sV c ■» • .0' '^^^a:": ^oP' %< • %..i^ ■* . o. vs. ;:. -^^ c'.:^5^'^ .s. .'^' ' » « <• "* .^■^ • ^^^ iS> -r. > V* Digitized by tine Internet Arciiive in 2010 witii funding from Tine Library of Congress littp://www.arcli ive.org/details/economicsoflierbeOOowen THE SOCIAL SCIENCE LIBRARY Edited by W. D. P. BLISS. THE ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER THE ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER C/.«^- W C. "OWEN. NEW YORK THE HUMBOLDT PUBLISHING CO. Clinton Hall, Astor Place. \ Copyright i8gi, BY The Humboldt Publishing Co. INDEX. PART I. PAGE. Chapter I. THE LAND.— The right to use the earth— The illegitimacy of existing titles — The impossibility of wrong becoming right by lapse of time — The indefensi- bility of private property in land — What system of land tenure can take the place of that now prevailing — The law of equal freedom, ..... ^ Chapter II. WOULD IT WORK?— Progress and Poverty — The Government Real Estate Exchange and the Prole- tarian^Land not the only tool — Free rent and diminished wages— The exploitation of labor by charity — The New York Tax Reform Association — Free Trade and the rise of the Capitalist to power, .... j^ Chapter III. ADDITIONAL OBJECTIONS.— Our joint inheritance — The application of the funds — Falling between two stools — The necessity for radical agitation — Herbert Spencer and Utopian Socialism — His ignorance of the development of Evolutionary Socialism — Division impossible — Supply and demand as regulating wages — Socialism the natural outcome of Democracy — Edward Bellamy and William Morris — Communism and Socialism — Competition and Monopoly, - - 27 Chapter IV. COMPENSATION.— Intricacies no excuse for postponement of the question — Mr. Spencer's posi- tions in 1850 and 18S4 compared — Henry George on compensation, ..... ^ IV INDEX. Chapter V. GROWTH.— The disintegrating influences of laissez faire — The net result of Henry Georgeism — Socialism in England— Socialism's debt to Evolution — The economic mold — The growth of institutions — Indi- vidualist and Collectivist influences — The coming change — The order of tlie mental processes — Destruction and construction — Our present stage — The necessity for solidarity — The class struggle — Wherein those who differ can cooperate, - - - - - - 51 PART II. Chapter I. CONDUCT.— The Data of Ethics— Conduct- Self-preservation and race-maintenance — Perfect conduct and industrial cooperation^Materialism, - - 65 Chapter II. UTILITARIANISM. -The basis of Utilita- rianism — That life is worth living — What constitutes morality and immorality — Static and dynamic theories of right and wrong — Natural rights — Causation, - 77 Chapter III.— EVOLUTIONARY PROOFS.— The physi- cal point of view — The biological — The psychological— The sociological— The limit of evolution in conduct, 91 Chapter IV. THE HIGHEST TYPE. —Justice and happiness— A model community— Conflicting theories reconciled— Pain and pleasure— The highest type, - 107 Chapter V. EGOISM. — The supremacy of egoism over altruism — The survival of the fittest — Free will — Admin- istrative nihilism — Comparative death-rates of workers and non-workers — Increase of suicide, insanity and prostitution— Parasites, - - - - 116 INDEX. V PAGE Chapter VI. ALTRUISM. — Dependence of egoism on altruism — Family altruism the necessary precedent to social altruism — Superiority of monogamy over polygamy — Necessity of cooperation — Contracts — Increase of mutual interdependence — Failure of unqualified egoism — Extended pleasures of the altruistic nature — Interna- tionalism, - - - - - - 129 Chapter VII. STRIKING THE BALANCE.— Need for a compromise between egoism and altruism— Signs of progress — The militant type — Social discipline and gradual evolution — The German Emperor — The coming storm, ...... 1^8 Chapter VIII. EXFOLIATION.— Progress— The Essential beneficence of things — -The human will counts for some- thing — One-sided treatment of evolution — Exfoliation and the survival of the fittest — Carlyle . and Spencer — The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children — Class laws — Gestation and birth, - - - 147 PART III. Chapter I. THE COMING SLAVERY. — The Commu- nistic manifesto — Voluntary contracts — The undeserving poor — The wage-fund theory — Capitalist exploitation of reforms — The practical politician — The Factory Acts — Why revolutionary Anarchists oppose them — Ship- owners and the load-line — Recent steps toward Socialism in England, Australia and America — The Pope's Encyclical, - - - - - 157 vi INDEX. PAGE. Chapter II. THE SLAVERY THAT HAS COME.— Why Socialistic legislation is condemned — Self-help — The Democratic evolution — The abolition of class-rule — That suffering is curative— Condition of the prole- tariat — The defects of human nature — The colossal directorate required — The case of the transition. — Slavery defined — Paternal and Fraternal Socialism — Wherein we are agreed — Benthamism — The pre- requisites for individual welfare — Is Herbert Spencer an Anarchist ? — The economic mold — Modern marriages — The industrial divorce — Self-preservation, - - 176 Chapter III.— A PLEA FOR LIBERTY, - - 199 Chapter IV.— CONCLUSION, - - - - 238 THE ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. PART I. CHAPTER L THE LAND. ' HERBERT SPENCER has been generally regarded as one of the leading apostles of "Individualism." By those, however, whose conception of " Individul- ism" is that it has attained its culmination in our existing order, it is found apparently convenient to forget that he pre-supposes Land Nationalization as the necessary condi- tion precedent of an Individualist community. I commence this inquiry, therefore, with a well-known quotation from Social Statics, for which I bespeak a careful perusal : — ' ' Given a race of beings having like claims to pursue the objects of their desires — given a world adapted to the grati- fication of those desires — a world into which such beings are similarly born, and it unavoidably follows that they have equal rights to the use of this world. For if each of them 'has freedom to do all that he wills, provided he 8 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. infringes not the equal freedom of any other,' then each of them is free to use the earth for the satisfaction of his wants, provided he allows all others the same liberty. And con- versely, it is manifest that no one, or part of them may use the earth in such a way as to prevent the rest from simi- larly using it ; seeing that to do this is to assume greater freedom than the rest, and consequently to break the law. "Equity, therefore, does not permit property in land. For if one portion of the earth's surface may justly become the possession of an individual, and may be held by him for his sole use and benefit, as a thing to which he has an exclusive right, then other portions of the earth's surface may be so held ; and our planet may thus lapse altogether into private hands. Observe now the dilemma to which this leads. Supposing the entire habitable globe to be so enclosed, it follows that if the landowners have a valid right to its surface, all who are not landowners have no right at all to its surface. Hence, such can exist on the earth by sufferance only. They are all trespassers. Save by the permission of the lords of the soil, they can have no room for the soles of their feet. Nay, should the others think fit to deny them a resting-place, these landless men might equitably be expelled from the earth altogether. If, then, the assumption that land can be held as property, involves that the whole globe may become the private domain of a part of its inhabitants ; and if, by consequence, the rest of its inhabitants can then exercise their faculties — can then exist even — only by consent of the land-owners ; it is manifest that an exclusive possession of the soil neces- sitates an infringement of the law of equal freedom. For men who cannot 'live and move and have their being' with- out the leave of others, cannot be equally free with those others. THE LAND. ' ' Passing from the consideration of the possible, to that of the actual, we find yet further reason to deny the recti- tude of property in land. It can never be pretended that the existing titles to such property are legitimate. Should any one think so, let him look in the chronicles. Violence, fraud, the prerogative of force, _ the claims of superior cunning — these are the sources to which those titles may be traced. The original deeds were written with the sword, rather than with the pen : not lawyers, but soldiers, were the conveyancers : blows were the current coin given in payment ; and for seals, blood was used in preference to wax. Could vahd claims be thus constituted? Hardly. And if not, what becomes of the pretensions of all subse- quent holders of estates so obtained? Does sale or bequest generate a right where it did not previously exist? Would the original claimants be nonsuited at the bar of reason, because the thing stolen from them had changed hands? Certainly not. And if one act of transfer can give no title, can many? No: though nothmg be multiplied for ever, it will not produce one. Even the law recognizes this principle. An existing holder must, if called upon, sub- stantiate the claims of those from whom he purchased or inherited his property; and any flaw in the original parch- ment, even though the property should have had a score of intermediate owners, quashes his right. ' ' ' But time, ' say some, ' is a great legalizer. Immemorial possession must be taken to constitute a legitimate claim. That which has been held from age to age as pri\'ate property, and has been bought and sold as such, must now be considered as irrevocably belonging to individuals.' To do this, however, they must find satisfactory answers to such questions as — How long does it take for what was originally a wrong to grow into a righO. At what rate per lO ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. annum do invalid claims become valid? If a title gets perfect in a thousand years, how much more than perfect will it be in two thousand years? and so forth. For the solution of which they will require the calculus. "Whether it may be expedient to admit claims of a certain standing is not the point. We have here nothing to do with considerations of conventional privilege or legisla- tive convenience. We have simply to inquire what is the verdict given by pure equity in the matter. And this verdict enjoins a protest against every existing pretension to the individual possession of the soil : and dictates the asser- tion that the right of mankind at large to the earth's surface is still valid ; all deeds, customs and laws notwithstanding. "Not only have present land tenures an indefensible origin, but it is impossible to discover any mode in which land can become private property. Cultivation is commonly considered to give a legitimate title. He who has reclaimed a tract of ground from its primitive wildness is supposed to have thereby made it his own. But if his right is disputed, by what system of logic can he vindicate it?" The significance of the foregoing will be readily appre- ciated ; and, although it is charged that Mr. Spencer has been for years endeavoring to shift from the position he took in the rashness of generous youth, the revolu- tionary doctrine here advocated has long since passed into current thought, having formed the basis of Henry George's Progress and Poverty. The moral results of that work, which traces its pedigree direct to the propositions in Social Statics, are pithily expressed by Mr. G. Bernard Shaw in the Fabian Essays"^ — "Ever since," he says, " Mr. * New York : Humboldt Pub. Co. THE LAND. n Henry George's book reached the EngUsh Radicals, there has been a growing disposition to impose a tax of twenty shiUings in the pound on obviously unearned incomes : that is, to dump four hundred and fifty millions a year down on the Exchequer counter, and then retire with three cheers for the restoration of the land to the people. ' ' Social Statics was published in 1850, and, in a pamphlet entitled The Classification of the Sciences, Mr. Spencer tells us that the ideas which he developed in Social Statics were first embodied in a series of letters on The Proper Sphere of Gov ernment, published in the Non-conformist during the latter part of 1842. In the preface to the American edition oi Social Statics (1865) he gives no sign of having modified his views as to the injustice of private property in land. To obtain a complete view of Mr. Spencer's position on the land question his answers to two other interrogatories must be ascertained ; the first being as to the system that is to take the place of that now prevailing, the second being as to how the claims of existing owners should be dealt with. The answer to the first is given in the following words in Social Statics : ' ' But to what does this doctrine, that men are equally entitled to the use of the earth, lead ? Must we return to the times of unenclosed wilds, and subsist on roots, berries, and game? Or are we to be left to the management of Messrs. Fourier, Owen, Louis Blanc and Co. ? "Neither. Such a doctrine is consistent with the highest state of civilization ; may be carried out without involving a community of goods ; and need cause no very serious revolution in existing arrangements. The change required would simply be a change of landlords. Separate ownerships would merge into the joint-stock o\\'nership of 12 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. the public. Instead of being in the possession of individ- uals, the country would be held by the great corporate body — Society. Instead of leasing his acres from an iso- lated proprietor, the farmer would lease them from the nation. Instead of paying his rent to the agent of Sir John or his Grace, he would pay it to an agent or deputy agent of the community. Stewards would be public officials instead of private ones ; and tenancy the only land tenure, ' ' A state of things so ordered would be in perfect har- mony with the moral law. Under it all men would be equally landlords ; all men would be alike free to become tenants. A, B, C, and the rest, might compete for a vacant farm as now, and one of them might take that farm, without in any way violating the principles of pure equity. All would be equally free to bid ; all would be equally free to refrain. And when the farm had been let to A, B, or C, all parties would have done that which they willed — the one in choos- ing to pay a given sum to his fellow-men for the use of certain lands — the others in refusing to pay that sum. Clearly, therefore, on such a system, the earth might be enclosed, occupied, and cultivated, in entire subordination to the law of equal freedom. ' ' It is here necessary to explain what is meant by ' ' the law of equal freedom." Speaking of the letters upon The Proper Sphere of Governmeiit, previously mentioned, Mr. Spencer says : "In these lettei;s will be found, along with many crude ideas, the same belief in the conformity of social phenomena to un variable laws ; the same belief ^ in human progression as determined by such laws ; the same belief in the moral modification of men as caused by social disci- pline ; the same belief in the tendency of social arrange- THE LAND. ments 'of themselves to assume a condition of stable equilibrium ; ' the same repudiation of State-control over various departments of social life ; the same limitation of State-action to the maintenance of equitable relations among citizens." Social Statics was written to prove that there is a law, the observance of which would bring about equi- librium, and render the cumbersome state arrangements now in vogue superfluous. The law is thus stated : Every mail has freedom to do all that he ivills, provided he infringes not the equal freedom of other men. 14 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. CHAPTER II. WOULD IT WORK? MY readers are now in a position to understand that, in the first place, Herbert Spencer regards social prosperity as varying with the degree in which the law given at the close of the last chapter is observed ; and that, in the second place, he has laid down a specific system of land-tenure as the one absolute, necessary and essential condition precedent, without which this law cannot possibly be observed. As already remarked, the publication of Henry George's Progress and Poverty ; the political and social agitation which followed, and attained their zenith — upon this par- ticular point of land-tenure — in America, in 1886, when Mr. George ran for Mayor in New York ; the growing Socialist movement which, in every country, has always placed "land nationalization" in the front rank of its specific demands ; and the numerous other factors, such as the Irish question, which have served to stimulate the search for economic truth, have resulted in a thorough examination of this specific proposition. It will be con- venient here to point out the flaws that have been found, or that are thought to have been found, by numerous critics who certainly have not objected to Mr. Spencer's propositions upon the ground of their revolutionary character. To bring the first flaw out in all its clearness I must WOULD IT WORK? 15 refer back to Mr. Spencer's own statement, already quoted, that private property in land may result in this, ' * that our planet may thus lapse altogether into private hands," and that all outside the owners' ring may be merely "tres- passers. ' ' For the sake of emphasizing this I quote again from one of Mr. G. Bernard Shaw's articles in the collec- tion oi Fabian Essays which has immediately preceded this as the July (1891) number of the Humboldt Publishing Com- pany's "Social Science Series." Speaking of the landless proletarian, he says: "The board is at the door, inscribed ' Only standing room left ; ' and it might well bear the more poetic legend, Lasciate ogni speranza^ voi cK entrate. This man, born a proletarian, must die a proletarian, and leave his destitution as an only inheritance to his son. It is not yet clear that there is ten days life in him ; for whence is his subsistence to come if he cannot get at the land? Food he must have, and clothing ; and both promptly. There is food in the market, and clothing also ; but not for nothing : hard money must be paid for it, and paid on the nail too ; for he who has no property gets no credit. Money then is a necessity of life ; and money can only be procured by selling commodities. This presents no diffi- culty to the cultivators of the land, who can raise com- modities by their labor ; but the proletarian, being landless, has neither commodities nor means of producing them. Sell something he must. Yet he has nothing to sell — except himself The idea seems a desperate one ; but it proves quite easy to carry out. The tenant cultivators of the land have not strength enough or time enough to exhaust the productive capacity of their holdings. If they could buy men in the market for less than these men's labor would add to the produce, then the purchase of such men would be a sheer gain. It would indeed be only a 16 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. purchase in form : the men would hterally cost nothing, since they would produce their own price, with a surplus for the buyer. Never in the history of buying and selling was there so splendid a bargain for buyers as this. Aladdin's uncle's offer of new lamps for old ones was in comparison a catchpenny." Now the conditions, so vividly here described by Mr. Shaw, are not a new development. They have existed, in a more or less modified form ; since time immemorial, through the influence of a thousand and one monopolies, varying with the shifting times, incalculable inequalities of wealth have arisen. In the vast Real Estate Exchange, therefore, to be conducted by the State, all obviously will not bid at first on equal terms, and many indeed will not be able to bid at all. The cry of the proletarian will still be therefore — "Where do I come in?" and the answer will be as heretofore — "Wherever the plutocrat has not chosen to pre-empt." It is, however, urged that, by the extra toll which the plutocracy must pay into the public till as the proportionate rent of the special advantages which it would immediately bid in, and through the equal distribution of such toll among all citizens, the poorest would quickly find himself in funds, and equality would gradually be established. To this it is readily replied that a system of government lease- holds, working under the supervision of such officials as plutocracy has cursed us with, would be corruption incar- nate ; that the plutocracy, starting at a confessedly great advantage, would see to it that such advantage should be, at least, maintained, and that prices would be "fixed" till chaos grew worse confounded. Attention is further called to the obvious fact that land, though unquestionably a primal, essential tool, is not the WOULD IT WORK? 17 all-essential tool. As Karl Marx has put it."* "Just as a man requires lungs to breathe with, so he requires some- thing that is work of man's hand in order to consume phys- ical forces productively. A water-wheel is necessary to exploit the force of water, and a steam-engine to exploit the elasticity of steam. Once discovered, the law of the deviation of the magnetic needle in the field of an ielectric current, or the law of the magnetization of iron around which an electric current circulates, cost never a penny. But the exploitation of these laws for the purposes of telegraphy, etc., necessitates a costly and extensive apparatus." Not only does the monopoly of these essential tools give our plutocracy an enormous and most unequal advantage at the start, which advantage would, in any event, be certain to continue long after the adoption of land nationalization ; but without access to these essentials to production it would be impossible for the proletariat to get any start at all. If proof of this is required it is furnished in abundance by the bitter experience through which the small farmer is now passing ; and he, having some capital, is a plutocrat as compared with the proletarian. As will be hereafter shown at length, equality of oppor- tunity, is, in Mr. Spencer's opinion, synonymous with jus- tice, and is therefore the one thing toward which we should aspire, and that it behooves the State to enforce. I have endeavored to show that the system of land-tenure, which is his leading, direct contribution to economic literature, does not, by itself, satisfy the requirements of the case, and there is reason to suppose that it might even augment the inequality which is admitted to be the crying evil of modern times. For, unable to employ himself — since the posses- * Capital, p. 235. (Humboldt Publishing Co., 1890). 1 8 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. sion of a bare piece of land does not guarantee a living — the proletarian would still have to work for an employer, and the reduction of his rent to zero would but enable him to work for a diminished wage. What is shown upon a small scale in the following extract from a recent pamphlet by Miss Ida M. Van Etten, entitled The Condition of Wotneji Workers under the Present Industrial System, would hold good throughout, for it will be seen that the free rent which a system of land nationalization might supposedly offer, is, so far as the reduction of wages is concerned, entirely on all fours with the free lodging supplied to-day by numer- ous charitable institutions. On page 12 of the above mentioned pamphlet, published by the American Feder- ation of Labor, Miss Van Etten says : ' ' We find charity everywhere supplementing the pres- ent industrial system, bolstering it up and making its oper- ations possible ; accepting its horrible results as a normal state of things ; and instead of bitterly and relentlessly attacking the root of the evil, attempting to plaster up and palliate its consequences. ' ' Charity has only succeeded in making it easier for the unscrupulous employers of women to exploit them safely and respectably. By the side of the huge factory, whose owner is growing enormously rich, upon the spoliation of his women workers, it builds the Lodging House or Chris- tian Home, and this enables the manufacturer to pay wages below the living point. * ' The ' sweating ' system would in many cases be almost impossible, were it not for the thoughtless charity of innumerable Church Relief, St. Vincent de Paul Societies, etc., etc. ' ' If these societies would look carefully into the histories WOULD IT WORK? 19 of their pensioners, they would find in almost every case that they are the underpaid employees of some manufac- turer of slop-work goods or his 'contractor' who counts upon the dole of charity to supplement the wages of his miserable workers. "But while thus, indirectly, charity is one of the many causes which tend to depress the condition of working women by making possible many of the exactions and oppressions under which they suffer, the rapid increase of great charitable institutions, supported by the municipal or State treasury, within whose walls are often housed hundreds of women and girls, has become a direct means of lowering wages, by entering directly into competition with the sewing women, already the most numerous and oppressed of women workers. And what an unequal com- petition ! With all living expenses paid by the city or State, augmented by the voluntary offerings of the chari- table, the managers of those institutions are able and do sell the labor of their inmates far below the rate of wages prevailing outside — miserably low as that is. "Sometimes this is done from ignorance of conditions existing among working women in the world, as the directors of many of these large institutions for women are sisters, whose vows incapacitate them from acquiring such knowledge by personal contact or intercourse. "It is, of course, claimed that the institutions do so small a percentage of the work done that it does not affect wages. But under the present industrial system, it is well known that a reduction of wages, even in a fraction of the trade, has an immediate effect upon the wages of the whole trade. In the Catholic Protectory, sheltering about 1,000 girls, shirts, gloves, men's and boys' clothing are made at prices that it would be impossible for a woman to live upon out- 20 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. side. Scores of sewing women have told me that, upon protesting against a reduction in wages, they have been met with the answer, 'We can get work done by the sisters at these prices.' "In the House of the Good Shepherd, an institution founded for the reclamation of fallen women and supported by the city, the women, to the number of several hundreds, under the supervision of the Sisters of the Good Shepherd, are employed in making children's waists, clothing, and underwear at any prices the manufacturer chooses to offer. "It is to be hoped that the gentle, pious sisters, who, unfortunately for the work they have undertaken, know so little of outside conditions, do not fully realize the crime they are every day committing against working-women. "I wonder if they have ever considered the ^fwew;'?zV causes that creates one of their inmates. The gradual stages from want and misery to vice and shame, the horrible depressing poverty ever growing greater and grimmer, the ceaseless grind and oppression of heartless employers. And when at last a bitter protest has been wrung from her by a threatened reduction in wages, to be met by the information that the Sisters are willing to do her work at these prices, is it any wonder that she returns to her miser- able tenement with a bitter feeling in her heart against religion, whose representatives have been unconsciously, but nevertheless as truly her oppressors as the most cruel employer. And when, despairing, she is driven to eke out her miserable wages by the wages of sin, she is brought, by a strange irony of fate, to the House of the Good Shep- herd to be reformed. Thus, in a vicious circle, this, and similar institutions for women, create the very class they are founded to reclaim. "One of the largest manufacturers of white underwear WOULD IT WORK? 21 in New York, not long ago, advertised in the leading newspapers of New York State for inmates of charitable institutions to do his work at 'good prices.' "The officer of an institution for women in Syracuse answered the advertisement, asking for the prices, etc. She found they were much less than those paid to outside workers. Still this manufacturer succeeded in obtaining a large number of charitable institutions throughout New York and the adjoining States to do his work." As will be pointed out when considering The Coming Slavery this is the very argument which Mr. Spencer him- self there uses with crushing force, showing us that the effect of the old English poor-law was actually to reduce the wages of agricultural laborers, who, being partly sup- ported by the "rates," were thereby enabled to work for so much less. Neither the Socialist, nor the bulk of the organized labor movement in America, have been as yet able to convince themselves that a social reconstruction limited to land nationalization, the wage-system being left untouched, would not operate in a precisely similar manner. Should it so operate history would again repeat itself, and the workingman would again have been used as a cat's-paw to rake the capitalist chestnuts out of the fire. For the history of the last hundred years has been the gradual elbow- ing of the landlords out of the seat of poiver to make room for the capitalist class, whose little finger has already proved heavier than the loins of the feudal landed aris- tocracy. It is certainly, therefore, not for the increase of capitalist power that the workers agitate. I have said that there is reason to suppose that such a system of land tenure, if put into operation side by side with the retention of our competitive system as now in 22 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. vogue, might result, not in freeing the workers, but in augmenting incalculably the capitalist's power. Prophecy is a dangerous amusement, but current events do, now and again, prove trustworthy guides. I submit, therefore, a summary of the organization of "The New York Tax Reform Association," as reported in the New York papers of June 6th, 1891. The prime mover in this matter is said to have been one Bolton Hall, a lawyer ; other active agents being Spencer Aldrich, also a lawyer ; George R. Read, president of the Real Estate Exchange, and the Record and Guide — a paper devoted to real estate. The report, which I take from the New York Recorder, further informs us that "a number of prominent business men, some of them large real estate owners, are interested in it. The subject has been quietly canvassed and the conclusion reached that the times are ripe for reform. It is stated that Gen. Francis A. Walker, ex-supermtendent of the national census, was the only political economist who declined to indorse the movement, and only two business men out of about one hundred approached refused their support." The following is their declaration of principles : "We substantially concur in the following principles for the reasons stated, or for other reasons : " I . The most direct taxation is theoretically the best, because it gives to real payers of taxes a conscious and direct pecuniary interest in honest and economical govern- ment. "2. Mortgages and capital engaged in production or trade should be exempt from taxation, because taxes on such capital tend to drive it away, to put a premium on dishonesty and to discourage industry. "3. Real estate should bear the main burden of taxa- tion, because such taxes can be most easily, cheaply and certainly collected. WOULD IT WORK? 23 "4. Our present system of levying and collecting State and municipal taxes is extremely bad, and spasmodic and unreflecting tinkering with it is unlikely to result in substantial improvement. "5. No Legislature will venture to enact a good system of local taxation until the people, especially the farmers, perceive the correct principles of taxation and see the folly of taxing personal property. ' ' Therefore we desire to unite our efforts, in such ways as may seem advisable, to keep up intelligent discussion and agitation of the subject of taxation, with a view to improvement in the system and enlightenment as to the correct principles." Here follow a number of signatures, many of them those of well-known millionaires. Now it will be remarked that this is precisely Mr. Henry George's Single Tax scheme, to which, as the surest method of abolishing poverty, it was proposed to rally the workingmen of the United States. Among the signers is Mr. Thomas G. Shearman, one of Mr. George's staunchest supporters. The Socialists have been constantly and most bitterly attacked for their audacity in criticising the scheme, just as, I am sure, many of my readers will already have accused me of narrowmindedness for implying that no good thing can come out of Nazareth. That is, however, precisely what I do assert. I do not claim that the rich are intrinsically inferior to, or less public-spirited than the poor ; but I do claim that the morality engendered by our existing system is not of that exalted character which would induce millionaires to strip themselves of their possessions for the benefit of the workingman. Her- bert Spencer claimed for his scheme that it would give all equality of opportunity : Henry George declared that it 24 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. would abolish private property in land, and that, by giving all equality of opportunity, it would lead to the downfall of the wage system and to a regime of general voluntary cooperation. These propositions have been prominently before the public for the last ten years, and the fact that astute millionaires now conclude that they can safely advocate them raises, to say the least, a strong presumption that they are not as thorough-going as was at first sup- posed. Men are still mainly governed by their personal interests, and by the interests of their class. Strictly cognate to this subject is the history of the English free-trade movement, and its treatment by the Socialists, under the leadership of Karl Marx ; who, in 1847, had already laid the scientific bases of the Socialist movement as they to-day exist with conparatively trifling alterations. When, in the forties, the capitalists — eager to overwhelm the semi-socialistic Chartist movement — were parading England with the big and little loaf, carried, for purposes of compari- son, side by side ; when they were exhorting the English workers to redeem themselves from pauperism by cheapen- ing their food-supply through the abolition of the Anti- Corn laws, Karl Marx pointed out with exceptional lucidity the enormous fallacy that underlay their argument. He pointed out that under the wage-system — into which, by the working of an inexorable law, competition had devel- oped—labor was a commodity, bought and sold in the market as such, and governed by the law that fixed the price of all commodities. Revealing by the most elaborate analysis the fector common to all commodities, which enabled them to be compared with one another and which therefore determined their respective values in exchange, he showed that the price that labor would command in the market must, under our wage-system, depend upon what WOULD IT WORK? 25 it cost to produce the worker and keep him in working order. He pointed out, therefore, that to diminish that cost by cheapening the food-supply would result merely in lowering the market-value of the labor-commodity, and that it was the employer who would reap the benefit. Sub- sequent events have fully sustained this position ; for, although the enormous lead which England immediately took through her seizure of the markets of the world brought labor in certain industries to a temporary premium ; and although the advantage thus gained has been to some extent retained by the workers through their trades-unions — to which Mr. Spencer is bitterly opposed, — it remains true that the rank and file of labor can to-day work far more cheaply in England than in countries where the necessaries of life are more expensive, and that therefore they have to work more cheaply. For a full analysis of this phase of the question I would refer the reader to Karl Marx's pamphlet on "Free Trade," published by Lee & Shepard of Boston. Therein he will find set out with great distinctness the class struggle as between the English land-owning and manufacturing powers, and he will see gauged at their correct value the philanthropic sentiments that flowed so freely from the tongues and pens of the champions of the employing classes. In reviewing other of Mr. Spencer's works, and especially the Data of Ethics, we shall see repeated the hymns to Liberty, and the homilies respecting Peace, which made the fortune of orators of the John Bright stamp. And, indeed, it is a principal part of the object of this work to show that Mr. Spencer, who has interpreted with extra- ordinary felicity of illustration the potency of the environ- ment, is himself one of the most striking examples of that truth ; that his mind formed itself under the influence of 26 ECONOMICS OF HERBER T SPENCER. laissez /aire, which, though for the time being a powerful, was but a temporary phase of thought ; and that the decided set which it then acquired it has never been able to recover from. Inasmuch as in the recent free-trade agitation in the United States the old phenomena have re-appeared ; and, even in the advanced wing of the Free Trade party led by Henry George, employers have appeared with words of compassion on their lips for the sufferings of the wage- workers, I think it proper to append a quotation from Mr. Lecky's History of the Eighteenth Century — a quota- tion that is advisedly given in the Fabian Essays. He says: — "Nothing in the history of political imposture is more curious than the success with which, during the Anti-Corn Law agitation, the notion was disseminated that on questions of Protection and Free Trade the manufactur- ing classes have been peculiarly liberal and enlightened, and the landed classes peculiarly selfish and ignorant. It is indeed true that when in the present century the pressure of population on subsistence had made a change in the Corn Laws inevitable, the manufacturing classes placed themselves at the head of a Free Trade movement from which they must necessarily have derived the chief benefit, while the entire risk and sacrifice were thrown upon others. But it is no less true that there is scarcely a manufacture in England which has not been defended in the spirit of the narrowest and most jealous monopoly ; and the growing ascendancy of the commercial classes after the Revolution is nowhere more apparent than in the multiplied restrictions of the English Commercial Code." ADDITIONAL OBJECTIONS. 27 CHAPTER III. ADDITIONAL OBJECTIONS. IF land-nationalization, as an isolated measure, fails to provide equality of opportunity, still less does it satisfy in others ways the demands of abstract justice. For much of what is regarded by Mr. Spencer as being rightly public property — viz. : the raw material of mother earth — has entered into and forms a component part of existing wealth ; and, if the public were properly owners of such raw material, then the public are partners in all wealth to the extent to which the presence of the raw material embodied in it con- stitutes its value. Setting this, however, on one side, it is pointed out by all Socialist writers, and also most forcibly by Mr. Edward Bellamy in Looking Backward, that the great inventions, which we now see reduced to the private property of the few, can by no conceivable analysis be shown to be the product of their own individual toil, or even of the toil of those from whom they were acquired by purchase. It is shown by a most critical analysis, which is but an application of the general principles of evolution, that we are literally ' ' heirs of all the ages ; ' ' that invention has grown out of invention, and that pre-historic man him- self unconsciously cooperated in fashioning the marvelous combinations of mind and matter that to-day place the muscles of the universe at our command. It will be remarked that this is an exceedingly definite claim, backed up by a far-reaching analysis, and based upon 28 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. a demand for Justice. It is in no way satisfied by the land nationalization program now under criticism. Among the many objections to the proposed plan of land-nationalization, there are two others which seem to me worthy of notice. The first is the practical question of what is to be done with the enormous rents which the State will be in receipt of; since, with all enterprise in individual hands, the State would be at a loss to find a ready investment. In America Mr. George proposes to use the fund in Heu of all other taxation ; a proposition which, as it has appeared to the Socialists, would be robbing Peter to pay Paul, taxing the landlords for the sake of freeing the capitalists from all responsibilty. In England, where they are not blessed with our enormous protective tariff, the question of the social alterations in the competi- tive system that the investment of such a public revenue would necessitate has excited much attention. As Mr. Bernard Shaw has dealt with the point in a sprightly and most incisive way I shall make no apology for quoting from him again. He tells us that "the results of such a proceeding," — i. e. taxing the landlords twenty shillings on the pound — "if it actually came off, would considerably take its advocates aback. The streets would presently be filled with starving workers of all grades, domestic servants, coach builders, decorators, jewelers, lace-makers, fashionable professional men, and numberless others whose livelihood is at present gained by ministering to the wants of these and of the proprietary class. 'This,' they would cry, 'is what your theories have brought us to ! Back with the good old times, when we received our wages, which were at least better than nothing.' Evidently the Chancellor of the Exchequer would have three courses open to him. (i.) He could give the money back again to the landlords and ADDITIONAL OBJECTIONS. 29 capitalists with an apology. (2.) He could attempt to start State industries with it for the employment of the people. (3.) Or he could simply distribute it among the unemployed. The last is not to be thought of: anything is better than panevi et circenses. The second (starting State industries) would be far too vast an undertaking to get on foot soon enough to meet the urgent difficulty. The first (the return with an apology) would be a rediictio ad absurdum of the whole affair — a confession that the private proprietor, for all his idleness and his voracity, is indeed performing an indispensable economic function — the function of capitalizing, however wastefully and viciously, the wealth which surpasses his necessarily limited power of immediate personal consumption. And here we have checkmate to mere Henry Georgeism, or State appropria- tion of rent without Socialism. It is easy to show that the State is entitled to the whole income of the Duke of West- minster, and to argue therefrom that he should straightway be taxed twenty shillings in the pound. But in practical earnest the State has no right to take five farthings of capital from the Duke or anybody else until it is ready to invest them in productive enterprise. The consequences of withdrawing capital from private hands merely to lock it up unproductively in the treasury would be so swift and ruinous, that no statesman, however fortified with the destructive resources of abstract economics, could persist in it. It will be found in the future as in the past that gov- ernments will raise money only because they want it for specific purposes, and not on a priori demonstrations that they have a right to it. But it must be added that when they do want it for a specific purpose, then, also in the future as in the past, they will raise it without the slighest regard to a priori demonstrations that they have no right 30 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. to it. Here then we have got to a dead lock. In spite of democrats and land nationalizers, rent cannot be touched unless some pressure from quite another quarter forces productive enterprise on the State. Such pressure is already forthcoming." The other objection is that it is still impossible to get satisfactory results from putting new wine into old wine- skins ; a reflection that I have anticipated in my criticism of the Real Estate Exchange as run by the class of poli- ticians our present system has generated. For it is to be expected that the adoption of communism in land, coupled with the rigid retention of individual competition in all forms of industry, would prove at once an innovation very difficult to introduce, and a most severe wrench upon the logical consistency which individuals and communities alike endeavor, with more or less earnestness, to realize in actual life. With continually increasing asperity it is pointed out by the army of hostile critics to which the ' ' conventional lies of our civilization" have given birth that our present system rests upon no logical basis. It is demonstrated that the rich grind the faces of the poor, and absorb their weaker rivals, in the name of "individualism," and defend their acquisitions in the name of "the public weal ;" laud- ing the institutions that have proved to them so profitable as necessary for the maintenance oi society, and calling on society to tax itself, with annually increasing severity, for the support of the bayonet and the policeman's club, together with all the paraphernalia of so-called "justice" behind which property has succeeded in entrenching itself This criticism reminds the masses that they are tricked with maxims which their masters laugh at in their sleeves. It is therefore spreading rapidly, and, inasmuch as it is a genuine criticism which points to an absolutely illogical, ADDITIONAL OBJECTIONS. 31 and therefore indefensible condition of affairs, it will not down until logic is restored to actual life. Such a restora- tion can perhaps be conceived as possible in the adoption of a complete individualism all along the line, whereby every man shall be expected and allowed to play for his own hand, and the victor shall be recognized as entitled to the spoils.* Or, on the other hand, logic can be restored by the adoption and actual practice of the philosophy which makes the welfare of the humblest individual the concern of all — a socialistic philosophy that would urge every member of society to see that affairs were so ordered as to realize the following Utopia which Mr. Spencer him- self gives in his Data of Ethics : ' ' The citizens of a large nation industrially organized have reached their possible ideal of happiness when the producing, distributing, and other activities are such in their kinds and amounts that each citizen finds in them a place for all his energies and aptitudes, while he obtains the means of satisfying all his desires." The point here made, therefore, is that the mixture of communism in land, and individualism in all branches of production and exchange, would content no one ; and a moment's consideration will show that, if brought into operation to-morrow, land-nationahzation could not, by itself, satisfy the aspirations of either collectivists or individ- ualists. For to the former it would always seem but an installment of reform, representing a life that still "crept along on crippled wing" ; while the latter — your pushing, practical, typical business man, understanding that he had * "Lord Bramwell will give cogent reasons for the belief that absolute freedom of contract, subject to the trifli?ig exceptio7t of a drastic criminal law, will ensure a perfect state." — Fabian Essays, p. 6. (Humboldt Pub. Co.) 32 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. still to be the architect of his own fortune, would perpetually chafe at the illogical distinction which permitted him to exploit for his own private benefit all human society, but placed, in the name of society, on every foot of land the warning — "Trespassers will be prosecuted with the utmost rigor of the law." We may, however, rest assured that so revolutionary a proposition as communism in land can be carried into effect only after an agitation so profound that every existing social institution will have been submitted to the most critical review, and public thought remodeled throughout. It is precisely here that the insufficiency of the movement suggested by Mr. Spencer, and carried into effect by Henry George, becomes apparent. A society that is still content to think it justifiable to exploit one's neighbor at every turn — the matter of "cornering" land alone excepted — will never muster the energy needful to cast the whole of its social philosophy into the crucible of unsparing criti- cism ; it will never face the lions that bar the way to so radical a reform. For the truth of this position I refer to the history of the George movement here in the United States, and to the history of Mr. Spencer's own personality. He enunciated his revolutionary doctrine respecting land forty-one years ago. He has scarcely referred to it since in all his voluminous writings, such occasional mention as he has condescended to make being merely for the sake of emphasizing the necessity of fully compensating existing proprietors — a matter that will be subsequently treated. Considering that the abolition of private j^roperty in land is the absolutely indispensable basis on which the whole of the Spencerian individualism rests, the failure of Mr. Spencer to iterate and re-iterate it is, to say the least, remarkable. Suppressio veri expressio falsi : to conceal the truth is tantamount to a willful misleading of the masses. ADDITIONAL OBJECTIONS. 33 Were this the proper place I should also here point out that the institution of private property in all the means of production and distribution is now on trial, not merely as failing to satisfy the requirements of abstract justice, but still more from the point of view of an advanced and far- seeing utilitarianism. We shall have, however, occasion to consider this position later on, when examining Mr. Spencer in his character of a professed utilitarian. I wish here merely to call attention to the reference, already quoted, to "Messrs. Fourier, Owen, Louis Blanc & Co." As Mr. Bliss has pointed out in his preface to Socialism, by John Stuart Mill,* Mill knew only "the Socialism of Owen, of St. Simon, of Fourier, of Cabet, of the 'static' Socialists." This also is the only Socialism that Mr. Spencer appears to know, and throughout his later writings no sign is given of his being aware that to these, represent- ing as they did the Utopian stage, two generations have succeeded who have applied the methods of Darwin to the elucidation of economics, and are entirely at one with Mr. Spencer himself in their treatment of society as an organic growth. It is, moreover, impossible to have any consider- able acquaintance with the writings of such men as Marx, Engels, Bebel, Carpenter, Gronlund, and many other Social- ist authors who could be named, without awaking to a recognition of the fact that the incalculable service rendered by evolution, through the elucidation and logical arrange- ment of events that had previously appeared unconnected and causeless, is now being in its turn rendered to evolution by Socialism. It is extending the inquiry boldly from the domain of the infinitely little to that of the infinitely great ; and, by the firmness of its grasp -on the leading economic * Humboldt Publishing Company. Social Science Library, No. 2. February, 1891. 34 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. causes that shape the course of nations, and are the molds from which their social, religious and political institutions take their forms, it is re-writing all history and literature by the hght of the evolutionary philosophy, I shall have occasion later on, when reviewing the Data of Ethics, to show that this ignorance renders Mr. Spen- cer's criticism merely the criticism of a supposed position, and therefore absolutely without value. It is in order, however, here to state that the reference to "Messrs. Fourier, Owen, Louis Blanc & Co." is followed immedi- ately in Social Statics by a criticism of the (supposed) scheme of "what is usually called Socialism or Commu- nism." The passage is as follows : ' ' Plausible though it may be, such a scheme is not capable of realization in strict conformity with the moral law. Of the two forms under which it may be presented, the one is ethically imperfect ; and the other, although correct in theory, is impracticable. Thus, if an equal por- tion of the earth's produce is awarded to every man, irrespective of the amount or quality of the labor he has contributed toward the obtainment of that produce, a breach of equity is committed. Our first principle requires, not that all shall have like shares of the things which minister to the gratification of the faculties, but that all shall have like freedom to pursue those things — shall have like scope." "If an equal portion of the earth's produce, etc." The Socialist agitation has spread itself so widely, and permeated literature so generally, that all who have any pretensions to economic knowledge are to-day aware that the last thing Socialism dreams of is division. On the contrary it bases ADDITIONAL OBJECTIONS. 35 itself on the strictly evolutionary ground that the growth of the social organism, greatly through the improved methods of communication that render the modern world one country, has rendered combination not only feasible but inevitable. Instead of representing division, therefore, Socialism is combination personified ; and, believing with Buckle that "all true history is the history of tendencies," it preaches combination, not as a Utopia desirable upon grounds of abstract morality or co7ivenience, but as an irresistible developtnent. I shall hereafter call attention to Mr. Spencer's treat- ment, in very recent writings, of the ' ' wages-fund theory ' ' as an axiomatic truth ; there being shown no consciousness of the fact that John Stuart Mill gave it up as untenable years ago, and that it has been since repudiated by every economist of established reputation. I wish here to empha- size the fact that Mr. Spencer's crude conceptions of the schejnes of Socialism are given in an edition of Social Statics, approved and prefaced by himself, and dated in 1865 — that is to say, some twenty years after the position of Socialism, as an evolutionary interpreter of growth, had been fully set before the world by Karl Marx, Lassalle and others, all of whom specifically disclaimed all sympathy with or belief in abstract Utopian schemes. Having thus disposed of what he considers one of the two propositions of Socialism or Communism (the expres- sions being throughout treated by him as synonymous) Mr. Spencer considers the other in the following words : "If, on the other hand, each is to have allotted to him a share of produce proportionate to the degree in which he has aided production, the proposal, while it is abstractedly just, is no longer practicable. Were all men cultivators of 36 ECONOMICS OF HEkBER T SPENCER. the soil, it would perhaps be possible to form an approx- imate estimate of their several claims. But to ascertain the respective amounts of help given by different kinds of mental and bodily laborers, toward procuring the general stock of the necessaries of life, is an utter impossibility. We have no means of making such a division save that afforded by the law of supply and demand, and this means the hypothesis excludes." To which he appends the following curious foot-note: "These inferences do not at all militate against joint-stock systems of production and living, which are in all probability what Socialism prophe- sies." I speak of this foot-note as "curious," since it shows that, so recently as 1865, Mr. Spencer's conception of Socialism was that it was identical with the private cooperation movement. ' ' If, on the other hand, each is to have allotted to him a share of the produce proportionate to the degree in which he has aided production," etc. It is necessary here to use language carefully. Had the phrase employed been "shall receive from society in proportion to the value of the sacrifices he has made on behalf of society," it would have correctly represented the general position of Socialists on the question of remuneration, a position fortified by numer- ous scientific arguments which will be reviewed when con- sidering the Data of Ethics and subsequent works. It is, when measured by the time devoted, no such utter impossi- bility as Mr. Spencer supposes to gauge the sacrifices made ; while, on the other hand, the law of supply and demand offers no measure worthy of the name. For, in the first place, monopoly, which competition has quite naturally ended in, to-day controls this celebrated law, and has "supply" entirely at its command; and, in the second place, if there is one thing that has hitherto failed ADDITIONAL OBJECTIONS. 37 to satisfy the demands of abstract justice, it is this very law. Under it, it is precisely those who work the longest hours at the most arduous, dangerous and unhealthy tasks, who earn the least ; and, in consequence of our reliance on it, so orthodox and conservative an authority as John Stuart Mill was forced to the conclusion that * ' hitherto it is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made have lightened the day's toil of any human being." Before, however, quitting this branch of the subject I would correct any misapprehension that may have arisen from my mention of the facility with which the individual's sacrifices on behalf of the community could be gauged by measuring the time devoted to the community's service. It is true that, as Karl Marx and others have shown, the exchange value of goods is set, in the first instance, by the average time required for their production ; and that, upon this account, many Socialists have considered that time devoted to the service of the commonwealth should be the measure of reward. It has also been repeately urged that, where work is specially exhausting or dangerous, shorter hours should be considered as entitHng to the same remu- neration as longer hours spent at safer or less exhausting occupations. By those who have been at the trouble of elaborating these views it is insisted that the requirements of abstract justice would be thus entirely satisfied ; that we have long since passed the age of small and isolated indus- tries, during which alone it might have been possible to give the producer all his product; that, therefore, the object now should be to recompense the worker fully for the labor he has put upon the joint product, and that is best calculated by the time measure. It is almost needless to remark that trades-unionism has long been working in this direction. 38 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. Speaking for myself, such propositions do not interest me greatly. They appear to me to be relics of the Utopian epoch, which is itself a relic of the old feudal conception that it was possible for the few to map out the lives of the many in a fashion that would prove entirely satisfactory. My understanding of Socialism is very different. I appre- hend that the true philosophy of Socialism is the scientific and evolutionary one that conceives it as a natural develop- ment of the democratic idea, which, since the Protestant Reformation, we have been endeavoring to realize in the religious field, just as throughout this century, we have been trying to introduce it into the field of politics. Quite naturally the thought has grown that there is no reason why this idea should be confined to religion and to politics ; but that, in order to bring about true democracy in these, we must go logically on, and democratize our industrial institutions. If this conception be true, it follows that the attempt to anticipate the future, by starting with elaborate regulations for the reward of labor, is altogether premature ; since, by the very hypothesis, the people must be free to make such arrangements among themselves as may, from time to time, appear to satisfy the justice of the case. What Socialism seeks to do is to put the people in a position where they can make such arrangements for themselves. It seeks, therefore, to abolish monopoly, and to put the means of production and distribution at Xh&free disposition of the people — one and all. A word upon the two Utopian romances that have of late attracted the attention of the reading world — Looking Backward, and News from Nowhere. Far be it from me to suggest that no good is accomplished by holding up a lofty ideal. Such ideals are of incomparable value, but the ADDITIONAL OBJECTIONS. 39 limits of such constructive work are quickly seen, and nat- urally made the most of by the industries that have the strongest possible objection to being democratized. News from Nowhere was doubtless intended as a counter-blast to Looking Backward, but both show, in an exactly similar degree, the insuperable difficulties under which the artists labored. Mr. Bellamy fixed his thought upon the condi- tions of to-day, and, with the mammoth factory as his model, conceived the industrial army of the future, Mr. Morris went back to Medievalism, of which he has always been an enthusiastic student, and constructed a model com- monwealth upon the lines of the Renaissance. They are, therefore, mere predictions, and are entitled to just the weight that individual predictions may be supposed to have as to the final outcome of a question that must be settled by the co7isensus of several hundred million minds. I devote considerable space here, and in subsequent chapters, to emphasizing the evolutionary and anti-Utopian character of modern Socialism, which is a stern movement, having little place in it for dreams. It is an easy task for the Pope, and all the countless enemies of progress, to select some one detail of some one Utopian scheme, to criticise it, and to condemn the whole science of industrial evolution by exhibiting the shortcomings of the detail criticised. The principal evil they effect is the despondency into which they cast that portion of the progressive element which, yearning for a change, has been so foolish as to pin its faith to the infallibility of some single Utopian dream. As showing how far a most capable Socialist may differ on these details from both Mr. Bellamy and Mr. Morris, I quote from Graham Wallas's "Property under Socialism," in the Fabia7i Essays. He says : — "In considering how far the State has a claim upon the services of its members. 40 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. we come upon the much larger question — How far are we working • for SociaHsm ; and how far for Communism ? Under pure Socialism, to use the word in its narrowest sense, the State would offer no advantage at all to any citizen except at a price sufficient to pay all the expenses of producing it. In this sense the Post Office, for example, is now a purely Socialistic institution. Under such condi- tions the State would have no claim at all on the service of its members ; and compulsion to work would be pj^oduced by the fad that if a man chose not to work he would be in danger of starvation. Under pure Communism, on the other hand, as defined by Louis Blanc's dictum: 'From every man according to his powers : to every man according to his wants,' the State would satisfy without stint and without price all the reasonable wants of any citizen. Our present drinking fountains are examples of the numerous cases of pure communism which surround us." It will be noticed that the line between Socialisrn and Communism is very clearly drawn, whereas Mr. Spencer invariably treats the two as synonymous. Returning to supply and demand, as affording the most workable method of reward, it will, of course, be pointed out that they have never had a fair chance, owing to the monopolization of the soil. This is, indeed, the main argu- ment of the school that, in the United States, has grouped itself around Henry George. I have already anticipated this objection by showing that bare land is not the only necessary tool ; and that, so long as the competitive wage- system prevails, and the nation is divided into the two classes of employers and employed, labor will be a com- modity the price of which is fixed as the price of all other commodities is fixed. ADDITIONAL OBJECTIONS. 41 But, apart from all this, we can both by deduction and by the safer inductive method, attack the question from another side. Just laws foster a nation's development; unjust laws retard it. The construction of railroads fosters development ; their absence is a serious drawback. But it is a drawback shared by all the inhabitants of the country, in spite of which they develop ; and, warring with one another under a competitive system, they attain vastly different stages of development ; some rolling in wealth, others finding their burial place in the potter's field. The same result holds, though in a more marked degree, where natural disadvantages have been minimized by the intro- duction of railroads, and that the differences becomes rap- idly more decided is entirely natural. For, as men with Winchester rifles do incomparably more harm to one another, when they engage in conflict, than do children whose only weapon is the pop-gun, so, with every increase in his power, does the result of man's war with his fellow- man become more fatal. The system of competition is therefore rotten at the core ; its active principle may be stated in Mr. Spencer's own striking phrase as "commer- cial cannibalism." It accordingly produces everywhere the same results. It will work itself out, more or less pro- nouncedly, in the same way, whether the country be in the barbaric stage where there are no railroads, or in the advanced stage in which electricity will shortly land us ; whether the country be cursed by unjust, barbaric laws, or whether the laws be carefully framed to insure fair play, and to prevent hitting below the belt. For it is^ of the essence of warfare to try to hit below the belt, and, no matter how fine the sentiments that the belligerent parties may agree to embody in their codes, their actual philos- ophy will always be that ' ' all is fair in war. ' ' The story 42 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. of the daily and hourly stratagems which our commercial classes, despite their dread of criminal prosecution, employ to cheat the law is self-sufficient proof. So much for the deductive argument. Turning to the inductive method, and forecasting the future by the experience of the past, we have, for instance, seen a whole class — the bourgeoisie — rise into power ; and similarly we have seen a whole nation — the Jews. Trodden under foot by the land-owning aristocracy, the members of this class, and of this nation, nevertheless developed ; and, as between themselves, developed very unequally, although the deprivation of access to the soil was for all of them equal. They were, to refer to my previous illustration, as between themselves joint occupiers of a country that lacked the advantages of a railroad, yet they nevertheless differentiated into rich and poor. Nor can it be said that this differentiation only set in when a portion of the members obtained access to the land ; for the bourgeoisie, as a class, have not invested largely in land, while the Jews, as a nation, have concentrated their energies upon obtaining control of the department of exchange. What warrant, therefore, does history give us that the experience of the bourgeoisie as a class, and of the Jews as a nation — all equally working under the disad- vantage of exclusion from the soil — will not be repeated on the body of a whole nation, all the members of which are equal partners in the soil? It is submitted here that induc- tion and deduction alike prove that, whatever temporary relief may be given, the same results will eventually be reached, and that history will repeat itself indefinitely until the regime of individualistic competitive warfare shall have been replaced by the regime of cooperative unity. Such a replacement is not confined merely to the enactment of ADDITIONAL OBJECTIONS. 43 measures whereby each shall be secured equal opportunity with each in both land and the general resources of our inherited civilization. It means the conception and accept- ance, in both thought and action, of a new idea ; for where the spirit is lacking the law will ever remain a dead letter. Such a conception has not been entertained by Mr. Herbert Spencer who, nourished upon an early diet of laissez faire, has confined himself to the advocacy, over forty years ago, of a single measure to stop hitting below the belt. Nor has it been entertained by Mr. Henry George, who, follow- ing far more boldly in the footsteps of his master, remains like him the champion of competition. 44 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. CHAPTER IV. COMPENSATION. WE pass now to the consideration of the second question involved in Mr. Spencer's statement of land nationalization, viz.: How are the existing owners to be treated? The answer given in Social Statics is as follows : "No doubt great difficulties must attend the resumption, by mankind at large, of their rights to the soil. The question of compensation to existing proprietors is a com- plicated one — one that perhaps cannot be settled in a strictly equitable manner. Had we to deal with the parties who originally robbed the human race of its heritage we might make short work of the matter. But, unfortu- nately, most of our present landowners are men who have either mediately or immediately — either by their own acts, or by the acts of their ancestors — given for their estates equivalents of honestly earned wealth, believing that they were investing their savings in a legitimate manner. To justly estimate and liquidate the claims of such is one of the most intricate problems society will one day have to solve. But with this perplexity and our extrication from it abstract morality has no concern. Men having got themselves into the dilemma by disobedience to the law must get out of it as well as they can, and with as little injury to the landed class as may be. Meanwhile, we shall do well to recollect that there are others besides the landed COMPENSA TION. 45 class to be considered. In our tender regard for the vested interests of the few let us not forget that the rights of the many are in abeyance ; and must remain so, as long as the earth is monopolized by individuals. Let us remem- ber, too, that the injustice thus inflicted on the mass of mankind is an injustice of the gravest nature. The fact that it is not so regarded proves nothing. In early phases of civilization even homicide is thought lightly of. The suttee of India, together with the practice elsewhere followed of sacrificing a hecatomb of human victims at the burial of a chief, shows this : and probably cannibals con- sider the slaughter of those whom 'the fortune of war' has made their prisoners, perfectly justifiable. It was once also universally supposed that slavery was a natural and quite legitimate institution — a condition into which some were born, and to which they ought to submit as to a divine ordination ; nay, indeed, a great proportion of man- kind hold this opinion still. A higher social development, however, has generated in us a better faith, and we now to a considerable extent recognize the claims of humanity. But our civilization is only partial. It may by and by be perceived that Equity utters dictates to which we have not yet listened ; and men may then learn that to deprive others of their rights to the use of the earth is to commit a crime inferior only in wickedness to the crime of taking away their lives or personal liberties. ' ' Such were the sentiments of Mr. Spencer in 1850 — repeated again in 1865 — respecting the question of com- pensation. It needs no special skill in reading between the lines to see that he considered the compensation a secondary detail of comparative unimportance ; the main point emphasized being that private property in land is 46 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. robbery, and must therefore be abolished. Upon this point Henry George himself has used no stronger language. Yet, writing in 1884 against Socialism, under the title of The Coming Slavery, Mr. Spencer — who had not ventured for years to touch upon his own previous declaration as to the iniquity of private property in land — could write as follows, the passage quoted being intended as a warning from the watch-tower. ' ' Meanwhile, ' ' he says, ' ' there goes on out-of-doors an active propaganda to which all these influences are ancillary. Communistic theories, partially indorsed by one Act of Parliament after another, and tacitly if not avowedly favored by numerous public men seeking supporters, are being advocated more and more vociferously under one or other form by popular leaders, and urged on by organized societies. There is the move- ment for land-nationalization which, aiming at a system of land-tenure equitable in the abstract, is, as all the world knows, pressed by Mr. George and his friends with avowed disregard for the just claims of existing owners, and as the basis of a scheme going more than half-way to State- socialism. And then there is the thorough-going Demo- cratic Federation of Mr. Hyndman and his adherents. We are told by them that 'the handful of marauders who now hold possession [of the land] have and can have no right save brute force against the tens of millions whom they wrong.'" If there are to-day thousands who consider private property in land one of the most oppressive and indefensible forms of robbery, they are certainly entitled to point to Mr. Spencer as one of their instructors. Mr. George has repeatedly stated his position on the question of compensation, and there are many passages from which one could select. I take the following from Property in Land: — "The repetition of a wrong may dull COMPENSA TION. 47 the moral sense, but will not make it right. A robbery is no less a robbery the thousand millionth time it is com- mitted than it was the first time. This they forgot who, declaring the slave trade piracy, still legalized the enslave- ment of those already enslaved. This they forget who, admitting the equality of natural rights to the soil, declare it would be unjust now to assert them. For, as the keeping of a man in slavery is as much a violation of natural right as the seizure of his remote ancestor, so is the robbery involved in the present denial of natural rights to the soil as much a robbery as was the first act of fraud or force which violated those rights. Those who say it would be unjust for the people to resume their natural rights in the land without compensating present holders, confound right and wrong as flagrantly as did they who held it a crime in the slave to run away without first paying his owner his market value. They have never formed a clear idea of what property in land means. It means not merely a continuous exclusion of some people from the element which it is plainly the intent of Nature that all should enjoy, but it involves a continuous confiscation of labor and the results of labor. The Duke of Argyll has, we say, a large income drawn from land. But is this income really drawn from land? Were there no men on his land what income could the Duke get from it, save such as his own hands produced? Precisely as if drawn from slaves, this income represents an appropriation of the earnings of labor. The effect of permitting the Duke to treat this land as his property, is to make so many other Scotsmen, in whole or in part, his serfs — to compel them to labor for him without pay, or to enable him to take from them their earnings without return. Surely, if the Duke will look at the matter in this way, he must see that the iniquity is not in abolishing an institution which permits one man to plunder others, 48 ECONOMICS OF HEBRERT SPENCER. but in continuing it. He must see that any claim of land- owners to compensation is not a claim to payment for what they have previously taken, but to payment for what they might yet take, precisely as would be the claim of the slave- holder — the true character of which appears in the fact that he would demand more compensation for a strong slave, out of whom he might yet get much work, than for a decrepit one, out of whom he had already forced nearly all the labor he could yield." AH this is very admirable, and all of it is a logical deduction from Mr. Spencer's argument that it is impossi- ble to justify private property in land. But it is also true that, if the object of all human endeavor is to increase the length and depth and breadth of life, we are certainly not justified in throwing an enormous class upon the tender mercies of a world where many of them would probably starve to death. For these people have been led to look upon land-owning as part and parcel of our social system, under which land is as legitimate an investment as any other ; many of them are perfectly unable to earn a living ; for none of them would a place be made, since the express declaration of both George and Spencer is that our present industrial system shall remain unchanged. The proposi- tion is, therefore, the despoiling of a special class ; and though that class unquestionably has done, and still is doing, incalculable mischief; and though the wrongs inflicted on the proletariat are so enormous as to iustify almost any retaliation, it is certain that class-robbery can never satisfy the demands of abstract justice. From the utilitarian point of view the position, as one of statesmanship, is infinitely worse. A special class thus singled out for sacrifice will fight to its dying gasp ; it will make enormous capital out of the injustice of which it is the victim ; it will rally immense forces to its standard, and COMPENSA TION. 49 prolong the struggle indefinitely. That Mr. George should have thought that such a struggle could be started, pur- sued, and carried to a successful issue simply by the con- vincing eloquence of abstract propositions, unassisted by other concurrent economic changes, is anything but creditable to his intelligence. The Socialists have indulged in no such sanguine imag- inings. They look to a steady pressure all along the line resulting in modifications all along the line, in which land- lordism will come in for its full share of alteration. They look to the steady growth of the unemployed question in our industrial centers, bringing with it absolute compulsion of the municipal authorities "to do something." And this something cannot possibly be done without the author- ities themselves tampering with the vested rights of land- lordism. This has all been expressed so admirably by Mr. Bernard Shaw in the Fabian Essays that I cannot refrain from quoting him again. Speaking of the pressure upon the municipal authorities he says : ' ' But the municipal organization of the industry of these people will require capital. Where is the municipality to get it? Raising the rates is out of the question : the ordinary tradesmen and householders are already rated and rented to the limit of endurance : further burdens would almost bring them mto the street with a red flag. Dreadful dilemma ! in which the County Council, between the devil and the deep sea, will hear Lord Hobhouse singing a song of deliverance, telling a golden tale of ground values to be municipalized by taxation. The land nationalizers will swell the chorus : the Radical progressive income taxers singing together, and the ratepaying tenants shouting for joy. The capital difiiculty thus solved — for we need not seriously anticipate that the landlords will actually fight, as our President once threatened — the question of acquiring land will arise. The 50 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. nationalizers will declare for its annexation by the munici- pality without compensation ; but that will be rejected as spoliation, worthy only of revolutionary Socialists. The no-compensation cry is indeed a piece of unpractical catas- trophic insurrectionism ; for while compensation would be unnecessary and absurd if every proprietor were expro- priated simultaneously, and the proprietary system at once replaced by full blown Socialism, yet when it is necessary to proceed by degrees, the denial of compensation would have the effect of singling out individual proprietors for expropriation while the others remained unmolested, and depriving them of their private means long before there was suitable municipal employment ready for them. The land, as it is required, will, therefore, be honestly purchased ; and the purchase money, or the interest thereon, will be procured, like the capital, by taxing rent. Of course this will be at bottom an act of expropriation just as much as the collection of Income Tax to-day is an act of expropri- ation. As such, it will be denounced by the landlords as merely a committing of the newest sin the oldest kind of way. In effect, they will be compelled at each purchase to buy out one of their body and present his land to the municipality, thereby distributing the loss fairly over their whole class, instead of placing it on one man who is no more responsible than the rest. But they will be compelled to do this in a manner that will satisfy the moral sense of the ordinary citizen as effectively as that of the skilled economist." It is submitted that the above constitutes a more sensi- ble method of procedure than the single-tax scheme which, commencing with vehement protests that the landlords should not have a cent, has ended as the professed tail of a semi-professedly free-trade party that is always careful to disown the connection. GRO WTH. 51 CHAPTER V. GROWTH. THE discussion of Mr. Spencer's original advocacy of land-nationalization has carried me further into the field of general economics than I had originally in- tended. I do not regret it, since one of the main objects of this argument has been to show that the inauguration of any such scheme would not, of itself, permanently alter existing social conditions. That these social conditions will have to be radically altered, and that at a very early date, all thinkers are practically agreed, the almost solitary exception being Mr. Spencer, who clings tenaciously to the laissez faire doctrines he formulated in 1842, minus the land-nationalization proposition. For his continued silence upon that most vital point, coupled with the fact that when he has occasionally broken silence it has been only to urge the land-owner's claim to compensation, is tantamount to a virtual withdrawal of the proposition. I have also incident- ally endeavored to explain my reasons for believing that such a measure as the one proposed will never be inaugu- rated by a society still saturated with the selfishness of laissez faire philosophy ; since that philosophy isolates men, robs them of public spirit, and, therefore, renders it impossi- ble for them to form the powerful combination necessary for the overthrow of such an institution as private property in land. It has been no spirit of petty pique that has caused the labor movement in general, and the Socialists 52 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. in particular, to turn the cold shoulder upon or to oppose bitterly Mr. Henry George. It has been a deep-lying conviction of the fact that it is only the closest solidarity that can remove the mountain of folly, cruelty and fraud which centuries have bequeathed to us. The heritage we take is our existing social system, wherein is crystallized much doubtless that sages and philosophers have dreamed and prayed for, but much — alas ! much more — that is the legitimate offspring of the cruel greed of the few, and of the yet more lamentable cowardice and indolence of the many. That tender aspirations, burning hopes and high resolves are now waking into life on every hand is unques- tionably true ; but the shell has to be burst, and the effort required will probably be far greater than any that the human race has yet been called upon to make. It is mad- ness, pure and unalloyed, to imagine that the masses will find the spur necessary to that effort in a philosophy con- cerning which an eminent Christian Socialist — Charles Kingsley — has said : "Of all narrow, conceited, hypocritical and atheistic schemes of the Universe the Cobden and Bright one is exactly the worst." I have also endeavored to explain the reasons for my belief that the maintenance of a communistic system of land tenure, side by side with the retention of our present individualistic methods of production and exchange, would be an impossibility. Oil and water do not mix : the work- ings of the system would be vitiated from the start. There is, however, another side to the shield. Messrs. Spencer and George may prate of individualism as they will ; they may champion the ' ' buy cheap and sell dear ' ' philosophy of Bright and Cobden to their hearts' content, and the net result of all their teaching will be to increase the growing conviction that the management of our vast GROWTH. 53 landed estate is an affair in which we are all equally interested, and in which, therefore, we are all entitled to bear an equal hand. Similarly with the proposition that land tenures should be limited to such territory as the occupier can actually use — a proposition that finds ready favor with the extreme individualists of whom Mr. Hugh O. Pentecost is a type. For this too is Individualism with a string tied round its leg ; this too is a confession that the Individualism that displays itself in "grab" has got to stop, that pig-philosophy has been tried and found miser- ably wanting. It is an invitation to the public to wake up and look after its estate ; it urges it to be the perpetual judge that shall discriminate daily and hourly as to where use shades off into abuse, as to where the possessor is legitimately employed and where he is acting as a soulless monopolist. It constitutes, therefore, an immense departure from the philosophy that for ages bade the conqueror annex the earth if his sword were only strong enough, and that to-day bids him corner the globe if his purse be only long enough. It marks an immense advance toward Social- ism ; and the differences of detail between different schemes are but the natural outcome of the excessive speculation which always precedes vigorous and wide-spread action. That this conclusion is correct the facts in the case already amply prove. Side by side with the growing sense that there are many functions which the community cannot trust to private hands, but must perform itself, there grows the habit of regarding the land as something in which we are all concerned, that we should all profit by. The point I emphasize, however, is that this habit is grow- ing side by side with the growth of the Socialist conception of business conducted by organized society. Thus, on the one hand, the main contentions of Messrs. Spencer and 54 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. George respecting the right to land are even now within the domain of practical politics, and they have been dragged there by the growth of the very philosophy which Messrs, George and Spencer have made it their special business to combat. The whole process is categorically set out by Mr. Sidney Webb in his Socialism in England^'^ and from the same author, writing in the Fabian Essays, I take the following quotation : ' ' The National Liberal Federation adopts the special taxation of urban ground values as the main feature in its domestic program, notwithstanding that this proposal is characterized by old-fashioned Liberals as sheer confiscation of so much of the landlords' property. The London Liberal and Radical Union, which has Mr. John Morley for its president, even proposes that the County Council shall have power to rebuild the London slums at the sole charge of the ground landlord. It is, therefore, not surprising that the Trades Union Congress should now twice have declared in favor of ' Land Nation- alization' by large majorities, or that the bulk of the London County Council should be returned on an essen- tially Sociahst platform." In the same Essay is printed the Radical program, as given in the Star of 8th August, 1888; and, under the head of "Extension of Municipal Activity," I find the following: ''Object. — The gradual public organization of labor for all public purposes, and the elimination of the private capitalist and middleman. Means. — i. The provision of increased facilities for the acquisition of land, the destruction, without compensation, of all dwellings found unfit for habitation, and the provision of artisan dwellings by the municipality." The "destruc- tion without compensation" is exceedingly significant. It * Publications of the American Economic Association, vol. iv. No. 2. (1889.) Price 75c. GROWTH. 55 marks a complete abandonment of the idea that what is the landlord's is his own, to do with as he chooses. It occupies the same place in the history of landlordism as the modifi- cation of absolute into constitutional monarchy does in the history of royalty. It thus appears that the general sense of the community and the stern logic of events alike prove the truth of my previous position, viz. : that communism in land, and indi- vidual competition in all other departments, are incompati- ble ; that the socializing of tl>e land will be brought about by the socialistic tendencies of the age, as evidenced in all departments. In schemes, as such, Socialism has no great interest. True to the evolutionary thought which Marx was, perhaps, the first to carry boldly into the domain of economics, it relies on growth. It sees that every industrial change gives rise to the necessity for another change ; that the necessity is seen, is discussed and is finally adopted, with more or less friction according as the parties on either side are enlightened or unenlightened. But always, sooner or later, the industrial change forces other changes all along the line ; creeds, customs, laws — themselves the creatures of previous economic conditions — modifying themselves under the imperious pressure. And, as it requires no supernatural sagacity to foresee that from the union of a stallion and a mare there will be born a foal ; so it requires no great sagacity to foresee that, if the industrial change has been a disintegrating one, there will also be a series of correspondingly disintegrating changes in industry and religion, art and laws, philosophy, social customs, marriage relations, and all the countless manifestations of life. Standing on this pinnacle — raised for us slowly, stone upon stone, by the labors of a thousand Darwins, Herbert 56 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. Spencers, Huxleys, all building far better than the most far- sighted of them can possibly have known — we look down upon the kingdoms of the earth, and we see how they have been made. Thanks to the labors of such investigators as Morgan, Bachofen, Frederick Engels, and the innumer- able host whose busy fingers have been devoted to the disentanglement of the earliest history of our race, the gorgeous diorama of industrial advance revolves before us, and we discover, even where we had least suspected it — in the most intimate of social relationships, in questions of marriage, descent, inheritance and the like — alterations, re-alterations and revolutions following in the wake of changed industrial conditions.* Under the guidance of M. Taine we pass in review the centuries that followed the fall of Rome, and see the feudal system, with its supplement the CathoHc church, gradually pressed and hammered into its historic shape by the altered circumstances of the times. Noting the exigencies of the epoch, we realize that institu- tions, which to us of to-day seen meaningless and immoral, came into existence by an entirely natural process, and rose to power because they ministered efficiently to what had become a practically universal want. We advance slowly to a comprehension that liberty is only one of the laws of life ; that storm and stress beget conditions under which men are willing to sacrifice a part of life that the remainder may be saved ; and that, when the whole social organism is falHng to pieces, the clumsiest bandage of the most nar- row-minded and unscientific organization is eagerly wel- * See, in particular, Frederick En,8:e]s's Oris^in of the Family, Private Property and the State : Lewis Morgan's Ancient Society, and Bachofen's Mother-riffht. The conclusions of these and others investigators are admirably summed up by August Bebel in his Woman and Socialism's, translation of which will shortly be issued by the Humboldt Publishing Company. GROWTH. 57 corned. Similarly we begin already to grasp the significance of the startling changes wrought by the series of great discoveries, of which that of America, four hundred years ago, was the first. The shutters were suddenly thrown open, and the eye found itself confronted with the infinite landscape of the world. Who to-day can measure the throb that must have come into the human heart ; the beat of new hopes ; the chafing at the restraints of bandages originally designed for an incomparably smaller life ? Every enterprising spirit felt the breath of a fresh morning blow- ing in his nostrils, and the world seemed big enough for every one to make for himself a living. The story develops itself, chapter by chapter, with logical precision. New markets send buccaneers chasing round the globe with Drake and Frobisher ; gold tempts the Spaniards to the conversion of the New World, cross and sword in hand. The pendulum swings violently to the opposite extreme. Everywhere an intense individualism is engendered, and manifests itself in symptoms that, at first sight, appear to have nothing in common. For from this are alike descended the merry-hearted citizen of the Renaissance, and the gloomy Puritan who, in Europe, burst the bonds of Rome that he might roast Servetus at the stake, and, in America, threw off the yoke of Church and King that he might teach heretical witches how to behave themselves. To this alike belong the Parisian bourgeois who used the sans-cidottes to pull down the feudal nobility with the Bastille, and the Massachusetts manufacturer, who transplants his capital to Carolina to escape from the tyramiy of factory acts that limit the extortions he may practice on his "hands." Again a new order is arising, springing, as is ever the case, from the loins of a new industrial revolution. And in this case the revolution is, beyond all measure, the most 58 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. extraordinary yet accomplished. Strong as is now the instinct of individuaUsm, the need of another prime neces- sary of hfe — cooperation — is making itself keenly felt, and heart and head alike revolt against the ' ' cash-nexus ' ' as the only bond between man and man. All signs presage the coming of a tremendous change. How could it be other- wise? How is it possible to link nationahties together with bands of steel, and at the same time to keep intact the old national antipathies? How is it possible to set the most extensive explorations afoot, and, by digging up the roots of all religious systems, to show the material soil from which every one of them has sprung ; how is it possible to do this and at the same time to keep intact the old myth of a special code of morality dictated from on high, immutable, unchangeable? How is it possible to imagine that the matrimonial order will continue for all time unchanged, when proof is piled on proof that it has varied from age to age with every variation in the industrial environment? How is it possible to believe in the wage- system as the final expression of industrial development, when it is shown to be but one of numerous arrangements under which the processes of production and exchange have been from time to time conducted? Moreover, how is it possible for even the most sanguine of our plutocrats to hug this cherished delusion to his breast, when he con- siders that the wage-system practically dates from the over- throw of feudalism less than a hundred years ago, and is already working with a friction that threatens to tear to pieces the whole machine? To ask these questions is to answer them. The foregoing reflection develops yet another thought which, as it seems to me, is not expressed so often or so GROWTH. 59 clearly as it should be. We are all Individualists and we are all Collectivists at heart : we are all Anarchists and we are all Socialists : we all long for and enjoy the com- munism of society, the comniunio7i of man with man, and the same law of life compels us all, in self-defence, to demand liberty for our own individualities. With some the pendulum swings to one extreme, with others to the other, varying with the ante-natal and the actually existing environment. But the difference is not of kind, it is only of degree. Now the same processes are at work in the general mind of society as those we see operating in the particular mind of the individual ; and, just as we see the particular mind always, upon some one occasion or another, anxious for the abolition of some law, custom, or other set of circumstances that appear to hinder the realization of the ideal that it has constructed, so do we find it with the general mind. Moreover, just as we find that the influences at work to-day incline the particular mind to the destructive side, while those at work to-morrow will incline it to the constructive side, so is it with the general mind of society. Two further questions consequently present themselves ; one a question of actual ascertainment, the other a question of probable calculation. The first is as to the order of the mental processes, and this I conceive to be as follows. Dissatisfied with existing conditions the mind constructs — an ideal. Having constructed, it seeks to demolish what stands in the way of realizing that ideal, and this starts it out on a long career of criticism, since it has to unearth the obstacles. Having discovered the obstacles and removed them, it becomes again constructive and devotes itself to devices for the preservation of the life of the ideal it now has realized. It enters again upon the law and custom making stage. When it is in the second stage it 6o ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. is Anarchistic, wishing to overthrow the hostile law. In the first and third stages it is constructive, and is Utopian- Socialist or Scientific-Socialist, according as it is igno- rant and believes that it can construct camels out of its own inner consciousness, or enlightened and recognizes that a camel must be grown by the development of natural laws exhibiting themselves in well-defined tendencies. The second question, which is necessarily one of calcu- lation, is as to what stage of the general mental process we are at present in. Granted that the destructive and con- structive processes go on largely side by side, it is still certain that at one time more effort is spent upon the one than upon the other. The thing that appeals to the general sense as the thing that has to be done here and now is that on which the mind principally fixes its attention, and nat- urally so, for the human mind is essentially a reasonable creature. Now, according to my own calculation, we are still principally in the critical or destructive stage ; and the calculation is based upon the following observations. First : we are not as yet a jovial people, as we should be if we saw our way clearly through the wilderness and had the promised land already well in view. In other words, we see plainly that there are still numerous obstacles to be unearthed ; that many lions still block the path, most of which indeed wear sheep's clothing, and have to be exposed, condemned, and executed, before the journey can be successfully completed. Secondly : I have noticed that, although treatises upon social re-construction find favor with a few, it is only with a few ; whereas denunciation finds ready listeners in every circle. And this is by no means because the human mind is naturally destructive, for I believe the history of the race will show that it is upon the whole exceedingly con- GROWTH. 6 1 structive ; that it cherishes its pet institutions long after they have become cold clay ; and the ' ' glorious army of martyrs" are all witnesses to the danger that for centuries attended all attempts to wrench the social mind from its conservative and constructive mood, and plunge it into the destructive process. It is not so to-day. There is scarcely an existing institution that a man may not now denounce as scathingly as he will, and the penalty is, at most, his ostracism by a particular set upon which he can often contemptuously turn his back. That this does not hold true in such countries as Germany and Russia in no way affects the soundness of the argument. I speak of public sentiment, not as it expresses itself, but as it would fain express itself In the third place I have noticed that all the numerous parties that have been formed upon a hasty and incomplete analysis of existing conditions have quickly gone to pieces, no matter how brave the front with which they may have started. The want of tenacity on the part of their own original adherents I take as evidence that they themselves are guiltily self-conscious that their own analysis has not been so complete as to assure them that they stand upon impregnable ground. The want of favor with which the public receives their platforms I take as evidence, not that their proposals do not strike the public at first blush as desirable, but that the pubHc is very guiltily self-conscious that, for its part, it has practically made no analysis at all, and is altogether uncertain whither the proposed reforms will lead it. I have, therefore, for myself concluded that we are still, and shall be for some time to come, principally in the crit- ical and destructive stage. The people are at present employed in observing the deficiencies of the existing order ; 62 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. in taking stock of the classes, the institutions and the erro- neous beliefs that have proved to be a nuisance, and that, therefore, must be overthrown. At every step in the inves- tigation the magnitude of the task becomes more apparent, and therewith the necessity of a solidarity that shall be equal to the task. All which begets a longing for union — to which the economic developments of the age give the greatest possible impetus, by crowding the workers cheek by jowl in our huge industrial centers, and massing a thou- sand artisans under a single roof Furthermore, the more searching the analysis, the more clearly is seen the lament- able fact that human nature is still most miserably weak, and that there is a small, but immensely influential class which will not listen to the voice of reason, being ruled entirely by its interests. We act and re-act on one another, and lessons that the masters teach are sooner or later bet- tered by the pupils. The pressure, therefore, tends all the time to weld the workers into the solidarity of a special class, with special class interests, which they will inevitably seek to realize by the special methods of their class. These methods will be shaped by the habits of their daily Hfe, which, in their turn, are shaped by their economic condi- tions. It is true that their methods may be influenced to some extent by outside counsels, but only to some extent ; for, when weighed against sentiment and the force of daily habit, the logic of fine-spun argument is extremely light : all this I neither approve nor disapprove, contenting my- self with a simple statement of the facts. I point out, however, that the tendency to solidarity must, by the inev- itable force of circumstances, grow continually more pro- nounced ; and that equally pronounced will be the tendency to condemn all there may be in Individualism and laissez /aire that threatens to disintegrate such solidarity. I GRO WTH. 63 furthermore point out that the workers are the people, and that they are continually receiving new and invaluable recruits from the classes that have hitherto stood between them and the plutocracy. All this has been a seemingly long digression, but it was a necessary one. For the point I wish to drive home is, that it is not the stupidity of the masses which is answer- able for the decay of Herbert Spencer's influence as an apostle of laissez /aire. The reason for that decay is that laissez /aire is opposed to the spirit of the times, which, being itself forged in the furnace of the economic conditions of the times, is inexorable. I present, however, again another aspect of the question, for which the previous argument has already laid the ground. If my analysis be correct ; if we are still mainly in the critical stage ; those who differ widely in their con- structive schemes can materially assist one another in the critical department. In this we Socialists join hands with Herbert Spencer, and we gladly acknowledge that we are much indebted to his criticism for our own advance from the Utopian stage of fancy schemes to the solid and scien- tific stage of "growth." All which I shall endeavor to point out in the next division of this work. PART II. CHAPTER I. CONDUCT. I NOW turn to the department in which Mr. Herbert Spencer, quitting the uncertain task of constructing special schemes, has done invaluable service to the cause of truth, and therein, as I conceive, to that of Social- ism. For, in the words with which Herr August Bebel, the leader of the German Socialists, closes the preface to the last edition of Wo?na7i and Socialism : "If Socialism rests on error it will go under ; but if it rests on truth — that is to say, if it is the natural outcome of our social evolution — then no power on earth can prevent its being realized. Somehow it will break its own way to the front, and become the new order of society." That this is the view which all intelligent Socialists now take of their own movement is due to the fidelity with which they have followed the researches of Comte, of Darwin, and of the whole school of evolutionists, among whose chief inter- preters is Mr. Herbert Spencer. I now enter upon a consideration of the laws of conduct, and, therefore, of life in general as summed up by Mr. Spencer more particularly in his Data of Ethics ; though I shall also have occasion to refer from time to time to other of his writings. And this 66 ECONOMICS OF HERBER T SPENCER. comes strictly within the limits of my subject — The Eco- nomics of Herbert Spencer; for economics are not bounded by the processes of production and exchange, powerful though the influence of these may be. The oikou nomas — the law of the household — is necessarily the law of and for the lives of the members of the household. It is, therefore, the law of life, and this takes all Nature, whose law is unity, for its scope. Mr. Spencer, in defining the subject matter of Ethics, has given us a general outline of the development of life as conceived by evolutionists. The union and mutual interdependence by which life is preserved and continued even in its least developed stage : the increasing interde- pendence as we mount in the scale of life, an interdepend- ence by no means limited to the "cash-nexus" which commercialism would recognize as the only bond : the necessity of peace, or, as Socialists would put it, the necessity for substituting harmonious cooperation for the now prevalent internecine warfare of competition — all these will be found expressly, or impliedly, set out in what follows. In part I have condensed Mr. Spencer's expo- sition ; the more important passages I have given entire ; throughout I have conscientiously endeavored to give a correct representation of Mr. Spencer's doctrine. In his Data of Ethics Mr. Spencer examines conduct as a whole, comprehending all adjustments of acts to ends as exhibited by all living creatures. "Nor is even this whole conceived with the needful fullness, so long as we think only of the conduct at present displayed around us. We have to include in our conception the less-developed conduct out of which this has arisen in course of time. We have to regard the conduct now shown us by creatures CONDUCT. 67 of all orders as an outcome of the conduct which has brought life of every kind to its present height. And this is tantamount to saying that our preparatory step must be to study the evolution of conduct." "Conduct is distinguished from the totality of actions by excluding purposeless actions ; but during evolution this distinction arises by degrees." As we mount in the scale of life the adjustments become more purposeful, and "with the greater elaboration of life produced by the pursuit of more numerous ends, there goes that increased duration of life which constitutes the supreme end. And here is suggested the need for supplementing this concep- tion of evolving conduct. For besides being an improving adjustment of acts to ends, such as furthers prolongation of life, it is such as furthers increased amount of life. The sum of vital activities during any given interval is far less in the oyster than in the cuttlefish. . . The differ- ence between the average lengths of the lives of savage and civilized is no true measure of the difference between the totalities of their two lives, considered as aggregates of thought, feeling and action." The examples given up to this point are merely those of acts directed purposely to the preservation and comple- tion of the individual life. We have now to consider those adjustments which have for their aim the preservation of the species. "Self-preservation in each generation has all along depended on the preservation of offspring by preced- ing generations. And in proportion as evolution of the conduct subserving individual life is high, implying high organization, there must previously have been a highly evolved conduct subserving nurture of the young. Through- out the ascending grades of the animal kingdom, this second kind of conduct presents stages of advance like 68 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. those which we have observed in the first. Low down, where structures and functions are Httle developed, and the power of adjusting acts to ends but sUght, there is no con- duct, properly so named, furthering salvation of the species. Race-maintaining conduct, like self-maintaining conduct, arises gradually out of that which cannot be called conduct : adjusted actions are preceded by unadjusted ones." The conduct which furthers race- maintenance evolves hand in hand with the conduct which furthers self-maintenance, the two being mutually dependent. "Speaking generally, neither can evolve without evolution of the other, and the highest evolutions of the two must be reached simultane- ously. ' ' Neither of these kinds of conduct, however, can assume its highest form without that highest form being itself assumed by yet a third kind of conduct. "The multitu- dinous creatures of all kinds which fill the earth cannot live wholly apart from one another, but are more or less in presence of one another — are interfered with by one another. In large measure the adjustments of acts to ends which we have been considering are components of that 'struggle for existence' carried on both between members of the same species and between members of different species ; and, very generally, a successful adjustment made by one creature involves an unsuccessful adjustment made by another creature, either of the same kind or of a differ- ent kind. That the carnivore may live herbivores must die ; and that its young may be reared the young of weaker creatures must be orphaned. Maintenance of the hawk and its brood involves the deaths of many small birds ; and that small birds may multiply, their progeny must be fed with innumerable sacrificed worms and larvae. Competition among members of the same species has allied, though less CONDUCT. 69 conspicuous, results. The stronger often carries off by force the prey which the weaker has caught. MonopoHzing certain hunting grounds, the more ferocious drive others of their kind into less favorable places. With plant-eating animals, too, the like holds : the better food is secured by the more vigorous individuals, while the less vigorous and worse fed succumb either directly from innutrition or indi- directly from resulting inability to escape enemies. That is to say, among creatures whose lives are carried on antag- onistically, each of the two kinds of conduct delineated above must remain imperfectly evolved. Even in such few kinds of them as have little to fear from enemies or competitors, as lions or tigers, there is still inevitable failure in the adjustments of acts to ends toward the close of life. Death by starvation from inability to catch prey shows a falling short of conduct from its ideal. . . "This imperfectly evolved conduct introduces us by antithesis to conduct that is perfectly evolved. Contem- plating these adjustments of acts to ends which miss com- pleteness because they cannot be made by one creature without other creatures being prevented from making them, raises the thought of adjustments such that each creature may make them without preventing them from being made by other creatures. That the highest form of conduct must be so distinguished is an inevitable implication ; for while the form of conduct is such that adjustments of acts to ends by some necessitate non-adjustments by others, there remains room for modifications which bring conduct into a form avoiding this, and so making the totality of life greater. "From the abstract let us pass to the concrete. Rec- ognizing men as the beings whose conduct is most evolved, let us ask under what conditions their conduct, in all three 70 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. aspects of its evolution, reaches its limit. Clearly while the lives led are entirely predatory, as those of savages, the adjustments of acts to ends fall short of this highest form of conduct in every way. Individual life, ill carried on from hour to hour, is prematurely cut short ; the foster- ing of offspring often fails, and is incomplete when it does not fail ; and in so far as the ends of self-maintenance and race-maintenance are met, they are met by destruction of other beings, of different kind or of like kind. In social groups formed by compounding and recompounding prim- itive hordes, conduct remains imperfectly evolved in pro- portion as there continue antagonisms between the groups and antagonisms between members of the same group — two traits necessarily associated, since the nature which prompts international aggression prompts aggression of individuals on one another. Hence the limit of evolution can be reached by conduct only in permanently peaceful societies. That perfect adjustment of acts to ends, in main- taining individual life and rearing new individuals, which is effected by each without hindering others from effecting like perfect adjustments, is, in its very definition, shown to constitute a kind of conduct that can be approached only as war decreases and dies out. "A gap in this outline must now be filled up. There remains a further advance not yet even hinted. For beyond so behaving that each achieves his ends without preventing others from achieving their ends, the members of a society may give mutual help in the achievement of ends. And if, either indirectly by industrial cooperation, or directly by volunteered aid, fellow- citizens can make easier for one another the adjustments of acts to ends, then their conduct assumes a still higher phase of evolution, since whatever facilitates the making of adjustments by each increases the CONDUCT. 71 totality of the adjustments made, and serves to render the lives of all more complete. "The conduct with which morality is not concerned passes into conduct which is moral or immoral by small degrees and countless ways ;" as a part of conduct at large it cannot be understood without a previous understanding of conduct at large, which in its turn can only be understood by having a previous understanding of the evolution of conduct. "Ethics has for its subject-matter that form which universal conduct assumes during the last stages of its evolution. We have also concluded that these last stages in the evolution of conduct are those displayed by the highest type of being, when he is forced, by increase of numbers, to live more and more in presence of his fellows. And there has followed the corollary that conduct gains ethical sanction in proportion as the activities, becoming less and less militant and more and more industrial, are such as do not necessitate mutual injury or hinderance, but consist with, and are furthered by, cooperation and mutual aid. "These implications of the evolution hypothesis we shall now see harmonize with the leading moral ideas men have otherwise reached." In the first chapter of this book I have alluded to Mr. Spencer's position as a utilitarian. Although the matter will develop of itself, I may here point out that the specific aim of the Data of Ethics is to substitute for the empirical utilitarianism of uninstructed thought, a scientific utilita- rianism founded on the rock of ascertained facts. I may again remind my readers that Socialism long since passed from the static to the dynamic stage ; from the advocacy 72 ECONOMICS OF HEBRERT SPENCER. of a rigid, fixed Utopia to a recognition of the laws of growth. This it never could have done had its advocates continued fettered to the various stationary Utopias which all religions have insisted on, setting a specified goal, and marking, with mathematical precision, the road by which alone it can be approached. In the place of these phan- tasy-pictures evolved from the inner consciousness of minds often morbid as the effect of an unnatural life, we now have a definite study of the actual workings of life as they reveal themselves to the eye of patient research. We have studies instead of dreams. We have conclusions based on facts ; and, although the facts may at first be scanty and the con- clusions, therefore, more or less uncertain, we have the security that, with every additional fact accumulated, the conclusions will be re-revised, and that they will become more and more reliable, affording constantly a more solid footing. In this all evolutionists are at one. All insist that actual facts should be examined through the micro- scope that science has put into our hands ; all insist that the effort should be to bring life into harmony with the facts so ascertained, instead of vainly attempting to make it square with the alleged divinations of an ignorant past. The hights to which such a philosophy, even in this its earliest stage, ascends, we shall have ample opportunity of seeing in passages hereafter quoted. I think it advisable, however, at this point to introduce an extract from Mr. Spencer's Progress. That various ingenious critics, who pride themselves on having taken all knowledge for their province, have quarreled with this passage I am well aware. My object in introducing it is both to show that materiahsm is not necessarily a low and sordid creed, and to point out the sphere which Socialism has taken for its operations, leaving to individuals and to posterity the grasping of the CONDUCT. 73 infinite if it ever can be grasped. The passage is as follows : ' ' A few words must be added on the ontological bear- ings of our argument. Probably not a few will conclude that here is an attempted solution of the great questions with which philosophy in all ages has perplexed itself Let none thus deceive themselves. Only such as know not the scope and the limits of science can fall into so grave an error. The foregoing generalizations apply, not to the genesis of things in themselves but to their genesis as mani- fested to the human consciousnesg. After all that has been said, the ultimate mystery remains just as it was. The explanation of that which is explicable does but bring out into greater clearness the inexplicableness of that which remains behind. However we may succeed in reducing the equation to its lowest terms, we are not thereby enabled to determine the unknown quantity : on the contrary, it only becomes more manifest that the unknown quantity can never be found. ' ' Little as it seems to do so, fearless inquiry tends con- tinually to give a firmer basis to all true religion. The timid sectarian, alarmed at the progress of knowledge, obliged to abandon one by one the superstitions of his ancestors, and daily finding his cherished beliefs more and more shaken, secretly fears that all things may some day be explained, and has a corresponding dread of science ; thus evincing the profoundest of all infidelity — the fear lest the truth be bad. On the other hand, the sincere man of science, content to follow wherever the evidence leads him, becomes by each new inquiry more profoundly convinced that the universe is an insoluble problem. Alike in the external and the internal worlds, he sees himself in the midst of perpetual changes, of which he can discover neither 74 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. the beginning nor the end. If, tracing back the evolution of things, he allows himself to entertain the hypothesis that all matter once existed in a diffused form, he finds it utterly- impossible to conceive how this came to be so ; and equally, if he speculates on the future, he can assign no limit to the grand succession of phenomena ever unfolding themselves before him. On the other hand, if he looks inward, he perceives that both terminations of the thread of conscious- ness are beyond his grasp : he cannot remember when or how consciousness commenced, and he cannot examine the consciousness that at any moment exists ; for only a state of consciousness that is already past can become the object of thought, and never one which is passing. "When, again, he turns from the succession of phenom- ena, external or internal, to their essential nature, he is equally at fault. Though he may succeed in resolving all properties of objects into manifestations of force, he is not thereby enabled to realize what force is ; but finds, on the contrary, that the more he thinks about it the more he is baffled. Similarly, though analysis of mental actions may finally bring him down to sensations as the original mate- rials out of which all thought is woven, he is none the for- warder ; for he cannot in the least comprehend sensation — cannot even conceive how sensation is possible. Inward and outward things he thus discovers to be alike inscru- table in their ultimate genesis and nature. He sees that the materialist and spiritualist controversy is a mere war of words ; the disputants being equally absurd — each believing he understands that which it is impossible for any man to understand. In all directions his investiga- tions eventually bring him face to face with the unknowable ; and he ever more clearly perceives it to be the unknowable. He learns at once the greatness and the littleness of human CONDUCT. 75 intellect — its power in dealing with all that comes within the range of experience ; its impotence in dealing with all that transcends experience. He feels, with a vividness which no others can, the utter incomprehensibleness of the simplest fact, considered in itself He alone truly sees that absolute knowledge is impossible. He alone knows that under all things there lies an impenetrable mystery." I may add here that, if any are still in doubt as to the gulf that separates the philosophy of evolution, with "growth" and ceaseless change as its fundamental law, from the philosophy of existing religions with their fixed Utopias, they cannot do better than consider the attitude of the Roman Catholic church toward Socialism and the recent encyclical of the Pope upon the subject. They will be gratified with the edifying spectacle of an entire philos- ophy basing itself upon the placid assumption that the rights of property as they to-day exist are natural rights dictated direct from heaven, and that, as they have existed from all time, so must they continue for all time. The misfortune under which such a cause labors is the trifling one of depending exclusively on the ignorance of its sup- porters ; and it is to be feared that, sooner or later, they will awake to the fact that in every library and museum proof incontrovertible is to be found that the direct con- trary is the case. Thus, to take but a single instance, Bebel, in his Woman and Socialism, traces the various relationships between the sexes as they have developed and altered from age to age in consonance with changed industrial conditions. Concluding his review of the long and highly progressive period during which mother-right prevailed — descent being traced through the female, and woman having a preponderating influence in both domestic 76 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. and public affairs — he says : ' ' Under the mother-right communism prevailed. With the triumph of the father- right the dominion of private property commences, and with the triumph of the father-right comes the oppression and servitude of woman." The ladies have been hitherto in blissful ignorance of this, their early history. We are, however, rapidly changing all this, and they are learning from their own sister-scholars that these are facts, written on papyrus, chiseled on stone, and absolutely irrefutable. UTILITARIANISM. 11 CHAPTER II. UTILITARIANISM. WE now enter upon a definite and prolonged exam- ination of the basis of Utilitarianism. What makes conduct good or bad, as the case may be? We call articles good or bad according as they are well or ill adapted to achieve prescribed ends. The good knife is one which will cut, the bad umbrella one which fails to keep off the rain. And so throughout. Wherever the adjustment of the act to the required end is efficient we call it "good," where it is inefficient, "bad." In considering the judgment we pass upon men's actions, take first the primary set of adjustments — those subserving individual life. "Apart from approval or disapproval of his ulterior aims a man who fights is said to make a good defense if his defense is well adapted for self-preservation. . . And thus it is with the opinions from hour to hour on those acts of people around which bear on their health and personal welfare. ' You should not have done that ' is the reproof given to one who crosses the street amid a dangerous rush of vehicles. ' You ought to have changed your clothes ' is said to another who has taken cold after getting wet. ' You were right to take a receipt, ' ' you were wrong to invest without advice,' are common criticisms. All such approv- ing and disapproving utterances make the tacit assertion that, other things equal, conduct is right or wrong accord- ing as its special acts, well or ill adjusted to special ends, do or do not further the general end of self-preservation. 78 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. "These ethical judgments we pass on self-regarding acts are ordinarily little emphasized ; partly because the promptings of the self-regarding desires, generally strong enough, do not need moral enforcement, and partly because the promptings of the other-regarding desires, less strong and often overridden, do need moral enforcement. Hence results a contrast. On turning to that second class of adjustments of acts to ends which subserve the rearing of offspring, we no longer find any obscurity in the application of the words good and bad to them, according as they are efficient or inefficient. The expressions good nursing and bad nursing, whether they refer to the supply of food, the quality and amount of clothing, or the due ministration to infantine wants from hour to hour, tacitly recognize as special ends which ought to be fulfilled the furthering of the vital functions, with a view to the general end of con- tinued life and growth. A mother is called good who, ministering to all the physical needs of her children, also adjusts her behavior in ways conducive to their mental health ; and a bad father is one who either does not provide the necessaries of life for his family, or otherwise acts in a manner injurious to their bodies or minds. Similarly of the education given to them or provided for them. Good- ness or badness is affirmed of it (often with little consistency, however) according as its methods are so adapted to physical and psychical requirements as to further the children's lives for the time being, while preparing them for carrying on complete and prolonged adult life. "Most emphatic, however, are the applications of the words good and bad to conduct throughout that third division of it comprising the deeds by which men affect one another. In maintaining their own lives and fostering their offspring, men's adjustments of acts to ends are so UTILITARIANISM. 79 apt to hinder the kindred adjustments of other men, that insistence on the needful Hmitations has to be perpetual ; and the mischiefs caused by men's interferences with one another's life-subserving actions are so great that the inter- dicts have to be peremptory. Hence the fact that the words good and bad have come to be specially associated with acts which further the complete living of others and acts which obstruct their complete living. Goodness stand- ing by itself, suggests, above all other things, the conduct of one who aids the sick in reacquiring normal vitality, assists the unfortunate to recover the means of maintaining themselves, defends those who are threatened with harm in person, property, or reputation, and aids whatever promises to improve the living of all his fellows. Contrari- wise, badness brings to mind, as its leading correlative, the conduct of one who, in carrying on his own life, damages the lives of others by injuring their bodies, destroying their possessions, defrauding them, calumniating them, "Always, then, acts are called good or bad according as they are well or ill adjusted to ends, and whatever inconsistency there is in our uses of the words arises from inconsistency of the ends. Here, however, the study of conduct in general, and of the evolution of conduct, have prepared us to harmonize those interpretations. The fore- going exposition shows that the conduct to which we apply the name good is the relatively more evolved conduct, and that bad is the name we apply to conduct which is relatively less evolved. We saw that evolution, tending ever toward self-preservation, reaches its limit when individual life is the greatest, both in length and breadth ; and now we see that, leaving other ends aside, we regard as good the con- duct furthering self-preservation, and as bad the conduct tending to self-destruction. It was shown that along with 8o ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. increasing power of maintaining individual life which evolu- tion brings, there goes increasing power of perpetuating the species by fostering progeny, and that in this direction evolution reaches its limit when the needful number of young, preserved to maturity, are then fit for a life that is complete in fullness and duration ; and here it turns out that parental conduct is called good or bad as it approaches or falls short of this ideal result. Lastly, we inferred that establishment of an associated state both makes possible and requires a form of conduct such that life may be com- pleted in each and in his offspring, not only without pre- venting completion of it in others, but with furtherance of it in others ; and we have found above that this is the form of conduct most emphatically termed good. More- over, just as we there saw that evolution becomes the highest possible when the conduct simultaneously achieves the greatest totality of life in self, in offspring, and in fellow-men ; so here we see that the conduct called good rises to the conduct conceived as best when it fulfills all three classes of ends at the same time. " Is there any postulate involved in these judgments on conduct? Is there any assumption made in calling good the acts conducive to life, in self or others, and bad those which directly or indirectly tend toward death, special or general? Yes; an assumption of extreme significance has been made — an assumption underlying all moral estimates." This assumption is that life is worth living. It is obvious, as Mr. Spencer shows, that upon this question depends entirely every decision concerning the goodness or badness of conduct. If life is worth living then all conduct that fosters life is to be approved ; if it is not worth living then such conduct is not to be approved. UTILITARIANISM. And in pointing out that the ultimate question, thercibre, is whether evolution, and especially that evolution which improves the adjustment of acts to ends, in ascending stages of organization, is or is not a mistake, he throws on those who claim that existence is not worth its pains the respon- sibility of showing that the whole of nature's development, from its simplest to its most complex forms, had better have been left undone. Moreover, "in calling good the conduct which subserves life, and bad the conduct which hinders or destroys it ; and in so implying that life is a blessing and not a curse ; we are inevitably asserting that conduct is good or bad according as its total effects are pleasurable or painful." "One theory only is imaginable, in pursuance of which other interpretations of good and bad can be given. This theory is that men were created with the intention that they should be sources of misery to themselves, and that they are bound to continue living that their Creator may have the satisfaction of contemplating their misery. Though this is not a theory avowedly entertained by many — though it is not formulated by any in this distinct way, yet not a few do accept it under a disguised form. Inferior creeds are pervaded by the belief that the sight of suffering is pleasing to the gods. Derived from bloodthirsty ancestors, such gods are naturally conceived as gratified by the infliction of pain : when living they delighted in torturing other beings, and witnessing torture is supposed still to give them delight. The implied conceptions long survive. It needs but to name Indian fakirs who hang on hooks, and Eastern dervishes who gash themselves, to show that in societies considerably advanced are still to be found many who think that sub- mission to anguish brings divine favor. And without enlarging on fasts and penances, it will be clear that there 82 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. has existed, and still exists, among Christian peoples, the belief that the Deity whom Jephthah thought to propitiate by sacrificing his daughter may be propitiated by self- inflicted pains. Further, the conception accompanying this, that acts pleasing to self are offensive to God, has survived along with it, and still widely prevails ; if not in formulated dogmas, yet in beliefs that are manifestly operative. "Doubtless in modern days such beliefs have assumed qualified forms. The satisfaction which ferocious gods were supposed to feel in contemplating tortures has been in large measure transformed into the satisfaction felt by a deity in contemplating that self-infliction of pain which is held to further eventual happiness. But clearly those who entertain this modified view are excluded from the class whose position we are here considering. Restricting our- selves to this class — supposing that from the savage who immolates victims to a cannibal god there are descendants among the civilized who hold that mankind were made for suffering, and that it is their duty to continue living in misery for the delight of their Maker, we can only recognize the fact that devil- worshipers are not yet extinct." Having shown, therefore, that our ideas of the goodness or badness of conduct originate from our consciousness of the certainty or probability that they will produce pleasures or pains somewhere, Mr. Spencer passes to a consideration of the philosophy of those who make excellence of being, and of those who make virtuousness of action the standard of life. He points out that Aristotle puts himself in the category of those who make virtue the supreme end by seeking to define happiness in terms of virtue, instead of defining virtue in terms of happiness ; thereby allying UTILITARIANISM. 83 himself to the Platonic belief that there is an ideal and absolute good. As Mr. Spencer remarks : — "As with good so with virtue — it is not singular but plural: in Aristotle's own classification, virtue, when treated of at large, is trans- formed into virtues. Those which he calls virtues must be so called in consequence of some common character that is either intrinsic or extrinsic. We may class things together either because they are made alike by all having in themselves some peculiarity, as we do vertebrate animals because they all have vertebral columns ; or we may class them together because of some community in their outer relations, as when we group saws, knives, mallets, harrows, under the head of tools. Are the' virtues classed as such because of some intrinsic community of nature? Then there must be identifiable a common trait in all the cardinal virtues which Aristotle specifies — 'Courage, Temperance, Liberality, Magnanimity, Magnificence, Meekness, Amiabil- ity or Friendhness, Truthfulness, Justice.' What now is the trait possessed in common by magnificence and meek- ness? and if any such common trait can be disentangled, is it that which also constitutes the essential trait in truthful- ness? The answer must be — No. The virtues, then, not being classed as such because of an intrinsic community of character, must be classed as such because of something extrinsic ; and this something can be nothing else than the happiness which Aristotle says consists in the practice of them. They are united by their common relation to this result, while they are not united by their inner natures." Taking two virtues considered as typically such in ancient and in modern times — courage and chastity — Mr. Spencer points out that if the former invariably brought misery to the individual and to the state, and that if the latter gener- ated discord between husband and wife, and entailed on 84 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. their offspring suffering, disease and death, it would be impossible to regard them as virtues. When from those ethical estimates which take per- fection of nature or virtuousness of action as tests we pass to those which take for test rectitude of motive, we approach the intuitional theory of morals : the theory that there is "a natural sense of immediate excellence" which is con- sidered as a supernaturally derived guide. "Nevertheless, it may be shown that conduciveness to happiness, here represented as an incidental trait of the acts which receive these innate moral approvals, is really the test by which these approvals are recognized as moral. The intuitionists place confidence in these verdicts of conscience, simply because they vaguely, if not distinctly, perceive them to be consonant with the disclosures of that ultimate test. Observe the proof "By the hypothesis, the wrongness of murder is known by a moral intuition which the human mind was originally constituted to yield, and the hypothesis therefore negatives the admission that this sense of its wrongness arises, imme- diately or remotely, from the consciousness that murder involves deduction from happiness directly and indirectly. But if you ask an adherent of this doctrine to contrast his intuition with that of the Fijian, who, considering murder an honorable action, is restless until he had distinguished himself by killing some one, and if you inquire of him in what way the civilized intuition is to be justified in opposi- tion to the intuition of the savage, no course is open save that of showing how conformity to the one conduces to well-being, while conformity to the other entails suffering, individual and general. When asked why the moral sense which tells him it is wrong to take another man's goods should be obeyed rather than the moral sense of a Turcoman, UTILITARIANISM. 85 who proves how meritorious he considers theft to be by making pilgrimages to the tombs of noted robbers to make offerings, the intuitionist can do nothing but urge that cer- tainly under conditions like ours, if not also under condi- tions like those of the Turcomans, disregard of men's claims to their property not only inflicts immediate misery, but involves a social state inconsistent with happiness. Or if, again, there is required from him a justification for his feel- ing of repugnance to lying, in contrast with the feeling of an Egyptian, who prides himself on skill in lying (even think- ing it praiseworthy to deceive without any further end than that of practicing deception), he can do no more than point to the social prosperity furthered by entire trust between man and man, and the social disorganization that follows universal untruthfulness — consequences that are necessarily conducive to agreeable feelings and disagreeable feelings respectively. The unavoidable conclusion is, then, that the intuitionist does not and cannot ignore the ultimate derivations of right and wrong from pleasure and pain. However much he may be guided, and rightly guided, by the decisions of conscience respecting the characters of acts, he has come to have confidence in these decisions, because he perceives vaguely but positively that conformity to them furthers the welfare of himself and others, and that disregard of them entails in the long run suffering on all. ' ' It will be observed that the argument is frankly materialistic ; being indeed that all creeds, codes of laws, and customs, have, consciously or unconsciously, founded themselves on a materialistic basis, aiming 2^^^^ permanent establishment of what the limited observing capacity of the time imagined it has discovered as the permanent good. The evolutionary conception of growth negatives this static 86 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. idea, and shows that circumstances alter cases, what would be immoral — because prejudicial to individual and social life — under certain conditions, being, under other conditions, imperatively moral. The wide outlook we have recently- acquired over the changing moralities of time and place have already fixed this as a conviction in the minds of all intellectual people. In the first part of this book I have endeavored to show, by my references to Bebel's Woman and Socialism, and other avowedly Socialistic works, that Socialism is thoroughly in accord with this evolutionary philosophy. That all Socialists should apprehend this clearly seems to me of paramount importance, since other- wise their philosophy must lack coherence, and the conduct of their movement must be wanting in that clear-cut con- sistency which can alone lead to success. Such a compre- hension will show them that the thunders of the Vatican against Socialism are inevitable ; and it will also show them that, whatever differences may for the time being separate Individualists and Collectivists, all who accept the evolu- tionist theory of growth are their natural allies. It also explains that, when Mr. Spencer speaks of "rights," he actually means that the phenomena already investigated seem to him to prove that the observation of certain laws make for the increase of individual and social happiness — at any rate in the long run, — just as we admit that a knowl- edge and observance of the law of gravitation tends to the preservation of life. Similarly Socialists often say that the first conception to be got rid of is that of "Natural rights," meaning thereby that their philosophy is strictly utilitarian, and that any institution that proves inimical to advance cannot be tolerated because it claims to be a natural right. It is the dynamic as opposed to the static philosophy that I wish throughout to emphasize. UTILITARIANISM. 87 We now enter with Mr. Herbert Spencer upon a con- sideration of the various ways in which conduct may be judged. We shall find him ridiculing the idea that rights and obligations can originate with Acts of Parliaments, and here all who accept the idea of growth — with its necessary corollary that circumstances alter cases — must agree with him. We shall also find Mm speaking of ' ' natural rights, ' ' but we shall see that he couples this declaration with elab- orate arguments drawn from physical, biological, psycho- logical and sociological investigations, all of which seem to prove to him the existence of certain laws non-observance of which hinders the development of life. Such laws we clearly have a right to observe. The surest characteristic, Mr. Spencer tells us, of intel- lectual progress is the development of the idea of causation ; for the development of this idea involves development of many other ideas, and it is only when science has accumu- lated examples of quantitative relations, foreseen and verified throughout a widening range of phenomena, that causations come to be conceived as necessary and universal. ' ' How slowly, as a consequence of its dependence, the conception of causation evolves, a glance at the evidence shows. We hear with surprise of the savage who, falling down a precipice, ascribes the failure of his foothold to a malicious demon ; and we smile at the kindred notion of the ancient Greek, that his death was prevented by a goddess who unfastened for him the thong of the helmet by which his enemy was dragging him. But daily, without surprise, we hear men who describe themselves as saved from ship- wreck by 'Divine interposition,' who speak of having 'providentially' missed a train which met with a fatal disaster, and who call it a ' mercy ' to have escaped injury from a falling chimney-pot — men who, in such cases, recog- 88 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. nize physical causation no more than do the uncivilized or semi-civilized. The Veddah who thinks that failure to hit an animal with his arrow resulted from inadequate invoca- tion of an ancestral spirit, and the Christian priest who says prayers over a sick man in the expectation that the course of his disease will so be stayed, differ only in respect of the agent from whom they expect supernatural aid and the phenomena to be altered by him : the necessary relations among causes and effects are tacitly ignored by the last as much as by the first. Deficient belief in causation is, indeed, exemplified even in those whose discipline has been specially fitted to generate this belief — even in men of science. For a generation after geologists had become uniformitarians in geology, they remained catastrophists in biology ; while recognizing none but natural agencies in the genesis of the earth's crust, they ascribed to supernat- ural agency the genesis of the organisms on its surface. Nay more — among those who are convinced that living things in general have been evolved by the continued inter- action of forces everywhere operating, there are some who make an exception of man, or who, if they admit that his body has been evolved in the same manner as the bodies of other creatures, allege that his mind has been not evolved but specially created. If, then, universal and necessary causation is only now approaching full recognition, even by those whose investigations are daily reillustrating it, we may expect to find it very little recognized among men at large, whose culture has not been calculated to impress them with it, and we may expect to find it least recognized by them in respect of those classes of phenomena amid which, in consequence of their complexity, causation is most difficult to trace — the psychical, the social, the moral." These reflections are made, Mr. Spencer adds, because, UTILITARIANISM. 89 on studying the various ethical theories, he is struck with the fact that they are all characterized either by entire absence of the idea of causation or by inadequate presence of it; all of them, whether theological, political, intuitional, or utilitarian, displaying, if not in the same degree, still each in a large degree, the defects which result from this lack. These theories he proceeds to consider in the order named. The still extant representative of the most ancient school of morals "is that which recognizes no other rule of conduct than the alleged will of God. This, which originates with the savage, whose only restraint beyond fear of his fellow-man is fear of an ancestral spirit, survives in great strength down to the present day, changed only by the gradual dying out of multitudinous minor supernatural agents and the accom- panying development of one universal supernatural agent. Systems of theology, and the systems of morality derived from them, all participate in the assumption that such and such actions are made good or bad simply by divine injunc- tion, and tacitly ignore the natural relations between acts and results." He then considers the position of those who, following Hobbes, hold that there can be neither justice nor injustice till a regularly constituted coercive power exists to issue and enforce commands, and that there is no other origin for good and bad in conduct than law ; who believe that moral obligation originates with Acts of Parliament, and can be changed this way or that by majorities ; who ridicule the idea that men have any natural rights, and allege that rights and duties are wholly the results of convention. To which it is answered that "the necessities which initiate government themselves prescribe the actions of govern- ment. If its actions do not respond to the necessities, they are unwarranted. The authority of law is, then, by the 90 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. hypothesis, derived, and can never transcend the authority of that from which it is derived. If general good, or welfare, or utility is the supreme end, and if state enact- ments are justified as means to this supreme end, then state enactments have such authority only as arises from con- duciveness to this supreme end. When they are right, it is only because the original authority indorses them, and they are wrong if they do not bear its indorsement. That is to say, conduct cannot be made good or bad by law ; but its goodness or badness is to the last determined by its effects as naturally furthering or not furthering the lives of citizens." Of the intuitionists it is remarked that, though their theory forbids overt recognition of causation, in all their defenses of such theory there is an unavowed recognition of it ; while as to the utilitarian school, which at first sight appears to be distinguished from the rest by recognizing natural causation, the complaint is that as yet only some relation between cause and effect in conduct is recognized, and that until the relation is accepted a completely scientific form of knowledge has not been reached. The science is as yet only in the primitive stage when observations are accumulated and empirically generalized, and it will be only when such generalizations have been included in a rational generalization that it can become a developed science. Astronomy, geology and the science of life have reached this stage ; psychology and sociology are entering it, and ethics — being, as it is, a part of physical, biological, psychological and sociological science — can find its ultimate interpretations only in those fundamental truths which are common to all of them. We enter, therefore, upon the consideration of moral phenomena as a part of the aggregate of phenomena which evolution has wrought out. EVOLUTIONARY PROOFS. gi CHAPTER III. EVOLUTIONARY PROOFS. APPROACHING the subject from the physical point of view, we find, as we mount from stage to stage of evolution, definite coherence succeeding aimless inco- herence. The animalcule moves at random ; to-day's wan- derings of a fish, though showing a slightly determined order, are unrelated to those of yesterday and to-morrow ; the bird that builds its nest and rears its chicks presents a dependent series of motions extending over a considerable period, and in civilized man obviously the definiteness and coherence attain their culmination. The more duly pro- portioned the conduct, and the more clearly defined its aim, the more perfect it is. But this truth, so readily admitted, is not all, and the defect in the current concep- tion of morality is that it usually identifies a moral life with a hfe little varied in its activities. Throughout the ascend- ing forms of life, along with increasing heterogeneity of structure and function, there goes increasing heterogeneity of conduct, and a life that does not display this heterogene- ity presents an example of a low order of evolution, is not only not moral but is the reverse of moral. "One who satisfies personal needs only goes through, other things equal, less multiform processes than one who also administers to the needs of wife and children. Suppos- ing there are no other differences, the addition of family relations necessarily renders the actions of the man who fulfills the duties of husband and parent more heterogeneous 92 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. than those of the man who has no such duties to fulfill, or, having them, does not fulfill them ; and to say that his actions are more heterogeneous is to say that there is a greater heterogeneity in the combined motions he goes through. The like holds of social obligations. These, in proportion as a citizen duly performs them, complicate his movements considerably. If he is helpful to inferiors dependent on him, if he takes a part in political agitation, if he aids in diffusing knowledge, he, in each of these ways, adds to his kinds of activity — makes his sets of movements more multiform ; so differing from the man who is the slave of one desire or group of desires." And the increasing coherence, definiteness, and heterogeneity of the combined motions of fife are all instrumental to the better main- tenance of a moving equilibrium, to the acquirement of ability to maintain for a continually increasing period a balanced combination of internal actions in face of external forces tending to overthrow it. From the biological point of view the ideally moral man is one whose functions — many and varied in their kinds — are all discharged in degrees duly adjusted to the conditions of existence ; for, since each function has some relation to the needs of life non-fulfillment of it, in its normal propor- tion, is non-fulfillment of a requisite to complete life. The moral obligation is, therefore, not merely negative, it is also most distincdy positive : it not only requires us to restrain such vital activities as, in our present state, are often pushed to excess ; but it also requires us to carry on these vital activities up to their normal limits. It will be observed that here, as in many other places, the idea of "duty," which many Individualists who quote Herbert Spencer as an authority are apt to deride, is given the most prominent place. I am far, however, from sug- EVOLUTIONARY PROOFS. 93 gesting that such IndividuaHsts ignore the idea of "duty," as the term is commonly understood. On the contrary, the infinitely more reliable testimony of their own lives shows that they are exceedingly mindful of it, and most conscientiously abstain from trespassing on what they believe to be their neighbors' rights. The universal testimony of biology is that every pleasure increases, and every pain decreases vitality ; that every pleasure raises the tide of life, and every pain lowers it. "Non-recognition of these general truths vitiates moral speculation at large. From the estimates of right and wrong habitually framed, these physiological effects wrought on the actor by his feelings are entirely omitted. It is tacitly assumed that pleasures and pains have no reactions on the body of the recipient, affecting his fitness for the duties of life. The only reactions recognized are those on character, respecting which the current supposition is that acceptance of pleasures is detrimental and submission to pains bene- ficial. The notion, remotely descended from the ghost- theory of the savage, that mind and body are independent, has, among its various implications, this belief that states of consciousness are in no wise related to bodily states. ' You have had your gratification — it is past ; and you are as you were before,' says the moralist to one. And to another he says, ' You have borne the suffering — it is over ; and there the matter ends.' Both statements are false. Leaving out of view indirect results, the direct results are that the one has moved a step away from death and the other has moved a step toward death." And after point- ing out that it is the remote, indirect result that the ortho- dox moralist exclusively views, regardless of the immediate beneficial or injurious effect of any act ; after reminding his readers that the vital functions accept no apologies on 94 ECONOMICS OF HERBER T SPENCER. the ground that neglect of them was unavoidable, or was in pursuit of a noble aim ; and after dwelling on the folly of those who imagine that they can understand those special phenomena of human life with which ethics deals, while paying little or no attention to the general phenomena of human life, Mr. Spencer gives in detail the roots from which spring sentiments and ideas so adverse to the facts of life. "There is the theological root. As before shown, from the worship of cannibal ancestors who delighted in witness- ing tortures, there resulted the primitive conception of deities who were propitiated by the bearing of pains, and consequently angered by the receipt of pleasures. Through the religions of the semi-civilized, in which this conception of the divine nature remains conspicuous, it has persisted, in progressively modified forms, down to our own times, and still colors the beliefs both of those who adhere to the current creed and of those who nominally reject it. There is another root in the primitive and still-surviving militancy. While social antagonisms continue to generate war, which consists in endeavors to inflict pain and death while sub- mitting to the risks of pain and death, and which necessa- rily involves great privations, it is needful that physical suffering, whether considered in itself or in the evils it bequeaths, should be thought little of, and that among pleasures recognized as most worthy should be those which victory brings. Nor does partially developed industrialism fail to furnish a root. With social evolution, which implies transition from the life of wandering hunters to the life of settled peoples engaged in labor, and which, therefore, entails activities widely unlike those to which the aboriginal con- stitution is adapted, there comes an under-exercise of facul- ties for which the social state affords no scope, and an EVOLUTIONARY PROOFS. 95 overtaxing of faculties required for the social state — the one implying denial of certain pleasures, and the other submission to certain pains. Hence, along with that growth of population which makes the struggle for exist- ence intense, bearing of pains and sacrifice of pleasures is daily necessitated. "Now, always and everywhere, there arises among men a theory conforming to their practice. The savage nature, originating the conception of a savage deity, evolves a theory of supernatural control sufficiently stringent and cruel to influence his conduct. With submission to des- potic government severe enough in its restraints to keep in order barbarous natures, there grows up a theory of divine right to rule and the duty of absolute submission. Where war is made the business of life by the existence of warlike neighbors, virtues which are required for war come to be regarded as supreme virtues ; while, contrariwise, when industrialism has grown predominant, the violence and the deception which warriors glory in come to be held criminal. In like manner, then, there arises a tolerable adjustment of the actually accepted (not the nominally accepted) theory of right living to living as it is daily carried on. If the life is one that necessitates habitual denial of pleasures and bearing of pains, there grows up an answering ethical system under which the receipt of pleasures is tacitly disapproved and the bearing of pains avowedly approved. The mischiefs entailed by pleasures in excess are dwelt on, while the benefits which normal pleasures bring are ignored, and the good results achieved by submission to pains are fully set forth, while the evils are overlooked. ' ' But while recognizing the desirableness of, and indeed the necessity for, systems of ethics adapted, like religious 96 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. systems and political systems, to their respective times and places, we have here to regard the first as, like the others, transitional. We must infer that, like a purer creed and a better government, a truer ethics belongs to a more advanced social state. Led, a priori, to conclude that distortions must exist, we are enabled to recognize as such the distortions we find — answering in nature, as these do, to expectation. And there is forced on us the truth that a scientific morality arises only as fast as the one-sided conceptions adapted to transitory conditions are developed into both-sided conceptions. The science of right living has to take acount of all consequences in so far as they affect happiness, personally or socially, directly or indirectly, and by as much as it ignores any class of consequences by so much does it fail to be science." Turning to the psychological view of ethics, it is shown that, as evolution mounts, acts are adjusted to ends with a deliberation that takes into account remoter consequences ; it is pointed out that the more complex motives, and the more involved thought, have all along been of higher authority for guidance. Throughout the ascent self-preser- vation has been increased by the subjection of the present to the future. The animal that seizes its prey regardless of consequences is ever courting death ; the savage who takes no thought for the morrow meets sooner or later with starvation. This subjection of the present to the future increases as we reach the higher types and meet with ideal motives looking to distant ends. Hence arises the too hasty generalization that immediate satisfactions must not be valued, and, instead of understanding that the lower must yield to the higher when the two conflict, a conception is current that the lower feeling must be disre- EVOLUTIONARY PROOFS. garded even when there is no conflict. There springs up a false ascetism that regards whatever is pleasant as wrong, and ignores the primary sensations where they are entitled to speak imperatively. In the preceding paragraph we have been tracing the genesis of the moral consciousness, for its essential trait is the control of some feeling or feelings by some other feeling or feelings. Among the higher animals we see constant subordination of the simpler to the more compound feelings, as when a dog is restrained from snatching food by fear of the penalties which may come if he yields to his appetite : in man we see conscious subordination — introspection revealing the fact that one feeling has yielded to another. We have now to face a fact of profound significance, viz. : that throughout the earlier stages of man's evolution the self-restraint called "moral" has its root in fear. In the rudest groups consciousness of the evil which the anger of fellow-savages will entail is the check : as chieftainship becomes established the dread of angering the chief restrains, and political control begins to differentiate from the more indefinite control of mutual dread. Meanwhile the ghost-theory has been developing ; the double of the deceased chief is conceived as able to injure the survivors, and thus the religious check takes shape. Loyalty to the ruler is taught as the first duty, and the Divine injunctions — originally traditions of the dead king's will — inculcate the destruction of his enemies. Meanwhile the growing social organization gives birth to other restraints. War implies cooperation, and cooperation is prevented by intes- tine quarrels. The aggressions, therefore, that give rise to such quarrels are sternly checked, and a body of civil laws for their prevention is formed. Throughout the commands are obeyed not because of their acknowledged rectitude, but g8 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. from fear of the penalties for disobedience. How largely we are still ruled by fear is well suggested in the following quotation : ' ' Down to our own time we trace, in legal phrases, the original doctrine that the aggression of one citizen on another is wrong, and will be punished, not so m«uch because of the injury done him as because of the implied disregard of the king's will. Similarly, the sinfulness of breaking a Divine injunction was universally at one time, and is still by many, held to consist in the disobedience to God rather than in the deliberate entailing of injury ; and even now it is a common belief that acts are right only if performed in conscious fulfillment of the Divine will — nay, are even wrong if otherwise performed. The like holds, too, with that further control exercised by public opinion. On listening to the remarks made respect- ing conformity to social rules, it is noticeable that breach of them is condemned not so much because of any essential impropriety as because the world's authority is ignored. How imperfectly the truly moral control is e\'en now differentiated from these controls within which it has been evolving, we see in the fact that the systems of morality criticised at the outset severally identify moral control with one or other of them. For moralists of one class derive moral rules from the commands of a supreme political power. Those of another class recognize no other origin for them than the revealed Divine will. And though men who take social prescription for their guide do not formulate their doctrine, yet the belief, frequently betrayed, that con- duct which society permits is not blameworthy implies that there are those who think right and wrong can be made such by public opinion." Gradually from the pressure of political, religious and EVOLUTIONARY PROOFS. gg social authority there emerge higher moral feelings which of themselves act as restraints of a higher order ; and later still, as the results of accumulated experiences of utility, gradually organized and inherited, these moral feelings grow into moral intuitions which operate independently of conscious experience. Murder and theft are abstained from, not from fear of the hangman or the jail, but intuitively. The point, however, constantly insisted on is that— ' ' Only after political, religious, and social restraints have produced a stable community can there be sufficient experience of the pains, positive and negative, sensational and emotional, which crimes of aggression cause, as to generate that moral aversion to them constituted by con- sciousness of their intrinsically evil results. And more manifest still is it that such a moral sentiment as that of abstract equity, which is offended not only by material injuries done to men, but also by political arrangements that place them at a disadvantage, can evolve only after the social stage reached gives familiar experience both of the pains flowing directly from injustices and also of those flowing indirectly from the class privileges which make injustices easy. ' ' Emerging as the moral motive does but slowly from amid the political, religious and social motives, it long participates in that consciousness of subordination to some external agency which is joined with them, and only as it becomes distinct and predominant does it lose this associated consciousness — only then does the feeling of obligation fade. "This remark implies the tacit conclusion, which will be to most very startling, that the sense of duty or moral obligation is transitory, and will diminish as fast as moral- lOO ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. ization increases. Startling though it is, this conclusion may be satisfactorily defended. Even now progress toward the implied ultimate state is traceable. The observation is not infrequent that persistence in performing a duty ends in making it a pleasure ; and this amounts to the admission that while at first the motive contains an element of coer- cion, at last this element of coercion dies out, and the act is performed without any consciousness of being obliged to perform it. The contrast between the youth on whom diligence is enjoined and the man of business so absorbed in affairs that he cannot be induced to relax, shows us how the doing of work, originally under the consciousness that it ought to be done, may eventually cease to have any such accompanying consciousness. Sometimes, indeed, the rela- tion comes to be reversed, and the man of business persists in work from pure love of it when told that he ought not. Nor is it thus with self-regarding feelings only. That the maintaining and protecting of wife by husband often result solely from feelings directly gratified by these actions, without any thought of must, and that the fostering of children by parents is in many cases made an absorbing occupation without any coercive feeling of ought, are obvious truths which show us that even now, with some of the fundamental other- regarding duties, the sense of obligation has retreated into the background of the mind. And it is in some degree so with other-regarding duties of a higher kind. Conscientiousness has in many outgrown that stage in which the sense of a compelling power is joined with rectitude of action. The truly honest man, here and there to be found, is not only without thought of legal, religious, or social compulsion, when he discharges an equitable claim on him, but he is without thought of self-compulsion. He does the right thing with a simple feeling of satisfaction EVOLUTIONARY PROOFS. lOl in doing it, and is, indeed, impatient if anything prevents him from having the satisfaction of doing it. "Evidently, then, with complete adaptation to the social state, that element in the moral consciousness which is expressed by the word obligation will disappear. The higher actions required for the harmonious carrying on of life will be as much matters of course as are those lower actions which the simple desires prompt. In their proper times and places and proportions, the moral sentiments will guide men just as spontaneously and adequately as now do the sensations. And though, joined with their regulating influence when this is called for, will exist latent ideas of the evils which nonconformity would bring, these will occupy the mind no more than do ideas of the evils of starvation at the time when a healthy appetite is being satisfied by a meal." Viewed from the sociological standpoint we find that for every race there are laws of right living. Given its environment and structure there is for each kind of animal a set of motions adapted to secure the highest conservation its nature permits. For each there is a formula that favors most completely the activities of the individual and of the race, but in the case of man the formula has to include an additional factor — it must specially recognize the relations of each individual to others, in presence of whom, and in cooperation with whom, he has to live. "From the sociological point of view, then, ethics becomes nothing else than a definite account of the forms of conduct that are fitted to the associated state, in such wise that the lives of each and all may be the greatest possible, alike in length and breadth. ' ' But here we are met by a fact which forbids us thus to I02 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. put in the foreground the welfare of citizens, individually considered, and requires us to put in the foreground the welfare of the society as a whole. The life of the social organism must, as an end, rank above the lives of its units. These two ends are not harmonious at the outset, and though the tendency is toward harmonization of them, they are still partially conflicting. ' ' As fast as the social state establishes itself, the preserva- tion of the society becomes a means of preserving its units. Living together arose because, on the average, it proved more advantageous to each than living apart; and this implied that maintenance of combination is maintenance of the conditions to more satisfactory living than the combined persons would otherwise have. Hence social self-preserva- tion becomes a proximate aim, taking precedence of the ultimate aim, individual self-preservation. "This subordination of personal to social welfare is, how- ever, contingent ; it depends on the presence of antagonistic societies. So long as the existence of a community is endangered by the actions of communities around, it must remain true that the interests of individuals must be sacri- ficed to the interests of the community, as far as is needful for the community's salvation. But if this is manifest, it is by implication manifest that when social antagonisms cease, this need for sacrifice of private claims to public claims ceases also ; or rather, there cease to be any public claims at variance with private claims. All along, furtherance of individual lives has been the ultimate end ; and if this ultimate end has been postponed to the proximate end of preserving the community's life, it has been so only because this proximate end was instrumental to the ultimate end. When the aggregate is no longer in danger, the final object of pursuit, the welfare of the units, no longer needing to be postponed, becomes the immediate object of pursuit. EVOLUTIONARY PROOFS. 103 "Consequently, unlike sets of conclusions respecting human conduct emerge, according as we are concerned with a state of habitual or occasional war, or are concerned with a state of permanent and general peace." During the gradual passage from militarism to indus- trialism a series of compromises between the moral code of enmity and the moral code of amity are effected ; each age and society adopting what under the circumstances is approximately the best, and the ideal being attainable only when international antagonism, and antagonism between individuals, have simultaneously ceased. For the highest life which accompanies completely evolved conduct requires not merely that cooperation which excludes all acts of aggression, but also that cooperation for the satisfaction of wants which gives the social state its raison d' etre. Successive forms of cooperation, in the order of their ascending complexity, are then passed under review, the conclusion reached being that ' ' only under voluntary agreement, no longer tacit and vague but overt and definite, can cooperation be harmoniously carried on when division of labor becomes established. And as in the simplest cooperation, where like efforts are joined to secure a com- mon good, the dissatisfaction caused in those who, having expended their labors, do not get their shares of the good, prompts them to cease cooperating ; as in the more advanced cooperation, achieved by exchanging equal labors of like kind expended at different times, aversion to cooperation is generated if the expected equivalent of labor is not rendered ; so in this developed cooperation the failure of either to surrender to the other that which was avowedly recognized as of like value with the labor or product given, tends to prevent cooperation by exciting discontent with I04 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. its results. And evidently, while antagonisms thus caused impede the lives of the units, the life of the aggregate is endangered by diminished cohesion." In Part II., Principles of Sociology, Mr. Spencer has shown that the fundamental principles of organization are the same for an individual organism and for a social organ- ism, since both consist of mutually dependent parts. The welfare of a living body implies an approximate equilibrium between waste and repair ; and each organ, like the entire organism, is wasted by performing its particular function, and has to restore itself from the materials brought to it by the joint agency of the other organs. Since each of the organs has to be paid in nutriment for its services by the rest, it follows that the due balancing of their respective claims and payments is requisite* directly for the welfare of each organ, and indirectly for the welfare of the organism ; for in a whole formed of mutually dependent parts anything which prevents due performance of its duty by one part reacts injuriously on all the parts. "With change of terms these statements and inferences hold of a society. That social division of labor which parallels in so many other respects the physiological division of labor parallels it in this respect also. . . The universal basis of cooperation is the proportioning of benefits received to benefits ren- dered." But although these are absolutely necessary to the existence of a harmonious society ' ' we have to recog- nize the fact that complete fulfillment of these conditions, original and derived, is not enough. Social cooperation may be such that no one is impeded in the obtainment of the normal return for effort, but contrariwise is aided by equitable exchange of services, and yet, much may remain to be achieved. There is a theoretically possible form of society, purely industrial in its activities, which, though EVOLUTIONARY PROOFS. 105 approaching nearer to the moral ideal in its code of conduct than any society not purely industrial, does not fully reach it. For while industrialism requires the life of each citizen to be such that it may be carried on without direct or indirect aggression on other citizens, it does not require his life to be such that it shall directly further the lives of other citizens. It is not a necessary implication of indus- trialism, as thus far defined, that each, beyond the benefits given and received by exchange of services, shall give and receive other benefits. A society is conceivable formed of men leading perfectly inoffensive lives, scrupulously ful- filling their contracts, and efficiently rearing their offspring, who yet, yielding to one another no advantages beyond those agreed upon, fall short of that highest degree of life which the gratuitous rendering of services makes possible. Daily experiences prove that every one would suffer many evils and lose many goods, did none give him unpaid assist- ance. The life of each would be more or less damaged had he to meet all contingencies single-handed. Further, if no one did for his fellows anything more than was required by strict performance of contract, private interests would suffer from the absence of attention to public interests. The limit of evolution of conduct is consequently not reached until, beyond avoidance of direct and indirect injuries to others, there are spontaneous eflforts to further the welfare of others. "The leading traits of a code under which complete living through volu*itary cooperation is secured may be simply stated. The fundamental requirement is that the life-sustaining actions of each shall severally bring him the amounts and kinds of advantage naturally achieved by them ; and this implies, firstly, that he shall suffer no direct aggressions on his person or property, and, secondly, that lo6 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. he shall suffer no indirect aggressions by breach of contract. Observance of these negative conditions to voluntary- cooperation having faciliated life to the greatest extent by exchange of services under agreement, life is to be further facilitated by exchange of services beyond agreement : the highest life being reached only when, besides helping to complete one another's lives by specified reciprocities of aid, men otherwise help to complete one another's lives." THE HIGHEST TYPE. iqj CHAPTER IV. THE HIGHEST TYPE. IN a series of criticisms upon Bentham and Prof. Sidg- wick Mr. Spencer calls attention to a fact of great sig- nificance — viz. : that ' ' during evolution there has been a superposing of new and more complex sets of means, and a superposing of the pleasures accompanying the uses of these successive sets of means, with the result that each of these pleasures has itself eventually become an end." Throughout, the pleasure attendant on the use of means to achieve an end becomes itself an end ; the use of each set of means, from the simplest and earliest to the most complex and most recently evolved, constitutes an obligation, and the obligation becomes a healthy pleasure. It will be understood that the Daia of Ethics itself is a sustained defence of the philosophy of rational utilitarianism. "I pointed out that it (rational utilitarianism) does not take welfare for its immediate object of pursuit, but takes for its immediate object of pursuit conformity to certain principles which, in the nature of things, causally determine welfare. And now we see that this amounts to recognition of that law, traceable throughout the evolution of conduct in general, that each later and higher order of means takes precedence in time and authoritativeness of each earlier and lower order of means. " Mr. Spencer then takes issue with Bentham' s statement that what happiness is every man knows, while as to what io8 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. constitutes justice — that is on every occasion the very sub- ject matter of the dispute. He shows that the conception of justice has always been the same, viz. , equalness of treat- ment, but that the conceptions of happiness change con- stantly with time and circumstance. Justice is therefore a more easily intelligible end than happiness. But, further, "if there are any conditions without fulfillment of which happiness cannot be compassed, then the first step must be to ascertain these conditions with a view to fulfilling them ; and to admit this is to admit that not happiness itself must be the immediate end, but fulfillment of the conditions to its attainment must be the immediate end." He then proceeds to show, in a celebrated passage, from which in the first chapter of this book I have already quoted, that "while greatest happiness may vary widely in societies which, though ideally constituted, are subject to unlike physical circumstances, certain fundamental conditions to the achievement of this greatest happiness are common to all such societies. ' ' Given a people inhabiting a tract which makes nomadic habits necessary, and the happiness of each individual will be greatest when his nature is so molded to the require- ments of his life that all his faculties find their due activities in daily driving and tending cattle, milking, migrating, and so forth. The members of a community otherwise similar, which is permanently settled, will sever- ally achieve their greatest happiness when their natures have become such that a fixed habitat, and the occupations necessitated by it, supply the spheres in which each instinct and emotion is exercised and brings the concomitant pleasure. The citizens of a large nation industrially organ- ized have reached their possible ideal of happiness when the producing, distributing, and other activities are such in THE HIGHEST TYPE. 109 their kinds and amounts that each citizen finds in them a place for all his energies and aptitudes, while he obtains the means of satisfying all his desires. Once more we may recognize as not only possible but probable the eventual existence of a community, also industrial, the members of which, having natures similarly responding to these require- ments, are also characterized by dominant aesthetic facul- ties, and achieve complete happiness only when a large part of life is filled with aesthetic activities. Evidently these different types of men, with their different standards of hap- piness, each finding the possibility of that happiness in his own society, would not find it if transferred to any of the other societies. Evidently though they might have in common such kinds of happiness as accompany the satis- faction of vital needs, they would not have in common sundry other kinds of happiness. "But now mark that while, to achieve greatest happi- ness in each of such societies, the special conditions to be fulfilled must differ from those to be fulfilled in the other societies, certain general conditions must be fulfilled in all the societies. Harmonious cooperation, by which alone in any of them the greatest happiness can be attained, is, as we saw, made possible only by respect for one another's claims : there must be neither those direct aggressions which we class as crimes against person and property, nor must there be those indirect aggressions constituted by breaches of contracts. So that maintenance of equitable relations between men is the condition to attainment of greatest happiness in all societies, however much the great- est happiness attainable in each may differ in nature, or amount, or both." The chapter concludes with paragraphs which, if only for their broad-mindedness, deserve reproduction in full. no ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. ' ' After observing how means and end in conduct stand to one another, and how there emerge certain conclusions respecting their relative claims, we may see a way to reconcile sundry conflicting ethical theories. These sever- ally embody portions of the truth, and simply require combining in proper order to embody the whole truth. "The theological theory contains a part. If for the Divine will, supposed to be supernaturally revealed, we substitute the naturally revealed end toward which the Power manifested throughout evolution works, then, since evolution has been, and is still, working toward the highest life, it follows that conforming to those principles by which the highest life is achieved is furthering that end. The doctrine that perfection or excellence of nature should be the object of pursuit, is in one sense true, for it tacitly recognizes that ideal form of being which the highest life implies, and to which evolution tends. There is a truth, also, in the doctrine that virtue must be the aim, for this is another form of the doctrine that the aim must be to fulfill the conditions to achievement of the highest life. That the intuitions of a moral faculty should guide our conduct is a proposition in which a truth is contained, for these intuitions are the slowly organized results of experi- ences received by the race while living in presence of these conditions. And that happiness is the supreme end is beyond question true, for this is the concomitant of that highest life which every theory of moral guidance has distinctly or vaguely in view. "So understanding their relative positions, those ethical systems which make virtue, right, obligation, the cardinal aims are seen to be complementary to those ethical systems which make welfare, pleasure, happiness the cardinal aims. Though the moral sentiments generated in civilized men by THE HIGHEST TYPE. m daily contact with social conditions and gradual adaptation to them are indispensable as incentives and deterrents ; and though the intuitions corresponding to these senti- ments have, in virtue of their origin, a general authority to be reverently recognized, yet the sympathies and antipathies hence originating, together with the intellectual expressions of them, are, in their primitive forms, necessarily vague. To make guidance by them adequate to all require- ments, their dictates have to be interpreted and made definite by science : to which end there must be analysis of those conditions to complete Hving which they respond to, and from converse with which they have arisen. And such analysis necessitates the recognition of happiness for each and all, as the end to be achieved by fulfillment of these conditions. "Hence, recognizing in due degrees all the various ethical theories, conduct in its highest form will take as guides innate perceptions of right duly enlightened and made precise by an analytic intelligence, while conscious that these guides are proximately supreme solely because they lead to the ultimately supreme end, happiness special and general." In a chapter in the Data of Ethics, entitled ' ' The rela- tivitly of pains and pleasures, ' ' Mr. Spencer further shows us that the truth that the standard of happiness varies with the race, with different men of the same race, and even with the same men at different periods of life, is one of cardinal importance ; the effect, pleasant or the reverse, which external things have upon us depending upon the structure of our organism, and upon the state of the structure. To illustrate the wide divergences of sentiency that accompany the wide divergences of organization which 112 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. evolution in general has brought about — in order that we may thereby better comprehend the divergences of sentiency which are to be expected from the further evolution of humanity — he passes to a consideration, first, of the gen- eral question of pain ; secondly, to that of pleasure. As regards the former, in the well-known insensibility to pain of idiots, and the comparative callousness of savages ; in the indifference with which a robust laboring man bears what to a highly nervous organization is torture : in these we have successive proofs that the question of pain depends largely upon the character of the structure exposed to it. That it also depends upon the condition of the structure is even more manifest. The sensibility of an external part depends upon its temperature : cool it below a certain point, and it becomes numb and insensible to pain : heat it so that the blood-vessels dilate and the tenderness is extreme. The relativity of pleasure is far more conspicuous. What is one man's meat is another's poison; what gives the keenest satisfaction at one time is rejected with disgust at another ; and a thousand instances might be cited to carry home the truth that the receipt of each agreeable sensation depends primarily on the existence of the structure which is called into play, and, secondarily, on the condition of that structure, as fitting it or unfitting it for activity. Similarly with emotional pleasures. This animal which, leading a life demanding solitary habits, has an organization adapted thereto, gives no sign of need for the presence of its kind. On the other hand a gregarious animal separated from the herd shows every mark of unhappiness while the separation continues, and equally distinct marks of joy on rejoining its companions. And throughout we see that those who have led lives involving particular kinds of THE HIGHEST TYPE. 113 activities have become so constituted that pursuance of those activities, exercising the correlative structures, yields the associated pleasures. "I have insisted," continues Mr. Spencer, "on these general truths with perhaps needless iteration, to prepare the reader for more fully recognizing a corollary that is practi- cally ignored. Abundant and clear as is fhe evidence, and forced though it is daily on every one's attention, the con- clusions respecting life and conduct which should be drawn are not drawn ; and so much at variance are these conclu- sions with current beliefs that enunciation of them causes a stare of incredulity. Pervaded as all past thinking has been, and as most present thinking is, by the assumption that the nature of every creature has been specially created for it, and that human nature, also specially created, is, like other natures, fixed — pervaded too as this thinking has been, and is, by the allied assumption that the agree- ableness of certain actions depends on their essential qualities, while other actions are by their essential qualities made disagreeable, it is difficult to obtain a hearing for the doctrine that the kinds of action which are now pleasurable will, under conditions requiring the change, cease to be pleasurable, while other kinds of action will become pleas- urable. Even those who accept the doctrine of evolution mostly hear with skepticism, or at best with nominal faith, the inferences to be drawn from it respecting the humanity of the future. "And yet, as shown in myriads of instances indicated by the few above given, those natural processes which have produced multitudinous forms of structure adapted to mul- titudinous forms of activity have simultaneously made these forms of activity pleasurable. And the inevitable implication is that within the limits imposed by physical 114 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. laws there will be evolved, in adaptation to any new sets of conditions that may be established, appropriate structures of which the functions will yield their respective gratifi- cations. "When we have got rid of the tendency to think that certain modes of activity are necessarily pleasurable because they give us pleasure, and that other modes which do not please us are necessarily unpleasing, we shall see that the remolding of human nature into fitness for the require- ments of social life must eventually make all needful activities pleasurable, while it makes displeasurable all activities at variance with these requirements. When we have come fully to recognize the truth that there is nothing intrinsically more gratifying in the efforts by which wild animals are caught than in the efforts expended in rearing plants, and that the combined actions of muscles and senses in rowing a boat are not by their essential natures more productive of agreeable feeling than those gone through in reaping corn, but that everything depends on the cooperating emotions, which at present are more in accordance with the one than with the other, we shall infer that along with decrease of those emotions for which the social state affords litde or no scope, and increase of those which it persistendy exercises, the things now done with disHke from a sense of obligation will be done with imme- diate liking, and the things desisted from as a matter of duty will be desisted from because they are repugnant." And after showing that the corollary above drawn from the doctrine of evolution at large coincides with the corollary which past and present changes in human nature force on us, and that the leading contrasts of character between savage and civilized (as shown in the instances of those who prefer mercy to cruelty, industry to idleness, philan- THE HIGHEST TYPE. 115 thropy to selfish gain) are just those contrasts to be expected fi-om the process of adaptation, he concludes the chapter with a passage which admirably illustrates the optimism of the evolutionist's creed. "Now, not only," he says, "is it rational to infer that changes like those which have been going on during civilization will continue to go on, but it is irrational to do otherwise. Not he who believes that adaptation will increase is absurd, but he who doubts that it will increase is absurd. Lack of iliith in such further evolution of humanity as shall harmonize its nature with its conditions adds but another to the countless illustrations of inadequate consciousness of causation. One who, leaving behind both primitive dogmas and primitive ways of look- ing at things, has, while accepting scientific conclusions, acquired those habits of thought which science generates will regard the conclusion above drawn as inevitable. He will find it impossible to believe that the processes which have heretofore so molded all beings to the requirements of their lives that they get satisfactions in fulfilling them will not hereafter continue so molding them. He will infer that the type of nature to which the highest social life affords a sphere such that every faculty has its due amount, and no more than the due amount, of function and accom- panying gratification, is the type of nature toward which progress cannot cease till it is reached. Pleasure being producible by the exercise of any structure which is adjusted to its special end, he will see the necessary implication to be that, supposing it consistent with maintenance of life, there is no kind of activity which will not become a source of pleasure if continued ; and that, therefore, pleasure will eventually accompany every mode of action demanded by social conditions." Ii6 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. CHAPTER V. EGOISM. IN considering the comparative claims of Egoism and Altruism we now enter upon the question to which all the previous argument has been preliminary. The illustrations given are largely drawn from every-day, domestic life. "If," says Mr. Spencer, "insistence on them tends to unsettle established systems of belief, self- evident truths are by most people silently passed over, or else there is a tacit refusal to draw from them the most obvious inferences." One of these self-evident truths is that a creature must live before it can act ; that the acts by which each maintains his own life must precede in imperativeness all other acts of which he is capable ; that, unless each duly cares for himself, his care for all others is ended by death. "This permanent supremacy of egoism over altruism, made manifest by contemplating existing life, is further made manifest by contemplating life in course of evolution. "Those who have followed with assent the recent course of thought do not need telling that throughout past eras, the life, vast in amount and varied in kind, which has over- spread the earth has progressed in subordination to the law that every individual shall gain by whatever aptitude it has for fulfilling the conditions to its existence. The uniform principle has been that better adaptation shall bring greater benefit, which greater benefit, while increasing the pros- EGOISM. 117 perity of the better adapted, shall increase also its ability to leave offspring inheriting more or less its better adaptation. And, by implication, the uniform principle has been that the ill-adapted, disadvantaged in the struggle for existence shall bear the consequent evils, either disappearing when its imperfections are extreme, or else rearing fewer off- spring, which, inheriting its imperfections, tend to dwindle away in posterity. "It has been thus with innate superiorities ; it has been thus also with acquired ones. All along the law has been that increased function brings increased power, and that, therefore, such extra activities as aid welfare in any member of a race produce in its structures greater ability to carry on such extra activities — the derived advantages being enjoyed by it to the hightening and lengthening of its life. Conversely, as lessened function ends in lessened structure, the dwindling of unused faculties has ever entailed loss of power to achieve the correlative ends — the result of inadequate fulfillment of the ends being diminished abil- ity to maintain life. And by inheritance, such functionally produced modifications have respectively furthered or hindered survival in posterity. ' ' As already said, the law that each creature shall take the benefits and the evils of its own nature, be they those derived from ancestry or those due to self-produced modi- fications, has been the law under which life has evolved thus far, and it must continue to be the law, however much further life may evolve. Whatever qualifications this natural course of action may now or hereafter undergo are qualifications that cannot, without fatal results, essen- tially change it. Any arrangements which in a consider- able degree prevent superiority from profiting by the rewards of superiority, or shield inferiority from the evils Il8 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. it entails — any arrangements which tend to make it as well to be inferior as to be superior, are arrangements diametri- cally opposed to the progress of organization and the reaching of a higher life. ' ' But to say that each individual shall reap the benefits brought to him by his own powers, inherited and acquired, is to enunciate egoism as an ultimate principle of conduct. It is to say that egoistic claims must take precedence of altruistic claims." He proceeds to show that under its biological aspect this proposition cannot be contested by those who agree in the doctrine of evolution, though they will not allow that admission of it under its ethical aspect is equally unavoid- able. But incapacity of every kind, and of whatever degree, causes unhappiness directly and indirectly — directly by the pain consequent on the overtaxing of inadequate fac- ulty, and indirectly by the non-fulfillment, or imperfect fulfillment, of certain conditions to welfare — conversely capacity of every kind brings happiness immediate and remote. "The mentally inferior individual of any race suffers negative and positive miseries, while the mentally superior individual receives negative and positive gratifi- cations. Inevitably, then, this law, in conformity with which each member of a species takes the consequences of its own nature — and in virtue of which the progeny of each member, participating in its nature, also takes such consequences — is one that tends ever to raise the aggregate happiness of the species, by furthering the multiplication of the happier and hindering that of the less happy." As health and capacity, disease and stupidity, are trans- mitted to descendants it follows that all current ideas as to the relative claims of egoism and altruism are vitiated just so far as they ignore the effect upon posterity of observance or neglect of the demands of the ' ' ego. ' ' EGOISM. 119 This appears to me an appropriate place to say a word upon the doctrine of the "survival of the fittest," a law which Mr. Spencer is convinced — and in no way do I, for my humble part, differ from him — makes enormously for general happiness, and is indeed its root. It is therefore regarded as no less than sacrilegious to attempt to impede the free working of this law, and the charge is continually made against Socialists by superficial critics that they propose to thwart and interfere with this beneficent law. I shall have occasion to touch upon another question that underlies this, when treating of Mr. Spencer's essay upon Progress: I allude to the question of " free-will. " Mean- while I may point out that the very men who in the infancy of Evolution, as a scientific doctrine, conceived it as the justification of the extremest Individualism, have already grasped the fact that it may also be used as the most powerful of arguments for Socialism. As typical of the mental change that has come with increased study I select the following from Prof. Wn-^ley' s Adnmiistrafwe Nihilism.'^^ Combating the laissez /aire proclivities of Mr. Spencer, he says: "But when men living in society have once become aware that their welfare depends upon two opposing ten- dencies of equal importance — the one restraining, the other encouraging, individual freedom — the question 'What are the functions of government?' is translated into another — namely. What ought we men, in our corporate capacity, to do, not only in the way of restraining that free individuality which is inconsistent with the existence of society ; but in encouraging that free individuality which is essential to the evolution of the social organization? The formula which truly defines the function of government must contain the *The Humboldt Library, -No. 125, p. 50. I20 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. solution of both the problems involved, and not merely of one of them." The exact point taken by Socialists, viz. , that coopera- tive economics is one of the ways in which we can work with Nature, insuring our survival by insuring our own fitness, individually and socially — just as a sensible man recognizes that he increases his chance of life by observing the laws of health — is well put by Mr. Sidney Webb in the Fabian Essays. There he tells us : " We know now that in natural selection at the stage of development where the existence of civilized mankind is at stake, the units selected from are not individuals, but societies. Its action at earlier stages, though analogous, is quite dissimilar. Among the lower animals physical strength or agility is the favored quality : if some heaven-sent genius among the cuttle-fish developed a delicate poetic faculty, this high excellence would not delay his succumbing to his hulking neighbor. When, higher up in the scale, mental cunning became the favored attribute, an extra brain convolution, leading primitive man to the invention of fire or tools, enabled a comparatively puny savage to become the conqueror and survivor of his fellows. "Brain culture accordingly developed apace; but we do not yet thoroughly realize that this has itself been super- seded as the 'selected' attribute, by social organization. The cultivated Athenians, Saracens, and Provencals went down in the struggle for existence before their respective competitors, who, individually inferior, were in possession of a, at that time, more valuable social organization. The French nation was beaten in the last war, not because the average German was an inch and a half taller than the average Frenchman, or because he had read five more books, but because the German social organism was, for EGOISM. 121 the purposes of the time, superior in efficiency to the French. If we desire to hand on to the afterworld our direct influence, and not merely the memory of our excel- lence, we must take even more care to improve the social organism of which we form part, than to perfect our own individual developments." I have only here to add that, while our present system, with its necessary worship of what Mr. John Most calls "the Beast of Property," is admittedly engendering the most bitter discontent, few com- prehend how ample are the grounds for discontent, and how rapidly it is leading not to the survival of the fittest, but to the universal annihilation of body, mind and soul. According to statistics carefully compiled by the Fabian Society of England it appears that in London, the greatest wealth-center of the world, one in every five of the inhab- itants dies in the poor-house, the hospital or the lunatic asylum : that the average length of life of the members of the professional and well-to-do classes is 55 years, and of the workers in the immense East end district of Bethnal Green 29. When the workingmen of this, and other countries, become intelligent enough to think it worth their while themselves to master and to proclaim aloud such facts, instead of leaving the task to a few students and philan- thropists, we shall hear very little more laudation of our existing system. On the contrary, there will be a general awakening to the fact that its continuation means the con- tinued, ceaseless slaughter of those, who, as the workers, live most in accord with Nature's law, whom a natural system would be most careful to preserve, and whom the world can least afford to lose. The present system has, however, from the merely physical side, more than this upon its conscience. Not only does it take life remorse- lessly, but it forces thousands — of whom the immense 122 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. majority are from the working classes — to assist it by sending themselves out of existence. In the North Amer- ican Review for April, 1891, Dr. William Mathews has shown, as it has been often shown before, that as civilization advances suicides increase. In Europe 60,000 suicides are annually recorded, and unquestionably a large number escape official notice. Turning to the mental side of the question a truly ter- rifying array of evidence as to the increase of insanity confronts one. Such eminent English authorities on the subject of insanity as Bucknill and Crichton Browne tell us that "insanity attains its maximum development among civilized nation," and that "education and suicide are increasing all over Europe." The celebrated statistician M. G. Mulhall commences an article in the Contemporary Review of June, 1883, with these words : "The increase of insanity, so long doubted by the Lunacy Commissioners, is now, as Dr. Tuke observes, too patent to admit of ques- tion, and, as it is accompanied both here (Great Britain) and on the Continent by an increase of suicide, it is begin- ning to attract the notice of the world." He then goes on to prove that "in the United Kingdom the number of insane has almost doubled in twenty years, increasing three times faster than population." Turning again to the moral side, I touch but a moment upon the question of prostitution, since the comforting doctrine is apparently held that it is only the mentally or morally incapable who take to so shameful an occupation. It is, of course, inevitable that such should be driven to the wall, since they are entirely unfitted to survive ; and the pleasure of watching the infallible working of this beneficent law may be properly regarded as one of the legitimate EGOISM. 123 enjoyments of the elect. It would be certainly easy for me to pile up quotations showing the effect of economic condi- tions upon the growth of prostitution, and I might cap the climax with some edifying reflections as to the sale of human flesh — open and secret, legal and illegal — which society not only winks at but applauds. Before me, how- ever, lies a review from London Justice, of a book entitled Work Amo7ig the Fallen, by the Rev. Mr. Merrick, the chaplain of the well-known Millbank prison. It says : — "This book deals with cases of prostitutes with whom he has been brought into contact at Millbank. This number is stated to be 100,000, although Mr. Merrick takes 14,000 for purposes of classification. But he make one assertion which is most important, that out of the whole 100,000 cases not one hundred of the women professed to like their career of shame. Mr. Merrick also testifies to the fact that a great deal of occasional prostitution is forced on girls and women in order to get money to pay the rent when times are bad and work is slack. Having once taken the first step a girl is almost certain to become a prostitute." Mr. Spencer reminds us that there is yet another way in which the undue subordination of egoism to altruism is injurious, for in the first place excessive unselfishness gen- erates selfishness. "Every one can remember circles in which the daily surrender of benefits by the generous to the greedy has caused increase of greediness, until there has been produced an unscrupulous egoism intolerable to all around. There are obvious social effects of kindred nature. Most thinking people now recognize the demoral- ization caused by indiscriminate charity. They see how in the mendicant there is, besides destruction of the normal relation between labor expended and benefit obtained, a 124 ECONOMICS OF HERBER T SPENCER. genesis of the expectation that others shall minister to his needs, showing itself sometimes in the venting of curses on those who refuse. ' ' Next consider the remote results. When the egoistic claims are so much subordinated to the altruistic as to pro- duce physical mischief, the tendency is toward a relative decrease in the number of the altruistic, and therefore an increased predominance of the egoistic. Pushed to extremes, sacrifice of self for the benefit of others leads occasionally to death before the ordinary period of marriage ; leads sometimes to abstention from marriage, as in sisters of charity ; leads sometimes to an ill-health or a loss of attrac- tiveness which prevents marriage ; leads sometimes to non- acquirement of the pecuniary means needed for marriage ; and in all these cases, therefore, the unusually altruistic leave no descendants. Where the postponement of per- sonal welfare to the welfare of others has not been carried so far as to prevent marriage, it yet not unfrequently occurs that the physical degradation resulting from years of self- neglect causes infertility, so that again the most altruis- tically-natured leave no like-natured posterity. And then in less marked and more numerous cases the resulting enfeeblement shows itself by the production of relatively weak offspring, of whom some die early, while the rest are less likely than usual to transmit the parental type to future generations. Inevitably, then, by this dying out of the especially unegoistic, there is prevented that desirable mitigation of egoism in the average nature which would else have taken place. Such disregard of self as brings down bodily vigor below the normal level eventually produces in the society a counterbalancing excess of regard for self. *■ ' That egoism precedes altruism in order of imperative- EGOISM. 125 ness is thus clearly shown. The acts which make continual life possible must, on the average, be more peremptory than all those other acts which life makes possible, including the acts which benefit others. Turning from life as existing to life as evolving, we are equally shown this. Sentient beings have progressed from low to high types, under the law that the superior shall profit by their superiority and the inferior shall suffer from their inferiority. Conformity to this law has been, and is still, needful, not only for the continuance of life but for the increase of happiness, since the superior are those having faculties better adjusted to the requirements — faculties, therefore, which bring in their exercise greater pleasure and less pain. "More special considerations join these more general ones in showing us this truth. Such egoism as preserves a vivacious mind in a vigorous body furthers the happiness of descendants, whose inherited constitutions make the labors of life easy and its pleasures keen ; while, conversely, unhappiness is entailed on posterity by those who bequeath them constitutions injured by self-neglect. Again, the individual whose well- conserved life shows itself in over- flowing spirits becomes, by his mere existence, a source of pleasure to all around, while the depression which com- monly accompanies ill-health diffuses itself through family and among friends. A further contrast is that whereas one who has been duly regardful of self retains the power of being helpful to others there results from self-abnegation in excess not only an inability to help others but the infliction of positive burdens on them. Lastly, we come upon the truth that undue altruism increases egoism, both directly in contemporaries and indirectly in posterity. ' ' And now observe that though the general conclusion enforced by these special conclusions is at variance with 126 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. nominally accepted beliefs, it is not at variance with actually- accepted beliefs. While opposed to the doctrine which men are taught should be acted upon, it is in harmony with the doctrine which they do act upon and dimly see must be acted upon. For omitting such abnormalities of con- duct as are instanced above, every one, alike by deed and word, impHes that in the business of life personal welfare is the primary consideration. The laborer looking for wages in return for work done, no less than the merchant who sells goods at a profit, the doctor who expects fees for advice, the priest who calls the scene of his ministrations "a living," assumes as beyond question the truth that selfishness, carried to the extent of enforcing his claims and enjoying the returns his efforts bring, is not only legitimate but essential. Even persons who avow a con- trary conviction prove by their acts that it is inoperative. Those who repeat with emphasis the maxim, ' Love your neighbor as yourself,' do not render up what they possess so as to satisfy the desires of all as much as they satisfy their own desires. Nor do those whose extreme maxim is, 'Live for others,' differ appreciably from people around in their regards for personal welfare, or fail to appropriate their shares of life's pleasures. In short, that which is above set forth as the belief to which scientific ethics leads us is that which men do really believe, as distinguished from that which they believe they believe. "Finally, it maybe remarked that a rational egoism, so far from implying a more egoistic human nature, is con- sistent with a human nature that is less egoistic. For excesses in one direction do not prevent excesses in the opposite direction, but rather extreme deviations from the mean on one side lead to extreme deviations on the other side. A society in which the most exalted principles of EGOISM. 127 self-sacrifice for the benefit of neighbors are enunciated may be a society in which unscrupulous sacrifice of alien fellow- creatures is not only tolerated but applauded. Along with professed anxiety to spread these exalted principles among heathens there may go the deliberate fastening of a quarrel upon them with a view to annexing their territory. Men who every Sunday have listened approvingly to injunctions carrying the regard for other men to an impracticable extent may yet hire themselves out to slay, at the word of com- mand, any people in any part of the world, utterly indiffer- ent to the right or wrong of the matter fought about. And as in these cases transcendent altruism in theory co-exists with brutal egoism in practice, so, conversely, a more qual- ified altruism may have for its concomitant a greatly mod- erated egoism. For asserting the due claims of self is, by implication, drawing a limit beyond which the claims are undue, and is, by consequence, bringing into greater clearness the claims of others. ' ' It appears to me desirable here to say a word respecting the charge made by Mr. Spencer in the foregoing passage against excessive altruism, viz., that it generates selfishness ; a charge that starts a train of investigations leading to the most weighty conclusions. For if this charge be true, as it obviously is, it reminds us that we have a duty to our- selves, to see that no undue advantage is taken of us, and that we have equally a duty to those who would take such advantage. Natural history supplies us with innumerable instances of the evil that parasites afflict not only upon those whom they select as their prey, but also on them- selves ; the neglect of performing life duties resulting inva- riably in degeneration, decay, and ultimately in death. So it is with individuals, with classes and with races ; the 128 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. cowardice that, shirking the duties of Hfe, seeks to impose them upon others, and the cowardice that submits to the imposition, being punished by nature with absolutely impar- tial hand. It is thus an open question which has suffered most severely from the injustices inflicted — the slave-owner or the slave ; and it is clear that in insisting upon such a reconstruction as shall compel all parasites to be useful members of society the working class will have the satis- faction not only of doing justice to themselves, but also of actually doing good to those who have oppressed them. That decay is the fate of all idle aristocracies is amply evidenced by history, and there is no earthly reason for supposing that the aristocracy of the money-bag will be any exception to the rule. ALTRUISM. 129 CHAPTER VI. ALTRUISM. PASSING to altruism — which term must be taken as inckiding all acts by which offspring are preserved and the species maintained — we find that while primarily- dependent on egoism, yet secondarily egoism is dependent on it. Both have been evolving simultaneously, "and each higher species, using its improved faculties primarily for egoistic benefit, has spread in proportion as it has used them secondarily for altruistic benefit. The imperativeness of altruism as thus understood is, indeed, no less than the imperativeness of egoism was shown to be. For while, on the one hand, a falhng short of normal egoistic acts entails enfeeblement or loss of life, and therefore loss of ability to perform altruistic acts ; on the other hand such defect of altruistic acts as causes death of olfspring or inadequate development of them involves disappearance from future generations of the nature that is not altruistic enough — so decreasing the average egoism. In short, every species is continually purifying itself from the unduly egoistic individ- uals, while there are being lost to It the unduly altruistic individuals." As the advance has been by degrees from unconscious to conscious parental altruism, so has it been from the altruism of the family to social altruism, altruistic relations in the political group being only rendered possible by the attainment of highly developed forms in the domestic group. For instance, it is stated that tribes in which I30 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. promiscuity prevails or in which the marital relations are transitory, and tribes in which polyandry entails indefinite relationships have shown themselves incapable of much organization. "Only where monogamic marriage has be- come general and eventually universal — only where there have consequently been established the closest ties of blood — -only where family altruism has been fostered has social altruism become conspicuous. . . . ' ' Recognizing this natural transition we are here chiefly concerned to observe that throughout the latter stages of the progress, as throughout the former, increase of egoistic satisfactions has depended on growth of regard for the satisfactions of others. On contemplating a line of succes- sive parents and offspring, we see that each, enabled while young to live by the sacrifices predecessors make for it, itself makes, when adult equivalent sacrifices for successors ; and that in default of this general balancing of benefits received by benefits given the line dies out. Similarly it is manifest that in society each generation of members, indebted for such benefits as social organization yields them to preceding generations, who have by their sacrifices elaborated this organization, are called on to make for succeeding generations such kindred sacrifices as shall at least maintain this organization, if they do not improve it — the alternative being decay and eventual dissolution of the society, implying gradual decrease in the egoistic satisfactions of its members." There follows a consideration of the various ways in which, under social conditions, personal welfare depends on regard for the welfare of others. At the outset where men unite for defense, or for other purposes, the increase of egoistic satisfactions which the social state brings can be purchased only by altruism sufficient to cause some recog- ALTRUISM. 131 nition of others' claims, and, whether it be in the earhest and rudest stage where the cooperation is merely for defense, or in the more developed stage of industrial cooperation, it is obvious that the prevalence of antagonisms among members of the union impedes the activities carried on by each. Hence, each profits egoistically from the growth of an altruism which leads each to aid in preventing or diminishing the violence of others. So, again, the undue egoism which displays itself in breaches of contract produces incessant friction, and the altruism which teaches that honesty is the best policy becomes the accepted rule. And, further, it is clearly seen that personal welfare is promoted by making certain sacrifices for social welfare, since defective governmental arrangements carry loss to every individual. ' ' So that on such altruistic actions as are implied, firstly in being just, secondly in seeing justice done between others, and thirdly in upholding and improving the agencies by which justice is administered, depend, in large measure, the egoistic satisfactions of each. "But the identification of personal advantage with the advantage of fellow-citizens is much wider than this. In various other ways the well-being of each rises and falls with the well-being of all. ' ' A weak man left to provide for his own wants sufiers by getting smaller amounts of food and other necessaries than he might get were he stronger. In a community formed of weak men, who divide their labors and exchange the products, all suffer evils from the weakness of their fellows. The quantity of each kind of product is made deficient by the deficiency of laboring power, and the share each gets for such share of his own product as he can afford to give is relatively small. Just as the maintenance 132 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. of paupers, hospital patients, inmates of asylums, and others who consume but do not produce, leaves to be divided among' producers a smaller stock of commodities than would exist were there no incapables, so must there be left a smaller stock of commodities to be divided, the greater the number of inefficient producers, or the greater the average deficiency of producing power. Hence, whatever decreases the strength of men in general restricts the gratifications of each by making the means to them dearer. "More directly and more obviously does the bodily well-being of his fellows concern him, for their bodily ill- being, when it takes certain shapes, is apt to bring similar bodily ill-being on him. If he is not himself attacked by cholera, or small-pox, or typhus, when it invades his neighborhood, he often suffers a penalty through his belongings. Under conditions spreading it, his wife catches diphtheria, or his servant is laid up with scarlet fever, or his children take now this and now that infectious disorder. Add together the immediate and remote evils brought on him year after year by epidemics, and it becomes manifest that his egoistic satisfactions are greatly furthered by such altruistic activities as render disease less prevalent. ' ' With the mental as well as with the bodily states of fellow-citizens, his enjoyments are in multitudinous ways bound up. Stupidity like weakness raises the cost of com- modities. Where farming is unimproved, the prices of food are higher than they would else be ; where antiquated routine maintains itself in trade, the needless expense of distribution weighs on all ; where there is no inventiveness, every one loses the benefits which improved appliances diffuse. Other than economic evils come from the average unintelligence — periodically through the manias and panics that arise because traders rush in herds all to buy or all to ALTRUISM. 133 sell; and habitually through the maladministration of justice, which people and rulers alike disregard while pursuing this or that legislative will-o'-the-wisp. Closer and clearer is the dependence of his personal satisfactions on others' mental states which each experiences in his household. Unpunctuality and want of system are perpetual sources of annoyance. The unskillfulness of the cook causes frequent vexation and occasional indigestion. Lack of forethought in the housemaid leads to a fall over a bucket in a dark passage. And inattention to a message or forgetfulness in delivering it entails failure in an important engagement. Each, therefore, benefits egoistically by such altruism as aids in raising the average intelligence. I do not mean such altruism as taxes ratepayers that children's minds may be filled with dates, and names, and gossip about kings, and narratives of battles, and other useless informa- tion no amount of which will make them capable workers or good citizens ; but I mean such altruism as helps to spread a knowledge of the nature of things and to cultivate the power of applying that knowledge. "Yet again, each has a private interest in public morals, and profits by improving them. Not in large ways only, by aggressions and breaches of contract, by adulterations and short measures, does each suffer from the general unconscientiousness, but in more numerous small ways. Now it is through the untruthfulness of one who gives a good character to a bad servant ; now it is by the reckless- ness of a laundress who, using bleaching agents to save trouble in washing, destroys his linen ; now it is by the acted falsehood of railway passengers who, by dispersed coats, make him believe that all the seats in a compartment are taken when they are not. Yesterday the illness of his child, due to foul gases, led to the discovery of a drain that 134 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. had become choked because it was ill-made by a dishonest builder under supervision of a careless or bribed surveyor. To-day workmen employed to rectify it bring on him cost and inconvenience by dawdling ; and their low standard of work, determined by the unionist principle that the better workers must not discredit the worse by exceeding them in efficiency, he may trace to the immoral belief that the unworthy should fare as well as the worthy. To-morrow it turns out that business for the plumber has been provided by damage which the bricklayers have done. "Thus the improvement of others, physically, intellect- ually, and morally, personally concerns each, since their imperfections tell in raising the cost of all the commodities he buys, in increasing the taxes and rates he pays, and in the losses of time, trouble, and money, daily brought on him by others' carelessness, stupidity, or unconscientiousness." It is further pointed out that egoism unqualified by altruism habitually fails. "Self-gratifications, considered separately or in the aggregate, lose their intensities by that too great persistence in them which results if they are made the exclusive objects of pursuit. The law that function entails waste, and that faculties yielding pleasure by their action cannot act incessantly without exhaustion and accom- panying satiety, has the implication that intervals during which altruistic activities absorb the energies are intervals during which the capacity for egoistic pleasure is recover- ing its. full degree. The sensitiveness to purely personal enjoyments is maintained at a higher pitch by those who minister to the enjoyments of others than it is by those who devote themselves wholly to personal enjoyments." Moreover, it must be borne in mind that the range of aesthetic gratifications is wider for the altruistic nature than for the egoistic nature. ' ' The joys and sorrows of human ALTRUISM. 135 beings form a chief element in the subject-matter of art, and evidently the pleasures which art gives increase as the fellow-feeling with these joys and sorrows strengthens. If we contrast early poetry occupied mainly with war and gratifying the savage instincts by descriptions of bloody victories, with the poetry of modern times, in which the sanguinary forms but a small part, while a large part, dealing with the gentler affections, enlists the feelings of readers on behalf of the weak, we are shown that with the development of a more altruistic nature there has been opened a sphere of enjoyment inaccessible to the callous egoism of barbarous times. So, too, between the fiction of the past and the fiction of the present there is the differ- ence that while the one was almost exclusively occupied with the doings of the ruling classes, and found its plots in their antagonisms and deeds of violence, the other, chiefly taking stories of peaceful life for its subjects, and to a con- siderable extent the life of the humbler classes, discloses a new world of interest in the every-day pleasures and pains of ordinary people. A like contrast exists between early and late forms of plastic art. When not representing acts of worship, the wall sculptures and wall paintings of the Assyrians and Egyptians, or the decorations of temples among the Greeks, represented deeds of conquest ; whereas in modern times, while the works which glorify destructive activities are less numerous, there are an increasing number of works gratifying to the kindlier sentiments of spectators. To see that those who care nothing about the feelings of other beings are, by implication, shut out from a wide range of aesthetic pleasures, it needs but to ask whether men who delight in dog-fights may be expected to appre- ciate Beethoven's 'Adelaida,' or whether Tennyson's 'In Memoriam ' would greatly move a gang of convicts. 136 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. ' ' From the dawn of life, then, egoism has been dependent upon altruism as altruism has been dependent upon egoism ; and in the course of evolution the reciprocal services of the two have been increasing." Lastly, "an indication must be added of the truth, scarcely at all recognized, that this dependence of egoism upon altruism ranges beyond the limits of each society, and tends ever toward universality. That within each society it becomes greater as social evolution, implying increase of mutual dependence, progresses, need not be shown : and it is a corollary that as fast as the dependence of societies on one another is increased by commercial intercourse, the internal welfare of each becomes a matter of concern to the others. That the impoverishment of any country, diminish- ing both its producing and consuming powers, tells detri- mentally on the people of countries trading with it, is a commonplace of political economy. Moreover, we have had of late years abundant experience of the industrial derangements through which distress is brought on nations not immediately concerned, by wars between other nations. And if each community has the egoistic satisfaction of its members diminished by aggressions of neighboring com- munities on one another, still more does it have them diminished by its own aggressions. One who marks how, in various parts of the world, the unscrupulous greed of conquest, cloaked by pretenses of spreading the blessings of British rule and British religion, is now reacting to the immense detriment of the industrial classes at home, alike by increasing expenditure and paralyzing trade, may see that these industrial classes, absorbed in questions about capital and labor, and thinking themselves unconcerned in our doings abroad, are suffering from lack of that wide- reaching altruism which should insist on just dealings with ALTRUISM. 137 other peoples, civilized or savage. And he may also see that beyond these immediate evils they will for a genera- tion to come suffer the evils that must flow from resuscitating the type of social organization which aggressive activities produce, and from the lowered moral tone which is its accompaniment. ' ' 138 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. CHAPTER VII. STRIKING THE BALANCE. IN a chapter entitled ' ' Trial and Compromise ' ' the "greatest-happiness principle," as enunciated by Ben- tham and his followers, is analyzed, with the result that making general happiness the end of action is shown realiy to mean the maintaining what we call equitable relations among individuals ; and the pure altruism which requires that men should live exclusively for others is shown to be impossible of realization. From the biological view of ethics it has already been shown that pleasures accompany normal exercise of functions, and that complete life depends on complete discharge of functions, and therefore on receipt of the correlative pleasures. Hence to yield up normal pleasures is to yield up so much life. "Complete abne- gation means death ; excessive abnegation means illness ; abnegation less excessive means physical degradation and consequent loss of power to fulfill obligations." The pleasures that are inseparable from maintenance of the physique in an uninjured state, and the pleasures that arise from successful action, are personal pleasures that cannot be transferred. And since pure altruism is necessarily self-destructive, the need for a compromise between egoism and altruism becomes conspicuous. "We are forced to recognize the claims which his own well-being has on the attention of each by noting how in some directions we come to a deadlock, in others to contradictions, and in others to disastrous results, if they are ignored. Con- STRIKING THE BALANCE. 139 versely, it is undeniable that disregard of others by each carried to a great extent is fatal to society, and carried to a still greater extent is fatal to the family, and eventually to the race. Egoism and altruism are therefore co-essen- tial." And as corporate happiness, like individual hap- piness, to be pursued effectively must be pursued not directly but indirectly, the question is what must be the general nature of the means through which it is to be pursued. "It is admitted that self-happiness is, in a measure, to be obtained by furthering the happiness of others. May it not be true that, conversely, general happiness is to be obtained by furthering self-happiness? If the well-being of each unit is to be reached partly through his care for the well-being of the aggregate, is not the well-being of the aggregate to be reached partly through the care of each unit for himself? Clearly, our conclusion must be that general happiness is to be achieved mainly through the adequate pursuit of their own happinesses by individuals, while, reciprocally, the happinesses of individuals are to be achieved in part by their pursuit of the general happiness. "And this is the conclusion embodied in the progress- ing ideas and usages of mankind. This compromise between egoism and altruism has been slowly establishing itself; and toward recognition of its propriety, men's actual beliefs, as distinguished from their nominal beliefs, have been gradu- ally approaching. Social evolution has been bringing about a state in which the claims of the individual to the proceeds of his activities, and to such satisfactions as they bring, are more and more positively asserted, at the same time that insistence on others' claims and habitual respect for them have been increasing. Among the rudest savages personal interests are very vaguely distinguished from the 140 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. interests of others. In early stages of civilization, the proportioning of benefits to efforts is extremely rude : slaves and serfs get for work arbitrary amounts of food and shelter : exchange being infrequent, there is little to develop the idea of equivalence. But as civilization advances and status passes into contract, there comes daily experience of the relation between advantages enjoyed and labor given — the industrial system maintaining, through supply and demand, a due adjustment of the one to the other. And this growth of voluntary cooperation — this exchange of services under agreement has been necessarily accompanied by decrease of aggressions one upon another, and increase of sympathy, leading to exchange of services beyond agreement. That is to say, the more distinct assertion of individual claims and more rigorous appor- tioning of personal enjoyments to efforts expended have gone hand in hand with growth of that negative altruism shown in equitable conduct and that positive altruism shown in gratuitous aid. ' ' A higher phase of this double change has in our own times become conspicuous. If, on the one hand, we note the struggles for political freedom, the contests between labor and capital, the judicial reforms made to facilitate enforcement of rights, we see that the tendency still is toward complete appropriation by each of whatever bene- fits are due to him, and consequent exclusion of his fellows from such benefits. On the other hand, if we consider what is meant by the surrender of power to the masses, the abolition of class-privileges, the efforts to diffuse knowl- edge, the agitations to spread temperance, the multitudin- ous philanthropic societies, it becomes clear that regard for the well-being of others is increasing pari passu with the taking of means to secure personal well-being." STRIKING THE BALANCE. 141 It would be impossible to pass the last paragraph with- out a word of criticism, though the most obvious reflections I postpone to the chapters in which Mr. Spencer's claim that our present system is one of "voluntary cooperation," a "regime of willinghood," is examined. As regards charities I have already shown, when considering his posi- tion on the land question, that one of the main curses of charity under our competitive system is that it is actually exploited by our enterprising capitalists as a method of acquiring cheaper labor. As for ' ' the struggles for politi- cal freedom," it is gratifying to find that the author of The Sins of Legislators, and The Gt'eat Political Super stitio7i, considers them a sign of progress, and that, bitter though his opposition to trades unions is, he nevertheless takes the same view of "the contests between labor and capital." It has been shown that during evolution there has been going on a conciliation between the interests of the species, the interests of the parents and the interests of the offspring, egoistic satisfactions becoming more and more dependent upon altruistic activities. As the constant presence of pain gradually produces callousness, so with increase of pleasures sympathy grows : a truth that introduces us to the first necessary implication, which is that under the militant type of social organization sympathy cannot develop to any considerable hight. "The destructive activities carried on against external enemies sear it ; the state of feeling maintained causes within the society itself frequent acts of ggression or cruelty; and further, the compulsory cooper- ;.tion characterizing the militant regime necessarily represses sympathy — exists only on condition of an unsympathetic treatment of some by others." But Mr. Spencer concludes that even if the militant regime were forthwith to cease, the 142 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER, hinderances to development of sympathy would still be great. The predatory nature would continue long after the predatory activities had ended, and the ill-adjustment of the human constitution to the pursuits of industrial hfe must persist for innumerable generations. "Nor would even complete adaptation, if limited to disappearance of the non-adaptations just indicated, remove all sources of those miseries which, to the extent of their manifestation, check the growth of sympathy. For while the rate of multiplica- tion continues so to exceed the rate of mortality as to cause pressure on the means of subsistence, there must continue to result much unhappiness, either from balked affections or from overwork and stinted means. Only as fast as fertility diminishes, which we have seen it must do along with fur- ther mental development {Prmciples of Biology, §§ 367- 377), can there go on such diminution of the labors required for efficiently supporting self and family that they will not constitute a displeasurable tax on the energies." ' ' That unceasing social discipline will so mold human nature that eventually sympathetic pleasures will be spon- taneously pursued to the fullest extent advantageous to each and all," Mr. Spencer does not doubt. He foresees the time when "the relation at present familiar to us will be inverted, and instead of each maintaining his own claims, others will maintain his claims for him — not, indeed, by active efforts, which will be needless, but by passively resisting any undue yielding up of them. There is nothing in such behavior which is not even now to be traced in our daily experiences as beginning. In business transactions among honorable men, there is usually a desire on either side that the other shall treat himself fairly. Not unfre- quently there is a refwsal to take something regarded as the STRIKING THE BALANCE. 143 other's due, but which the other offers to give up. In social intercourse, too, the cases are common in which those who would surrender shares of pleasure are not permitted by the rest to do so. Further development of sympathy cannot but make this mode of behaving in- creasingly general and increasingly genuine." Side by side with a healthy egoism which restrains the individual from imposing self-sacrifice on others will flourish an altruism which, in Mr. Spencer's judgment, will have three spheres, viz. : the care for children, the care for parents and the care for social welfare ; the sympathy which the last named involves increasing as pleasure predominates with the removal of human suffering, and participation in others' consciousness becoming a gain of pleasure to all. The chapter closes with a passage which it would be sacrilege to attempt to abbreviate. "As," he says, "at an earlier stage, egoistic com- petition, first reaching a compromise such that each claims no more than his equitable share, afterward rises to a conciliation such that each insists on the taking of equitable shares by others ; so, at the latest stage, altruistic com- petition, first reaching a compromise under which each restrains himself from taking an undue share of altruistic satisfactions, eventually rises to a conciliation under which each takes care that others shall have their opportunities for altruistic satisfactions — the highest altruism being that which ministers not to the egoistic satisfactions of others only, but also to their altruistic satisfactions. ' ' Far off as seems such a state, yet every one of the factors counted on to produce it may already be traced in operation among those of highest natures. What now in them is occasional and feeble, may be expected with further evolution to become habitual and strong; and 144 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. what now characterizes the exceptionally high may be expected eventually to characterize all. For that which the best human nature is capable of is within the reach of human nature at large. ' ' That these conclusions will meet with any consider- able acceptance is improbable. Neither with current ideas nor with current sentiments are they sufficiently congruous. "Such a view will not be agreeable to those who lament the spreading disbelief in eternal damnation ; nor to those who follow the apostle of brute force in thinking that because the rule of the strong hand was once good it is good for all time ; nor to those whose reverence for One who told them to put up the sword is shown by using the sword to spread his doctrine among heathens. The con- ception set forth would be received with contempt by that Fifeshire regiment of militia, of whom eight hundred, at the time of the Franco-German war, asked to be employed on foreign service, and left the government to say on which side they should fight. From the ten thousand priests of the religion of love, who are silent when the nation is moved by the religion of hate, will come no sign of assent, nor from their bishops who, far from urging the extreme precept of the Master they gretend to follow, to turn the other cheek when one is smitten, vote for acting on the principle, strike lest ye be struck. Nor will any approval be felt by legislators who, after praying to be forgiven their trespasses as they forgive the trespasses of others, forthwith decide to attack those who have not trespassed against them, and who, after a queen's speech has invoked "the blessing of Almighty God" on their councils, immediately provide means for committing political burglary. ' ' But though men who profess Christianity and STRIKING THE BALANCE. 145 practice Paganism can feel no sympathy with such a view, there are some, classed as antagonists to the current creed, who may not think it absurd to believe that a rationalized version of its ethical principles will eventually be acted upon." It is not the Socialist who will quarrel with these sentiments. In this morning's paper — ^June 8th, 1891 — side by side with the information that a German soldier has been sentenced to five years imprisonment for singing in barracks "A free man am I," we read that the German Emperor has delivered another of his "characteristic" speeches, in the course of which he said : "I warn you, who are mostly young countrymen, against the Social Democrats. Always remember, the oath you have taken binds, you to me. The Bible says the girl who marries leaves father and mother and follows her husband. I say to you, having taken the oath of soldier, follow me implicity, shooting even father or brother without question or hesitation, when ordered." But these things are not to be cured by lofty sentiments, any more than the starving victims of the British civil war of capitalism were cured by John Bright' s eloquent appeals to the goddess of peace. Everywhere to-day the sword is merely the adjunct of the money-bag, from which it derives the sinews of war, and to the defense of which it is everywhere pledged. And everywhere it still is so because still the people, as a whole, believe in the sacredness of property which they created but others enjoy ; just as formerly they believed in the sanctity of the medicine-man, and as a happily diminishing minority yet believes in the right divine of kings. That these which all intelligent men now look upon as the grossest of superstitions, were able to 146 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. endure for ages is easily understood, when we consider that they had the sanction of what the thought of the times universally regarded as commands direct from heaven. The capitalist's profits, aad the landlord's tribute, have practically to-day no such buttress ; they stand upon a utilitarian basis, and are defended from that standpoint by their professional advocates. From behind utilitarianism as their only rampart they have to face the rising anger of the crowd that points to the swelling record of murder, suicide, insanity, wretchedness and want, asking persistently why, in the face of productive powers that advance by leaps and bounds, such things should be. They have to answer the question kept standing in the columns of the leading English Socialist paper, Justice, viz.: "Is there one single useful or necessary duty performed by the capitalist to-day which the people organized could not perform better for themselves?" EXFOLIA TION. 147 CHAPTER Vni. EXFOLIATION. I HAVE said that Mr. Spencer is himself a Hving illustra- tion of one of the great truths he has made it his life- task to expound ; that, brought early under the influence of that laissez /aire philosophy which the English thought of the day regarded as irrefutable, he has never been able to shake off the influence of his first environment. That he has illuminated niost strikingly one side of evolution we all acknowledge, but that he has been proportionately blind to another side there is also good reason to suppose. As this, in my judgment, is closely connected with and colors all his economic thought ; and as, moreover, the matter, though of the first importance, is still comparatively obscure, I have devoted a chapter to its consideration. I allude to what Mr. Spencer himself describes as his "faith in the essential beneficence of things." The thought is expressed— although, as it appears to me, in somewhat hesitating language — in the following quotation from the closing chapter of his essay upon Progress: its law afid cause. There he says : "That long fit of indignation which seizes all generous natures when in youth they begin con- templating human affairs, having fairly spent itself, there slowly grows up a perception that the institutions, beliefs, and forms so vehemently condemned are not wholly bad. This reaction runs to various lengths. In some, merely to a comparative contentment with the arrangements under which they live. In others to a recognition of the fitness 148 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. that exists between each people and its government, tyrannical as that may be. In some, again, to the convic- tion that, hateful though it is to us, and injurious as it would be now, slavery was once beneficial — was one of the necessary phases of human progress. Again, in others, to the suspicion that great benefit has indirectly arisen from the perpetual warfare of past times ; insuring as this did the spread of the strongest races, and so providing good raw material for civilization. And in a io.'iN this reaction ends in the generalization that all modes of human thought and action subserve, in the times and places in which they occur, some useful function : that though bad in the abstract, they are relatively good — are the best which the then existing conditions admit of" This thought is a favorite one with Individualists of the Robert G. Ingersoll stamp : but, on the other hand, it has been vigorously opposed by Professor Huxley, who tells us that of one thing w-e may be sure, viz., that we have a will, and that that will counts for something. I conceive that it is this fundamental difference of thought that has been slowly drawing Prof Huxley into the opposite camp, and has led to his comparatively recent attack, in Administrative Nihilism, upon Herbert Spencer. I propose now to consider another side of the theory of evolution ; one in which the human will, though not the sole factor, is one of paramount importance. Mr. Edward Carpenter,* a well-known and most charming Socialist writer, has apparently made this branch of the subject a special study. In an essay entitled Exfoliation he expresses himself thus upon the recent tendencies of scientific See Civilization: its Cause and Cure, Humboldt Library, No. 144. EXFOLIA TION. 149 thought. "Sometimes we are idealists, sometimes we are materialists ; sometimes we believe in mechanics, some- times in human or spiritual forces. The science of the last fifty years has, as pointed out in a preceding paper, looked at things more from the mechanical than the distinctively human side — from the point of view of the non-ego rather than of the ego. Re-acting from an extreme tendency toward a subjective view of phenomena, which characterized the older speculations, and fearing to be swayed by a kind of partiality toward himself, the modern scientist has endeavored to remove the human and conscious element from his observations of Nature. And he has done valuable work in this way — but, of course, has been betrayed into a corresponding narrowness. In fact, the main scientific doctrine of the day, Evolution, is obviously suffering from this treatment." He submits, therefore, that "no man is modified by external conditions alone, without any play or re-action of inner needs and desires and growth from within ; nor is any man transformed in obedience to an inner expansion without sundry lets and hindrances from without. The two forces are in constant play upon one another; but in some ways that would appear to be the more important which proceeds from the man (or creature) himself, since this is obviously vital and organic to him, and, therefore, the most consistent and reliable factor in his modification; while the external force — arising from various and remote causes — must rather be regarded as discontinuous and accidental." He further ^tells us that "on the theory of Exfoliation, which was practically Lamarck's theory, there is a force at work throughout creation, ever urging each type onward into new and newer forms. This force appears first in con- gqiousness in the form of desire. Within each shape of life I50 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. sleep wants without number, from the lowest and simplest to the most complex and ideal. As each new desire or ideal is evolved, it brings the creature into conflict with its surroundings, then, gaining its satisfaction, externalizes itself in the structure of the creature, and leaves the way open for the birth of a new ideal. If, then, we would find a key to the understanding of the expansion and growth of all animate creation, such a key may exist in the nature of desire itself and the comprehension of its real meaning." He points out that, while this does not preclude the action of external conditions, or imply that organization is determined by desire alone, it is nevertheless very different from the ' ' Survival of the Fittest ' ' of the Darwinian evolu- tion theory. "We may fairly suppose," he says, "that both kinds of modification take place ; but the latter is a sort of easy success won by an external accident of birth — a success of the kind that would readily be lost again ; while the former is the up-hill fight of a nature that has grown inwardly, and wins expression for itself in spite of external obstacles — an expression which, therefore, is likely to be permanent." Furthermore, carrying the thought into the broad field of human action, and applying it to historic cases, he remarks, with a becoming hesitancy: "It has been frequently said that great material changes are suc- ceeded by intellectual, and finally by moral, revolutions — ■ as the conquests of Alexander passed on into the literary expansion of the Alexandrian Schools, and thence into the establishment of Christianity, or as the mechanical develop- ments of our own time have been followed by immense literary and scientific activities, and are obviously passing over now into a great social regeneration ; but a reconsid- enition of the matter might, I take it, lead us not so much to look on the later changes as caused by the earlier, as to EXFOLIATION. 151 look on the earlier as the indications and first outward and visible signs of the coming of the later. When a man feels in himself the upheaval of a new moral fact, he sees plainly- enough that that fact cannot come into the actual world all at once — not without first a destruction of the existing order of society — such a destruction as makes him feel satanic ; then an intellectual revolution ; and lastly only, a new order embodying the new impulse. When this new impulse has thoroughly materialized itself, then, after a time, will come another inward birth, and similar changes will be passed through again. So it might be said that the work of each age is not to build on the past, but to rise out of the past and throw it off; only, of course, in such matters where all forms of thought are inadequate, it is hard to say that one way of looking at the subject is truer than another. As before, we should endeavor to look at the thing from different sides." Now I am aware that many of my readers will have been long since growing impatient, and saying to them- selves : "This fellow persistently evades the point, which is — not whether our thoughts help, but whether we can help our thoughts." This is indeed a very bottom ques- tion which has perplexed a long line of diligent philosophers, and seems to me, at present, entirely incapable of actual proof Yet it is very clear, to me at least, that there is a vast difference between a Carlyle, with his strong convic- tion of the ability of the hero to triumph over circumstances, and a Herbert Spencer, with his inclination to look at men as drift, floating helplessly on a sea of matter. And I am equally convinced that it makes an immense difference to every movement whether it is composed of men who, like Kropotkin, are saturated with the thought of the "Power of the Minority;" or of philosophical phlegmatists who 152 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. have thought themselves into the conviction that they can neither help nor hinder, and that events must develop of themselves. Which, as a matter of fact, they never do. These classes, with one or other of which most thinkers have allied themselves, represent the opposite poles of thought. The one is the philosophic Buddhist whose creed is non-resistance ; the other the church militant of Christ armed cap-a-pie for the crusade. Develop unduly the thought of the omnipotence of the environment and you have a Herbert Spencer, so conscious of the helpless- ness, or hurtfulness, of interference that every effort at" collective activity draws from him a never-failing cry of alarm. In this morning's paper — ^June 9th, 1891 — I read his letter to the St. James' Gazette, from which, as his latest utterance, I extract. ' ' Respecting the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children," he says, "the ques- tion is : Will it work toward the enforcing of parental responsibilities or toward the undermining of them? To bring punishment on brutal and negligent parents seems, on the whole, a beneficial function : for though, by pro- tecting the children of bad parents (who are on the average of cases themselves bad) there is some interference with the survival of the fittest, yet it is a defensible conclusion that in the social state philanthropic feeling may, to this extent, mitigate the rigor of natural law. But if, instead of enforcing parental responsibilities, there is any under- taking of them, as in some cases there seems to have been, mischief will result. Or, if the action of the society is carried too far, parents may be debarred by fear from using fit discipline : an evil which is said to have already arisen. Or if, again, in the same way that voluntary education has grown into State education, this voluntary society should become a branch of police, then there will result a system EXFOLIA TION. 153 like that which existed among the ancient Peruvians, who had officers to inspect households and see that the children were properly managed. Unfortunately, very innocent- looking germs are apt to develop into structures which are anything but innocent ; and, as I have already said, it will require great and constant care to prevent such a result in the present case." What one likes about Mr. Spencer is his definiteness ; one knows exactly where to find him. Since the unfortunate fatix pas in Social Statics, wherein it was suggested that the community might take possession of and manage its landed estate, there has been no further straying from the straight and narrow individualistic path. The horizon of social activities is still measured by the sweep of the policeman's club. On the other hand, develop unduly the thought that circumstances are but putty in the hands of the really able man, and you have a Thomas Carlyle, whose hero-worship finally carries him to a scorn of democracy. But, by the very fact that he is to some extent a Don Quixote tilting at the windmill, you also have a man who actually accom- plishes much in the alteration of things ; of whom it has been fitly said that he was "the great unmasker,"* and that "the first man who really made a dint in the Individualist shield was Carlyle, who knew how to compel men to listen to him."t It is curious, therefore, to observe how closely these two, who seemed so far apart, approached each other. For Carlyle' s growing adoration of strength brought him finally to the frame of mind in which God appeared to be always on the side of the heaviest battalions ; and Herbert Spencer * Socialism and Unsocialism of Thomas Carlyle, p. x. Social Science Library, No. 3. Humboldt Publishing Co. t Fabian Essays, p. 23. Social Science Library, No. 6. 154 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. is the worshiper of the force, working through the "sur- vival of the fittest" — the latter assisted by a drastic criminal code, sugar-coa;ted with many sage reflections as to the necessity of conserving vested rights. Such an individual- ism is intolerable to an honest mind ; being, indeed, precisely one of those shams which it was Carlyle's special pleasure to unmask. It may be granted, doubtless, that we both act and are acted on ; mold and are molded : Nature, of which we are a part, being here, as elsewhere, bi-sexual and working through a two-fold force. It will probably be further granted that, as we see the least developed organisms the almost helpless prey of circumstances, so, as we rise in the scale, we mark a continual increase of power over the environment, which power attains its greatest development in the most completely developed man. In preceding chapters I have given repeated prominence to the Social- istic thought that it is the economic mold that gives all other institutions their shape, the bread and butter question being the foundation upon which all our social institutions rest. So it has been unquestionably in the past with prim- itive and comparatively helpless people ; so it is still with the masses, who are well-nigh as helpless as ever ; but so it is not with those among us whose bread and butter is secure, and so it will not be with the society of the future. Meanwhile it seems to me a most decided flaw in the phil- osophy of Herbert Spencer that, trained in the earlier school of evolutionists, he still continues to count the environment as well-nigh omnipotent. For him, therefore, naturally and inevitably, history is a slow and weary process that * ' creeps in its petty pace from day to day," and he pays too little attention to the sudden transformations it records. Con- centrating his attention on the length of the period of EXFOLIA TION. 155 gestation, he neglects to mark the rapidity of birth. He belongs to those who cite the French Revolution as illus- trative of the fact that human nature remained unchanged, but forgets to tell us that a colossal system which had stood for centuries fell almost at a blow. His philosophy explains the tenacity with which he still clings to laissez faire. PART III. CHAPTER I. THE COMING SLAVERY. IN the preceding pages we have followed Mr. Spencer from the time when, in 1842, he first came before the public as the exponent of the constant evolutionary "tendency of social arrangements of themselves to assume a condition oi stable equilibrium;" as the opponent of State control; as the advocate of "the limitation of State action to the maintenance of equitable relations among citizens." We have seen him appear in 1850 as the advocate of State- ownership of land, a doctrine upon which, as we have also seen, he has since maintained a most significant silence. We have followed him through an elaborate exposition of the laws of life as affecting the development of the individ- ual and the race ; and, if I have expressed myself with any approach to clearness, we have also seen that the altruistic conditions, on the observance of which the very existence both of the individual and of the social ego depends, are systematically violated, necessarily violated, and, as it would seem, increasingly violated by our methods of production and exchange. We have also seen how Socialism, thanks to its absorption of the teachings of Evolution, has advanced from the static condition of an idealism that constructed 158 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. Utopias mainly with the guidance of the intuitions, to the dynamic condition of a science that places itself squarely in line with the most advanced thought of the age, and con- ceives the social organism as being, equally with the indi- vidual organism, subject to the law of growth. Had I found a convenient place for its insertion I might have shown how, as early as 1847, ^^'^'l Marx and Frederick Engels in their celebrated Commtinistic Majiifesto were able to point out, by a strictly evolutionary analysis, both the course that capitalistic production must of necessity take, and the development of a gigantic class struggle between monopolists and proletariat, profoundly affecting all social institutions. I might have shown how they anticipated the rings and trusts, which have apparently taken our enlightened legislators so entirely by surprise, together with many other recent economic changes. We now come to the date when Mr. Spencer awoke to the fact that Socialism, instead of being the fancy scheme dismissed in 1850 with a casual paragraph, was a steady stream of tendencies ; and that these tendencies were bring- ing about social changes entirely different from those which he himself had contemplated. In 1884 he accordingly entered the lists against Socialism, striking the first blow in The Coming Slavery. We shall find him still the uncom- promising advocate of laissezfaire, although, as has been well said, it was then generally admitted that there was no escaping "the lesson of the century, taught alike by the economists, the statesmen, and the 'practical men,' that complete individual liberty, with unrestrained private own- ership of the instruments of wealth production, is irrecon- cilable with the common weal." I fear that my readers will discover that Mr. Spencer has nothing new to say upon the question, although the striking economic developments THE COMING SLAVERY. 159 of the preceding years had practically remolded English thought, constituting, as they do, a gigantic menace which even the most optimistic politician has found it impossible to ignore. On the other hand, the essays that will be now examined afford a most interesting study, as showing the tenacity with which a man who has built up his reputation as the exponent of a particular idea, will cling to that idea long after it has been proved, both inductively and deduct- ively, to be unworkable. We shall find no more advocacy of State-ownership of land : we shall find a rigid insistence upon the right and necessity of individual struggle ; and we shall find the existing individual struggle defended as a 7'egime of indus- trial wiUinghood. This assumption that the inequalities by virtue of which one gets ninety cents a day for mining coal, while another has accumulated in a few short years two hundred million dollars arise from agreements willingly entered into : this assumption that the purchase of labor by.xapital is accomplished by contracts free from all taint of coercion, and entered into by mutually contracting parties, each of whom was a free and equal agent — this assumption is the major premise that underhes the whole argument. Overthrow it by proving that upon either side there was compulsion ; show that the position of one of the contracting parties was such as to constitute that dutrss which every civilized code of laws regards as vitiating all contracts into which it may enter, and the whole super- structure of argument built upon this premise falls irrep- arably to pieces. Aware of this, Mr. Spencer assumes throughout the equality and liberty of the contracting parties with a placidity unparalleled, as I conceive, in the whole range of philosophic literature. In The Coming Slavery he plunges at once in medias i6o ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. res by reminding us that sympathy is wont to ideahze its object. Speaking of the unhappy conditions of immense masses in London he tells us that "they are thought of as the miseries of the deserving poor, instead of being thought of, as in large measure they should be, as the miseries of the undeserving poor." He tells us that the trouble is, not that they have no work, but that "they either refuse work or quickly turn themselves out of it ; " that it is natural that they should bring unhappiness on themselves and those connected with them, and that to attempt to save them from the penalties of dissolute living is to fight against the constitution of things, and eventually inflict far more pain. He then reminds us that "the command 'if any would not work neither should he eat ' is simply a Christian enunciation of that universal law of Nature under which life has reached its present hight — the law that a creature not energetic enough to maintain itself must die." This particular point I have already spoken of when treating the question of parasites in Chapter V., Part II. That the main success of our social evolution up to date has been the creation of a continually increasing swarm of parasites is to-day a patent fact. Mr. Spencer then passes to a consideration of the method in which the admitted evil of pauperism is being treated, and, to clear the ground, he gives an anecdote of the difficulties met by his uncle, the Rev. Thomas Spencer, when he attempted to put the Poor Law of 1833 into force. ' ' Almost universal opposition was encountered by him : not the poor only being his opponents, but even the farmers on whom came the burden of heavy poor-rates. For, strange to say, their interests had become apparently identified with the maintenance of this system which taxed THE COMING SLAVERY. i6i them so largely. The explanation is that there had grown up the practice of paying out of the rates a part of the wages of each farm-servant — 'make-wages,' as the sum was called. And though the farmers contributed most of the fund from which ' make-wages ' were paid, yet, since all other rate-payers contributed, the farmers seemed to gain by the arrangement. " . . . . " Under another form, and in a different sphere, we are now yearly extend- ing a system which is identical in nature with the system of ' make-wages ' under the old Poor Law. Little as poli- ticians recognize the fact, it is nevertheless demonstrable that these various public appliances for working-class comfort, which they are supplying at the cost of rate- payers, are intrinsically of the same nature as those which, in past times, treated the farmer's man as half-laborer and half-pauper. In either case the worker receives in return for what he does, money wherewith to buy certain of the things he wants ; while, to procure the rest of them for him, money is furnished out of a common fund raised by taxes. What matters it whether the things supplied by rate-payers for nothing, instead of by the employer in pay- ment, are of this kind or that kind ? the principle is the same. For sums received let us substitute the commodities and benefits purchased, and then see how the matter stands. In old Poor Law times the farmer gave for work done the equivalent, say, of house-rent, bread, clothes and fire ; while the rate-payers practically supplied the man and his family with their shoes, tea, sugar, candles, a little bacon, etc. The division is, of course, arbitrary ; but unquestionably the farmer and the rate-payers furnished these things between them. At the present time the artisan receives from his employer in wages the equivalent of the consumable commodities he wants, while from the public 1 62 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. comes satisfaction for others of his needs and desires. The two are pervaded by substantially the same illusion. In the one case as in the other, what looks like a gratis benefit is not a gratis benefit. The amount which, under the old Poor Law, the half-pauperized laborer received from the parish to eke out his weekly income, was not really, as it appeared, a bonus ; for it was accompanied by a substantially-equivalent decrease of his wages, as was quickly proved when the system was abolished and the wages rose. Just so is it with these seeming boons received by working people in towns. I do not refer only to the fact that they unawares pay in part through the raised rents of their dwellings (when they are not actual rate-payers) ; but I refer to the fact that the wages received by them are, like the wages of the farm -laborer, diminished by these public burdens falling on employers. If the employer has to pay this (increased rates, caused by improvements in the interest of labor), not on his private dwelling only, but on his business-premises, factories, warehouses, or the like ; it results that the interest on his capital must be diminished by that amount, or the amount must be taken from the wages-fund, or partly one and partly the other." The last sentence has special interest as showing that Mr. Spencer is still a believer in the "wage-fund" theory, a theory admitted by John Stuart Mill years before his death to be indefensible, and now generally discarded by econ- omists. The whole argument, however, which I have already in part anticipated, is noteworthy as being an indorsement of that perpetually used by Socialists, it being one of the cardinal principles of their economy that to enrich the proletariat in one direction is necessarily to subject them to attempts at further robbery in another, so THE COMING SLAVERY. 163 long as the present wage-system endures. They, there- fore, place the total abolition of the wage-system as their constant aim. As further elucidating a point I have dealt with in Part I., I quote from Capital and Land, issued by the Fabian Society: — "How far would land restoration alone remedy this ? If it were possible to nationalize soil apart from capital, the ground rents recovered for the nation might possibly amount to the present sum of our imperial and local taxation, ^135,000,000, or thereabouts. The pecuniary relief certainly could not amount to more. Land nationalization would further immensely benefit society, where it now suffers from the curmudgeonism of private owners. But so long as capital continued to be used for the exploitation of the workers, so long would their economic slavery continue. Those who retain the capital without which the earth and all its products cannot be worked, will step into the place of the landlord, and the tribute of ' interest ' will be augmented. ' ' Similarly the London Coimnonweal, organ of the Social- ist League, has been at the pains to demonstrate, in a series of exhaustive articles, that the advantages gained in various countries by the workers through Factory Acts, statutes limiting the hours of labor, and so forth, have been counter- balanced by other exactions which have been rendered possible by such legislation. All which, indeed, logically follows if the "Iron Law of Wages," first enunciated in scientific form by Ferdinand Lassalle and Karl Marx, and accepted by all Socialists as axiomatic, is correct. That law declares simply that, with the means of production and distribution monopolized, competition among the workers keeps the average wage steadily at the point at which the workers can subsist and propagate their species. If, there- fore, rents are high, railroad fares extortionate, and other 1 64 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. necessaries of life dear, the worker will necessarily receive what appears to be, m money, an excessive wage : if, on the other hand, through nationalization of land, rent should disappear ; if, through the municipalization of railroads, transit should be gratuitous ; and if, through the intro- duction of free trade, provisions and clothing should be cheapened indefinitely, then, as the net result of all these reforms — which, taken separately, appear so desirable — wages would fall to a merely nominal figure, since the masses would still remain dependent upon the capitalists for opportunity to work, and would be still forced to accept as wage a bare subsistence. To understand this is to under- stand the inexorable logic by which Socialists find them- selves forced to regard all effort for a mere amelioration of the wage system as being, so far as direct results are con- cerned, itself, a useless expenditure of time and effort ; and it will be seen that upon this point they and Mr. Spencer are in substantial accord. So far with regard to direct results. It is, however, the indirect result that attracts the attention of both the Socialists and Mr. Spencer ; the former regarding all attempts on the part of the masses to lighten the yoke of their employers, and every victory won, as rendering easier the final effort by which they will discard it altogether ; the latter seeing plainly that every successful interference by the people with private management carries us a step fur- ther from that individualism which he considers the basis of all progress. To both it is very clear that the philos- ophy of laissez /aire is the only foundation upon which private property in the means of production and distribu- tion can rest securely, and that to attack the foundation is to threaten the stability of the whole institution. All which THE COMING SLAVERY. 165 the employers in their daily conflict with labor instinctively comprehend, though probably not one in a hundred of them has any substantial knowledge of Mr. Spencer's works. As I write this the papers tell us that the so-called clothing manufacturers* of Rochester, N. Y. , have issued their ultimatum in the contest between themselves and the men who are the actual manufacturers. "It is no longer a question of wages," they say: "it is a question of per- sonal liberty : whether we shall be permitted to run our own factories as we see fit, employing whom we choose upon such terms as seem to us desirable." We now come to some severe criticisms of the practical, rule-of-thumb politician who "contemplates intently the things his act will achieve, but thinks little of the remoter issues of the movement his act sets up, and still less of its collateral issues ; ' ' who never stops to ask himself the one important question of questions — "What type of social structure am I tending to produce ? " To which complaint, all Socialists would reply that politicians have their trade like other men, and that, if Mr. Spencer would have them prefer the social welfare to their own interest, he should join hands with the Socialists in their endeavor to bring about a re-organization of society that would make private and public interests synonymous terms. At present the conflict of private interests is apparently even less con- ducive to harmony and public spirit in politics than in any other field, and the one blunder that is considered worse than any crime is the "getting left." Of the extent to which modern legislation has already sapped, and threatens to sap yet more the foundations of *Of course the men who actually make the clothes are the real manufacturers. 1 66 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. laissez faire, numerous instances are cited. I select a few of the most forcible ; such as have been brought most con- spicuously before the public, and have received already much attention. Mr. Spencer tells us that those who in 1834 passed an act regulating the labor of women and children in certain factories never anticipated "that the inspection provided would grow to the extent of requir- ing that before a * young person ' is employed in a factory, authority must be given by a certifying surgeon, who, by personal examination (to which no limit is placed) has satis- fied himself that there is no incapacitating disease or bodily infirmity ; his verdict determining whether the ' young person ' shall earn wages or not. " As to which it may be remarked that the factory act in question was passed in the teeth of the wealthy classes who had at that time a monopoly of the House of Commons, and was passed more- over, at a time when the doctrine of laissez faire was at the zenith of its power, millions of Englishmen honestly believ- ing that to interfere with the manufacturer's freedom to employ whom he chose, upon the crudest terms that necessity might dictate, was to write the doom of England's industrial supremacy. It was forced by the exhibit of an enormous mass of evidence showing conclusively that, in their greed for the markets of the world, the factory lords of the North of England had robbed the cradle, and hurried their unhappy fellow-countrymen to premature pauper graves, with a callous impartiality that a Caligula might have envied. As for the medical precautions now found necessary, they are the inevitable concomitant of an indus- trial system that has culminated in the grouping of a thousand operatives under a single roof That there may be a clear understanding of th^ lengths to which laissez faire can carry its advocates, I take the THE COMING SLAVERY. 167 following from Mr. Sidney Webb in the Fabian Essays : — ' ' Mr. Herbert Spencer and those who agree in his worship of Individualism, apparently desire to bring back the legal position which made possible the 'white slavery' of which the ' sins of legislators ' have deprived us ; but no serious attempt has ever been made to get repealed any one of the Factory Acts. Women working half naked in the coal mines ; young children dragging trucks all day in the foul atmosphere of the underground galleries ; infants bound to the loom for fifteen hours in the heated air of the cotton mill, and kept awake only by the overlooker's lash ; hours of labor for all, young and old, limited only by the utmost capabihties of physical endurance ; complete absence of the sanitary provisions necessary to a rapidly growing popula- tion : these and other nameless iniquities will be found recorded as the results of freedom of contract and complete laissez /aire in the impartial pages of successive blue-book reports. But the Liberal mill- owners of the day, aided by some of the political economists, stubbornly resisted every attempt to interfere with their freedom to use ' their ' capital and 'their '.hands as they found most profitable, and (like their successors to-day) predicted of each restriction as it arrived that it must inevitably destroy the export trade and deprive them of all profit whatsoever." To which he adds this note : — "It is sometimes asserted nowadays that the current descriptions of factory life under the regime of freedom of contract are much exaggerated. This is not the case. The horrors revealed in the reports of official inquiries even exceed those commonly quoted. For a full account of the legislation, and the facts on which it was founded, see Von Plener's 'English Factory Legislation.' The chief official reports are those of the House of Com- 1 68 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. mons Committee of 1815-6, House of Lords Committee, 18 1 9, and Royal Commission, 1840. Marx {Capital^ gives many other references. See also F. Engels, Condition of the English Working- Classes.'" It seems to me advisable to add here yet another note. There are Anarchists who consistently oppose all Factory Acts, all limiting of the hours of labor, all efforts to mitigate the ferocity of laissez /aire. They have at least candor on their side. They do not pretend that present arrangements are just, as springing from free and voluntary contract. On the contrary they maintain that they are merely the humiliating terms imposed by conquering capital upon its victims. They urge that the whole system is so radically unjust that it must tumble all together, annihilated by a single blow. They, therefore, deprecate all measures which, by giving temporary relief, tend to delay the blow. Mr. Bernard Shaw has expressed my own view of the situation so admirably in the Fabian Essays that I do not hesitate to steal again from him. The following is from the close of his essay on "Transition :" a paper originally read before the Economic Section of the British Association at Bath, 7th September, 1888. He says : — "Let me, in conclusion, disavow all admiration for this inevitable, but sordid, slow, reluctant, cowardly path to justice. I venture to claim your respect for those enthusiasts who still refuse to believe that millions of their fellow creatures must be left to sweat and suffer in hopeless toil and degradation, while parlia- ments and vestries grudgingly muddle and grope toward paltry instalments of betterment. The right is so clear, the wrong so intolerable, the gospel so convincing, that it seems to them that it must be possible to enlist the whole body of workers — soldiers, policemen, and all — under the banner of .brotherhood and equality ; and at one great stroke to THE COMING SLAVERY. 169 set Justice on her rightful throne. Unfortunately, such an army of light is no more to be gathered from the human product of nineteenth century civilization than grapes are to be gathered from thistles. But if we feel glad of that impossibility ; if we feel relieved that the change is to be slow enough to avert personal risk to ourselves ; if we feel anything less than acute disappointment and bitter humilia- tion at the discovery that there is yet between us and the promised land a wilderness in which many must perish miserably of want and despair : then I submit to you that our institutions have corrupted us to the most dastardly degree of selfishness. The Socialists need not be ashamed of beginning as they did by proposing militant organization of the working classes and general insurrection. The pro- posal proved impracticable ; and it has now been aban- doned — not without some outspoken regrets — by English Socialists. ' ' To return to Mr. Spencer's illustrations, the next of which is taken from the shipping business. ' ' Nor, ' ' he says, ' ' did it occur to the ' practical ' poHticians who provided a compulsory load-line for merchant vessels, that the pressure of ship-owners' interests would habitually cause the putting of the load-line at the very highest limit, and that from precedent to precedent, tending ever in the same direction, the load-line would gradually rise in the better class of ships ; as from good authority I learn that it has already done." Is it then the taking of a needful precaution for the preservation of life that is in fault, or is it not rather the "pressure of ship-owners' interests" — their readiness to risk the sailor's life for the sake of an extra one per cent.? The agitation conducted by Plimsoll for the institution of the compulsory load-Hne is still fresh in lyo ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. the memory of the EngUsh people ; they remember, with remorse, that for years he was left to fight the sailor's battle single-handed against the combined influence of the ship-owners' ring in Parliament. They remember the long indictment that he brought, and they remember that he proved it, beyond all possibility of denial, in open court. They remember that the indictment was one of murder, and of wholesale murder ; the deliberately plotted sacrifice of hapless wretches sent to sea in floating coffins that insurance might be gathered. And now the argument is made by Mr. Spencer that such a measure should never have been passed because "the pressure of ship-owners' interest ' ' has made it worse than useless ! Is it not inevitable that to many minds the suggestion should arise that, as between the load-line and the ship-owners' interests, it is the latter that should be abolished, and that shipping, and those who go to sea in ships, would greatly gain thereby? In the same vein we are told that "the law-makers who provided for the ultimate lapsing of French railways to the State, never conceived the possibility that inferior traveling facilities would result — did not foresee that reluctance to depreciate the value of property eventually coming to the State, would negative the authorization of competing lines, and that in the absence of competing lines locomotion would be relatively costly, slow, and infrequent. ' ' The retort just made in the case of the ship-owners obviously again holds good, the instance illustrating the extent to which, thanks to our superstitious reverence for what are regarded as the divine rights of property, we permit selfish interests to trample public convenience under foot. It would be tedious to give in detail the numerous THE COMING SLAVERY. 171 other instances cited, since they all proceed along the same line of thought. It is pointed out that the purchase and working of telegraphs by the English government is made a reason for urging that it should also buy and work the railroads ; that the supplying children with food for their minds by public agency has been followed, in some cases, by supplying food for their bodies, upon the logical plea that good bodies as well as good minds are needful to make good citizens ; and that this, in its turn, has been followed by the contention that ' ' pleasure, in the sense it is now generally admitted, needs legislating for and organizing at least as much as work." As germane to the subject, and as further proof of the correctness of Mr. Spencer's position both as regards the socialistic tendencies of modern legislation, and the short- sightedness of the "practical" politicians who, under the pressure of their constituents, inaugurate it, I quote again from Sidney Webb's Socialism in England. "Our unconscious acceptance," he says, "of this progressive Socialism is a striking testimony to the change which has come over the country of Godwin, Malthus and James Mill. The 'practical man,' oblivious or contemptuous of any theory of the Social Organism or general principles of social organization, has been forced by the necessities of the time into an ever deepening coUectivist channel. Socialism, of course, he still rejects and despises. The Individualist City Councilor will walk along the municipal pavement, lit by municipal gas and cleansed by municipal brooms with municipal water, and, seeing by the municipal clock in the municipal market that he is too early to meet his children coming from the municipal school hard by the county lunatic asylum and municipal hospital, will use the national telegraph system to tell them not to walk through 172 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. the municipal park but to come by the municipal tramway, to meet him in the municipal reading room, by the municipal art gallery, museum and library, where he intends to consult some of the national publications in order to prepare his next speech in the municipal town- hall in favor of the nationalization of canals and the increase of the government control over the railway system. 'Socialism, Sir,' he will say, 'don't waste the time of a practical man by your fantastic absurdities. Self-help, sir, individual self-help: that's what's made our city what it is.'" That this tendency is still more marked in Australia, the following quotation from an article by Sir Charles Dilke in the June, 1891, Forum, will show. There he says : — "The Australians are State Socialists, and although their new constitution proposes to recognize the inde- pendence of the States in a far higher degree than that in which it has been allowed to exist in Canada, yet it vests the virtual control of the whole railway system of Australia in the federal power, which will be a shock to your Amer- ican minds, whether north or south of the Canadian border line. . . . The great majority of Australians have confidence in the power of the State to do much for the people, and in the wisdom of its exercising this power. You in the United States, the Canadians across their border, the con- tinental governments, are far behind even old England in this respect, and it would be of advantage to the world that Australia, which is much before us all, should have the opportunity of putting its doctrines into practice upon the largest scale." Our own American cities are rapidly discovering that they can themselves manufacture their own gas and elec- tricity ; that they can supply themselves with water, and THE COMING SLAVERY. 173 look after the transportation of their inhabitants, far more cheaply than the monopolists will do it for them. And this is by no means a mere money gain. The notorious cor- ruption of our municipal politics is principally traceable to the vast interests which private corporations have at stake, and these corporations naturally look upon politics as a most important department of their business, to be con- ducted on strictly business principles. The bribery fund has, therefore, come to be regarded as one of the legitimate expenses of the business, and I would further point out that these corporations are vitally interested in that delightful institution, the "political boss." I myself have known capitalists, seeking to purchase an electric franchise in a new western city, complain bitterly that they had to traffic with a dozen city councilmen, whereas, in a more advanced community, it would have been sufficient to have "squared" a single boss. The elimination of this enormously corrupt- ing influence will carry with it consequences the value of which it is quite impossible as yet to estimate, for not only will it purify, but, by increasing the interest of citizens in the management of their own affairs, it will enlarge the circle of their activities, and stimulate that public spirit which is at present so lethargic. This, obviously, will greatly facilitate additional advance.* It is not by acci- dent that Massachusetts, which took the lead in the anti- slavery agitation, and was the first to protect her helpless women and children by passing factory acts, is now the first to follow boldly in the lead which England and Australia have already set. It may be interesting, before bringing this chapter to a * See Prof. Richard T. Ely's pamphlet on Natural Monopolies and Local Taxation, for a full statement of this question. 174 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. close, to call attention to the long encyclical letter on ' ' The Condition of Labor" which the Pope has just given to the world. I certainly do not deem it worth extended notice, but the opening paragraph is exceedingly significant. It runs : — "It is not surprising that the spirit of revolutionary change, which has so long been predominant in the nations of the world, should have passed beyond politics and made its influence felt in the cognate field of practical economy. The elements of a conflict are unmistakable : the growth of industry, and the surprising discoveries of science ; the changed relations of masters and workmen ; the enormous fortunes of individuals, and the poverty of the masses ; the increased self-reliance and the closer mutual combination of the working population ; and, finally, a general moral deterioration. The momentous seriousness of the present state of things just now fills every mind with painful appre- hension ; wise men discuss it ; practical men propose schemes : popular meetings, legislatures, and sovereign princes, all are occupied with it — and there is nothing which has a deeper hold on public attention." Although his Holiness continues, in a truly Socialistic vein, condemning " rapacious usury " — which the Church, as a large property holder, practices without remorse — and although he dwells with emphasis on the fact that the workingman of to-day has "been given over, isolated and defenseless, to the callousness of employers and the greed of unrestrained competition," this hinders him not a whit from condemning such attempts as have been already made to substitute cooperation for the regime of usurious compe- tition. The following shows his exact position :■-" To remedy these evils the Socialists, working on the poor man's envy of the rich, endeavor to destroy private property, and maintain that individual possessions should THE COMING SLAVERY. 1^5 become the common property of all, to be administered by the State or by municipal bodies. They hold that, by thus transferring property from private persons to the community, the present evil state of things will be set to rights, because each citizen will then have his equal share of whatever there is to enjoy. But their proposals are so clearly futile for all practical purposes that if they were carried out the workingman himself would be among the first to suffer. Moreover they are emphatically unjust, because they would rob the lawful possessor, bring the State into a sphere that is not its own, and cause complete confusion in the community." The Socialists' position is, of course, that monopoly of the instruments of production and distribution enables a small class to levy tribute upon the masses of the people. I am here concerned with pointing out that the industrial evolution now accomplishing itself in municipal affairs, and everywhere proved to be a necessary advance, is the very thing that both Herbert Spencer and the Pope object to. The extremes have met. 176 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. CHAPTER II. THE SLAVERY THAT HAS COME. IN this chapter I propose to consider the grounds upon which Mr. Spencer bases his opposition to all socialistic legislation — legislation that appeals to the average man as certainly humane, and usually as an imperative neces- sity. The grounds are fourfold. First, and most specious, that government interference involves the evil of doing for others what it would be far better that they should do for themselves. This argument Mr. Spencer, in common with all other writers upon evolution, is never too weary to reiterate. It is impregnable, since both biology and history adduce, as I have previously shown, proofs innumerable of the certain decay that falls upon the parasite who permits others to do his own struggling for him. But the conten- tion of the Socialists is that the argument is not to the point ; that it begs the whole question, and starts the dis- cussion upon a palpably small premise. Modern Socialism — which is essentially evolutionary, and regards the advance toward civilization as the steady unfolding of an organism -^\s, saturated with this very idea of self-help, and is per- petually reminding the working classes that they have to help themselves, and to wage their own struggle with every weapon at command. It reminds them that, prior to the Protestant reformation, they were not permitted to do their own thinking for themselves ; that, prior to the American and French Revolutions, they were not permitted to do THE SLAVERY THAT HAS COME. 177 their own law-making for themselves, and that to-day they are not permitted to run their own industries for them- selves. For what a heartless satire is that which grants permission to every man to start an enterprise, but places a valuation upon the tools wherewith it must be conducted so high that the ordinary earnings of a life-time would not pay the purchase price ! The very claim of the Socialists is that we ourselves, like capable men, should be permitted freedom to run our own industrial affairs ; that we should run our own railroads instead of leaving them to the abused trusteeship of a group of autocrats; that production should be by the people themselves for use, and not by monopo- lists for their own individual profit — a profit achieved by extorting tribute from the masses for the opportunity to toil. If, moreover, it is urged that speech and thought are still free, and government democratic, in name alone, the objection is immediately admitted, and as promptly met with the explanation that this is because the masses are still economically slaves, dependent upon their masters for liberty to produce. If, further, it is pointed out that to increase the power of the State is to entrench with even greater security the very power which enables the capitalist to prey upon society, it is at once replied that this is because govern- ment is at present the monopoly of the moneyed classes, and that the very object of the whole Socialist agitation is to abolish class rule, and classes altogether, by abolishing the monoply of the money-bag. The second ground of opposition is that it is not true that all suffering ought to be prevented. "Much suffering is curative, and prevention of it is prevention of a remedy." This, it is obvious, merely raises again the previous ques- tion of whether the remedy proposed by the Socialists — 1 78 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. viz. , that the people as a whole should take the manage- ment of their own affairs into their own hands — is a true remedy. If it is, they can scarcely be accused of wishing to prevent it. As regards the curative properties of suffering, it is a much to be lamented fact that hitherto mankind has realized much of its individuality through suffering ; but it is also true, as Mr. Oscar Wilde has most forcibly pointed out in The Soul Under Socialism,'''^ thdX a scarred and maimed individuality has been the result. Moreover, the lesson that Science has been most busily instilling during the last fifty years is that of the influence upon the creature of its environment ; an influence that, as I have previously said, grows less as we ascend in the scale of life, but which always remains extremely powerful. In dealing with sociological questions it is not the most highly developed type that we have to consider ; it is the average man, and, in countless instances, those who are far below the average man, and, therefore, far less capable of overcoming a hostile environ- ment. It is the curse of our competitive system that it is those who are least capable of resistance for whom the environment is made most difficult : how difficult, the fol- lowing quotation from a most cautious scientist. Professor Huxley, in the Nineteenth Century of February, iS88, will show. ' ' Anyone who is acquainted with the state of the population of all great industrial centers, whether in this or other countries, is aware that amidst a large and increas- ing body of that population there reigns supreme .... that condition which the French call la misere, a word for which I do not think there is any exact English equivalent. It is a condition in which the food, warmth, and clothing which are necessary for the mere maintenance of the func- * Humboldt Library, No. 147. THE SLAVERY THAT HAS COME. 179 lions of the body in their normal state cannot be obtained ; in which men, women, and children are forced to crowd into dens wherein decency is abolished, and the most ordi- nary conditions of healthful existence are impossible of attainment ; in which the pleasures within reach are reduced to brutality and drunkenness ; in which the pains accumu- late at compound interest in the shape of starvation, disease, stunted development, and moral degradation ; in which the prospect of even steady and honest industry is a life of unsuccessful battling with hunger, rounded by a pauper's grave When the organization of society instead of mitigating this tendency, tends to continue and intensify it, when a given social order plainly makes for evil and not for good, men naturally enough begin to think it high time to try a fresh experiment. I take it to be a mere plain truth that throughout industrial Europe there is not a single large manufacturing city which is free from a vast mass of people whose condition is exactly that described, and from a still greater mass, who, living just on the edge of the social swamp, are liable to be precipitated into it." When it is considered that in the richest city in the world, London, a whole population works at match-box making for 4)^ cents per gross (156), for which they find their own paste and firing, fetch their materials from the factory, and deliver the finished goods : that at fur-pulling another population works at another most unhealthy occu- pation for 6)^ cents an hour ; that at jam and pickle making 5 cents an hour is the average wage ; tliat at rope making the women lately struck for an advance to 5 cents an hour ; that at brush and toy making a steady worker can earn 72 cents a week, and that a sack maker who turns out twenty sacks a day can earn thereby 1 2 cents ; when these, which are but a few of the revelations which the i8o ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. industry of the world's metropolis discloses to the inquirer, are taken into consideration, some feeble conception can be had of the suffering which Mr. Spencer regards as "cura- tive." These are, in Mr. Spencer's view, "the miseries of the undeserving poor ; ' ' these are some of those with whom the trouble is, not that they have no work but that "they either refuse work or quickly turn themselves out of it. They are simply good-for-nothings." In Looking Back- ward, Edward Bellamy tells us the parable of the rosebush of humanity which generations of gardeners had vainly endeavored to bring to bloom while planted in the swamp, but which, when finally transplanted, and set in sweet, dry earth, broke immediately into blossoms whose fragrance filled the world. For a similar, and as exquisite parable See Viera Pavlovna's second dream, in IV/ial's to be Done, by Tchernuishevsky, the celebrated Russian novelist and socialist. On this all Socialists, as evolutionists, are necessarily agreed. This brings me to Mr. Spencer's third objection, which is that ' ' with the existing defects of human nature many evils can only be thrust out of one place or form into another place or form — often being increased by the change." This argument he recurs to again and again in the various essays collected under the head of The Man versus the State, and again in his latest publication From Free- dom to Bondage. To this two answers may be made. In the first place the one thing that may be safely postulated of human nature is that it is constandy changing, and the surest mark of an advanced type is that it readily conforms to its environment. In anthropology Mr. Spencer himself has been most emphatic on this very point, dwelling at great length on the facility with which the advanced races 777^ SLAVERY THAT HAS COME. i8i adapt themselves to the most extreme changes of climate. With a South Sea islander, on the other hand, the appar- ently imperceptible change involved in migration from one island to another is often fatal. To take our instances from what we see daily passing before our eyes, the country lad who gives up farming and takes a position in a New York office is a transformed being before twelve months have passed, and it is scarcely possible to recognize in the trim- stepping soldier the heavy-footed lout who a year ago was clumsily following the plow. Between the simple country folk that formed the bulk of England's population at the commencement of this century, and the keen-faced town population of to-day there is a far greater difference of manners, habits and ideals than there is between the average New York man and Londoner. The second and most obvious answer is that no abrupt change of human nature will be required, just as none was required when the telegraphers who had been previously working for a private company found themselves turned into employees of the English nation; just as none is required when a clerk is taken into partnership. How easily, thanks to the development of joint-stock companies, the transition from individual to social control can be effected I shall shortly show. We now arrive at Mr. Spencer's fourth and most strenuous objection, which is the colossal directive apparatus that a system of national administration of industry must necessarily entail. Upon this head I venture to quote apropos of Mr. Spencer, what I myself have said, in a previous number of this series :* "The management by the * Humboldt Library of Science, No. 147, p. 45. 1 82 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. people of their own industrial affairs is to him an impossi- bility save under the administration of a colossal directorate wielding unprecedented power, and he supports his argu- ment with illustrations drawn from our unhappy political experience, and the admitted tyrannies of trades unions. Herein he shows an ignorance of the whole philosophy of Socialism that is inexcusable in one who is making it a special object of attack. To make my meaning clear I quote from Frederick Engels's preface to the famous mani- festo written by Karl Marx and himself in 1847, a document continuously, to this day, distributed wherever Socialist agitators are at work. He says : ' The manifesto being our joint production, I consider myself bound to state that the fundamental proposition which forms its nucleus belongs to Marx. That proposition is that, in every historical epoch, the prevailing mode of economic production and exchange, and the social organization necessarily following from it, form the basis upon which is built up, and from which alone can be explained, the political and intellectual history of that epoch.' To miss this — and how often is it missed ! — is to misapprehend the whole position of the Socialist movement, for it is his clear comprehension of the truth th'at all social forms take their shape from the prevail- ing mode of economic production and exchange, which make the Socialist a revolutionist instead of a reformer, which makes him the uncompromising advocate of a total change of system, and the uncompromising foe of those who seek, by tinkering makeshifts, to prolong the life of the existing chaos of selfish competition, and as selfish com- bination. He therefore refuses to act with the Democrat or Mugwump, who professes enthusiasm for economy, because he recognizes that, so long as every man has to play for his own hand, every politician will make hay while THE SLAVERY THAT HAS COME. 183 the sun shines, just as every storekeeper, when trade is brisk, uses the opportunity as though it were his last. He refuses to beheve in the protestations of the free-trade bourgeoisie, because he knows that at heart all traders, working on a selfish basis as they must, yearn for monopoly so far as their own markets are concerned ; and he points to the record of the English manufacturers, whose pseudo- enthusiasm for freedom of exchange expired the instant they secured the free importation of the materials which their particular factories required. When he looks at a Trades Union, composed of individuals each of whom has his own bread-and-butter fight to make, and sees that Union in desperate war with employers whose very existence it threatens, the Socialist does not expect to see in it a model of voluntary cooperation. He expects to find it a military organization, following the tactics usually observed in the industrial warfare that everywhere prevails." Change the prevailing methods of production and exchange ; place them upon the peace footing of cooperation, instead of on the war basis of competition, and there will inevitably follow a change in the whole social organization. For, while it is obviously unfair to judge the conduct of humanity in times of profound tranquility by their conduct when engaged in a struggle where it is "thy life or mine!" so is it idle to attempt to sketch the producers and administrators of cooperation from the workmen, the business men, and the politicians of competition. It is only in our social re-unions, where each is anxious to assist his neighbor, that we catch a reflex of the light of a new life that has not as yet appeared above the horizon. Even there the reflection is necessarily faint, since such re-unions are to a great extent the battle- grounds of adventurers, male and female, spurred into action by the ever present bread-and-butter question. 1 84 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. How easily the transition from private to public control can be accomplished, and how naturally things may be expected to adjust themselves, is well shown by the follow- ing passage from Capital and Land, a publication to which I have previously referred : — "How will Socialists provide for the administration and increase of capital? The question is being answered by the contemporary development of indus- trial organization. How much of the ' management of land ' is done now by the landlords, and how much by the farmer and the agent or the bailiff? The landlord's supposed func- tion in this respect is almost entirely performed by salaried professional men. As to capital, who manages it? The shareholders in the Joint Stock Companies, who own one- third of the whole industrial capital ? No. The sharehold- ing capitalist is a sleeping-partner. More and more every day is the capitalist pure and simple, the mere owner of the lien for interest, becoming separated from the administrator of capital, as he has long been separated from the wage- worker employed therewith. The working-partner, with sleeping-partner drawing interest, is every day taking the form of the director of a joint stock company. More and more is the management of industries passing into the hands of paid managers, and even the 'directors' emphasize the fiction that they are not mere money-bags and decorative M. P.'s by the humorous practice of taking fees for their labors at board meetings. The administrator of capital can be obtained at present for a salary equivalent to his competition value, whether the concern to be managed be a bank, a railway, a brewery, a mine, a factory, a theater or a hotel. The transfer to the community (national or local) of the ownership of the main masses of industrial capital need make no more difference in this respect than does the sale of shares on the Stock Exchange at the present moment." THE SLAVERY THAT HAS COME. 185 "But why is this change described as 'the coming slavery ' ? is a question which many will still ask. The reply is simple — All Socialism involves slavery." Mr. Spencer then proceeds to a definition of slavery. He tells us that what "fundamentally distinguishes the slave is that he labors under coercion to satisfy another's desires," and that "the essential question is — How much is he com- pelled to labor for other benefit than his own, and how much can he labor for his own benefit? The degree of his slavery varies according to the ratio between that which he is forced to yield up and that which he is allowed to retain ; and it matters not whether his master is a single person or a society. If, without option, he has to labor for the society, and receives from the general stock such portion as the society awards him, he becomes a slave to the society. Socialistic arrangements necessitate an enslave- ment of this kind ; and toward such an enslavement many recent measures, and still more the measures advocated, are carrying us." Turning aside from this he points out that the effect of municipalizing various industries, of which he gives numerous instances, is to diminish their profitable- ness as an investment for private capital ; that the con- stantly increasing public charges on real estate are, in the first place, so many deductions from its value as an invest- ment, and that thereby, in the second place, they cause the resistance to a change of tenure from private to public ownership to grow less and less. "After the Government has extended the practice of hiring the unemployed to work on deserted lands, or lands acquired at nominal prices, there will be reached a stage whence there is but a small further step to that arrangement which, in the program of the Democratic Federation, is to follow nationalization of the land — the ' organization of agricultural and industrial armies under State control on cooperative principles.' 1 86 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. ' ' To one who doubts whether such a revolution may be so reached, facts may be cited showing its Hkelihood. In Gaul, during the decline of the Roman Empire, 'so numerous were the receivers in comparison with the payers, and so enormous the weight of taxation, that the laborer broke down, the plains became deserts, and woods grew where the plow had been.' In like manner, when the French Revolution was approaching, the public burdens had become such, that many farms remained uncultivated and many were deserted : one- quarter of the soil was absolutely lying waste ; and in some provinces one-half was in heath." It will be noticed, that, illustrating in actual life the fable of the dog in the manger, the land- owners retained and were permitted to retain their titles, and that the whole argument simply amounts to a threat that, if the land-owners and the capitalists are not allowed to use their property as they may choose, they will see to it that no one else shall use it. It is on record that John Bright, as spokesman of the laissez faire party, uttered this very threat in most specific language when opposing in the House of Commons the passage of the Factory Bill, his statement being that if he and his fellow-capitalists were to be dictated to they would take themselves and their capital to America. It is necessary, however, for us to look again at Mr. Spencer's definition of slavery, and at his gradation of the degrees of slavery. Laboring ' ' under coercion to satisfy another's desires." To the paternal Socialism of a Bis- marck, so bitteriy opposed by all the German Socialists, the objection might apply ; but the Socialist movement of the world is not pater7ial it is fraternal; it is not autocratic it is democratic; it does not propose that the people shall be ordered, it proposes that they shall agree. It is to the THE SLAVERY THAT HAS COME. 187 ordering of the industrial captains of the age that the objection is made : to that, and to their so ordering things that labor can only obtain employment by consenting to yield up to non-laborers a portion of its product. This ceaseless robbery of surplus-value The Coming Slavery never condescends to notice, just as no notice whatever is taken of the fact that the organized Socialist movement throughout the world has steadily taught the workingmen that they must help themselves, and that paternal Socialism is simply a wolf masquerading as a sheep. Under the Democracy which Socialism, as itself a mere development of the Democratic movement, mtist necessarily be, we shall have, not laborers toiling under compulsion for society, but organized laborers toiling for themselves. By many thinkers serious objection to the nationaliza- tion of industry is raised on the plea that it necessarily implies coercion — the coercion of the minority by the majority. I have already called attention to the folly of judging the social arrangements of the future by the scheme which some individual Utopia-spinner of to-day may chance to favor. In the quotation at page 39 from Graham Wallas I have shown the view of a Socialist who thinks, as I myself and thousands of us think, that the only compulsion to labor will be the entirely natural one of want, which should always befall the obstinately idle, and them alone. Upon tliis, however — as I have insisted with an iteration that must appear most damnable — it is too early now to speak. How Society will arrange its social toil must be left for Society to arrange when it has got the wherewithal to toil. To this point of coercion, however, full attention is given in The Great Political Superstition, and the \^iew taken is, in reality, by no means unfavorable to Socialism. Herein Mr. Spencer tells us that the whole question is as to the points 1 88 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. upon which, if the people were polled, they would be prac- tically unanimous in their agreement to cooperate, such cooperation carrying with it submission to the will of the majority. "Excepting only the Quakers, who, having done highly useful work in their time, are now dying out, all would unite for defensive war (not, however, for offen- sive war) ; and they would, by so doing, tacitly bind them- selves to conform to the will of the majority in respect of measures directed to that end. There would be practical unanimity, also, in the agreement to cooperate for defense against internal enemies as against external enemies. Omit- ting criminals, all must wish to have person and property adequately protected. In short, each citizen desires to preserve his life, to preserve those things which conduce to maintenance of his life and enjoyment of it, and to pre- serve intact his liberties both of using these things and getting further such. It is obvious to him that he cannot do all this if he acts alone. Against foreign invaders he is powerless unless he combines with his fellows ; and the business of protecting himself against domestic invaders, if he did not similarly combine, would be alike onerous, dangerous, and inefficient. In one other cooperation all are interested — use of the territory they inhabit. Did the primitive communal ownership survive, there would survive the primitive communal control of the uses to be made of land by individuals or by groups of them ; and decisions of the majority would rightly prevail respecting the terms on which portions of it might be employed for raising food, for making means of communication, and for other pur- poses. Even at present, though the matter has been com- plicated by the growth of private landownership, yet, since, the State is still supreme owner (every landowner being in law a tenant of the Crown) able to resume possession, or THE SLAVERY THAT HAS COME. 189 authorize compulsory purchase, at a fair price ; the impli- cation is that the will of the majority is valid respecting the modes in which, and conditions under which, parts of the surface or sub-surface, may be utilized ; involving certain agreements made on behalf of the public with private persons and companies. ' ' Details are not needful here ; nor is it needful to discuss that border region lying between these classes of cases, and to say how much is included in the last, and how much is excluded with the first. For present purposes, it is suffi- cient to recognize the undeniable truth that there are numerous kinds of actions in respect of which men would not, if they were asked, agree with anything like unanimity to be bound by the will of the majority ; while there are some kinds of actions in respect of which they would almost unanimously agree to be thus bound. Here, then, we find a definite warrant for enforcing the will of the majority within certain limits, and a definite warrant for denying the authority of its will beyond those limits." A "definite warrant!" Upon what does the "definite warrant for enforcing the will of the majority" here depend? Not, as elsewhere urged so eloquently, upon the question of whether the proposed course of action is in accord or in disaccord with the fundamental laws of life, but upon the practically unanimous willingness to cooperate. We find ourselves immediately on shaky ground. Are we all willing to cooperate for defensive war? Perhaps, but only perhaps. For protection of property ? As property is now understood, certainly not. An immense, and world-wide party now advocates joi7it ownership of the means of pro- duction and distribution, as the only method of preventing the robbery by monopolists of the earnings of labor. Do all men believe in the sanctity of private property in land ? I go ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. Unquestionably not. So orthodox an economist as John Stuart Mill regarded it as entirely a question of expediency ; Mr. Spencer himself has shown that it is indefensible. On the other hand, there is actually to-day a practical unan- imity respecting a vast number of State and mimiclpal insti- tutions to which Mr. Spencer, in what is practically solitude, objects. That the compulsory education of the people is a necessary measure of defense ; that so also is sanitary legislation ; that sending condemned vessels to sea is but a form of murder ; that it is better for the English people to own their own telegraph system than to have it monopolized by an English Jay Gould ; that it is inhuman to work children of tender years in factories and coal mines : upon these, and numerous other points, there is to-day a practical unanimity. It is a unanimity arrived at by a consciousness that these measures, one and all, tend to the increase of life, general and individual — the very touchstone by which elsewhere Mr. Spencer, with true scientific insight, tests all legislation. To this touchstone, indeed, he immediately returns, when criticising Professor Jevons's dictum that "the first step must be to rid our minds of the idea that there are any such things in social matters as abstract rights" — a dictum in which Matthew Arnold agreed — and Bentham's proposition that government fulfills its office "by creating rights which it confers upon individuals ; rights of personal security ; rights of protection for honor ; rights of prop- erty," etc. Upon this he makes the following comment : — "The sovereign people jointly appoint representatives, and so create a government ; the government thus created creates rights ; and then, having created rights, it confers them on the separate members of the sovereign people by THE SLAVERY THAT HAS COME. 191 which it was itself created. Here is a marvelous piece of political legerdemain ! Mr. Matthew Arnold, contending, in the article above quoted [one on copyright], that 'property is the creation of law,' tells us to beware of the ' metaphysical phantom of property in itself ' Surely, among metaphysical phantoms the most shadowy is this which supposes a thing to be obtained by creating an agent, which creates the thing, and then confers the thing on its own creator!" It is only necessary to remark that the same marvelous piece of legerdemain is daily practiced, as, for instance, in the appointment of agents, trustees or directors into whose hands the appointors surrender all their powers, and from whom they take whatever dividends, or other shares, the directors, trustees or agents may declare. Similarly I pass, with but the scantest notice, a long and elaborate argument purporting to show that law has had its origin in custom, and that the "alleged creating of rights was nothing else than giving formal sanction and better definitions to those assertions of claims and recognitions which naturally originate from the individual desires of men who have to live in presence of one another." If it is merely a question of the respective priority of laws and customs — as to which much might be said on either side — I reply that the question is one that is absolutely immaterial, since neither from the stand-point of natural rights, nor from that of utilitarianism, can ancient pedigree command any title to respect. The oldest is not invariably the best. If it is meant to be asserted that rights can neither be abrogated nor added to by social agreements crystallized in laws, I reply that in social, in business, as well as in legislative life, we are all constantly surrendering rights in one direction that we may obtain additional rights in another. tg2 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. Priority of time, however, is made to play a great part in Mr. Spencer's argument, because he wishes to insist that ' ' the fact is that property was well recognized before law existed ; the fiction is that property is the creation of law." This he emphasizes as a prelude to the statement that Comparative Sociology shows us that "along M-ith social progress it becomes in an increasing degree the business of the State, not only to give formal sanction to men's rights, but also to defend them against aggressors. Before permanent government exists, and in many cases after it is considerably developed, the rights of each individual are asserted and maintained by himself, or by his family. . . . But, as social organization advances, the central ruling power undertakes more and more to secure to individuals their personal safety, the safety of their possessions, and, to some extent, the enforcement of their claims established by contract. Originally concerned almost exclusively with defense of the society as a whole against other societies, or with conducting its attacks on other societies. Government has come more and more to discharge the function of defending individuals against one another. It needs but to recall the days when men habitually carried weapons, or to bear in mind the greater safety to person and property achieved by improved police administration during our own time, or to note the increased facilities now given for recov- ering small debts, to see that the insuring to each individual the unhindered pursuit of the objects of life, within limits set by others' like pursuits, is more and more recognized as a duty of the State. In other words, along with social progress, there goes not only a fuller recognition of these which we call natural rights, but also a better enforcement of them by Government : Government becomes more and more the servant to these essential pre-requisites for individual welfare." THE SLAVERY THAT HAS COME. 193 "The essential pre-requisites for individual welfare!" These pre-requisites sadly need defining, for what they are is precisely the question round which the whole controversy rages. Are they limited to defense of person and property ; and, indeed, is defense of person limited to protection from violent assault, or from libel upon character? Our lives are inextricably interwoven. My next-door neighbor so conducts himself as to destroy my peace, and depreciate the value of my property. I bring an action and the law supplies a remedy, with Mr. Spencer's full approval. My next-door neighbor by neglect of the decencies of life, and by permitting his children to grow up in the densest igno- rance, brings the locality into disrepute, exposes my family to constant degradation, and endangers the stability of the society with the well-being of which my own welfare is bound up. I again seek the protection of a law, and Mr. Spencer cries "Tyranny !" Where is the Hne of legitimate government interference to be drawn? Where can it be drawn ? What warrant is there for drawing it arbitrarily at the defense of person and property, and of property defined, moreover, by primitive ideas? The Anarchists are fond of pointing to Mr. Spencer as one of their most distinguished teachers, but Mr. Spencer is no Anarchist. He does not condemn Government in every shape and form ; on the contrary he approves of "the central ruling power" that protects. He is far from preaching "rights " alone ; for, as shown in the review of the Data of Ethics, he lays the greatest stress on "duties." But the rights and duties of the ' ' central ruling power ' ' are limited by him strictly to the policeman's role. The point here submitted is that the question of the necessity of a * ' central ruling power, ' ' and the question of how far it should go, can be decided correctly, not by Mr. Spencer's fancy 194 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. as to the matters upon which we are all agreed, but solely by the laws of life. If the life of the social organism and of its individual members is increased in length, and breadth, and depth, by the assumption of a novel function, the assumption is justified ; if it is decreased by such assump- tion the assumption stands condemned. Mr. Spencer's true position, and the one to which in the main he clings tenaciously, is that of the scientific utilitarian who regards the promotion of life as at once the immediate and the final aim. This last is also precisely the position of modern Socialism. It does not pretend to dictate to future genera- tions, saying — "here a directorate shall govern; in this department every citizen shall spend so many hours per day." It confidently leaves the settlement of all such questions to natural growth. It does, however, judge all institutions by the utilitarian standard, and the utilitarianism it strives to employ is not that empiric variety which, looking only to the immediate present, is guided solely by rule of thumb ; but the scientific utilitarianism which digs deep into the history of the past to unearth the roots of life and death. Back of all the tyrannies beneath which progress has withered it finds invariably the same power- — the power of the purse ; or, in other words, it finds that wherever there has been rule and subordination, the ruling class has always held its sway by the possession of some economic advantage of which the ruled have been deprived. It finds that in proportion to the greatness of the advantage has been the greatness of the power. It is the economic mold — that is to say, the method of production and distribution — that gives every other institu- tion its shape. If the economic system is such as to give the capitalist class undue advantage, and consequently undue power, that will be the class that actually sways all THE SLAVERY THAT HAS COME. 195 legislation, whether it be in democratic America and France, in constitutionar monarchy England, or in autocratic Ger- many. For politicians must live like other men, and, obedient to the imperious instinct of self-preservation, they will do the bidding of those who, controlling their bread and butter, are their masters.* If the economic system is such that women are dependent upon men for their support, women will be the slaves of men, and they will develop all the peculiar vices of slaves — they will fawn, intrigue, and sell themselves because they cannot help themselves. In our own society it is clearly noticeable that among what are called "the lower classes," whose women are as capable of earning their own living as are the men, marriages are dictated almost entirely by mutual affection : while among the so-called "upper-classes," whose women have no earning capacity, match-making is a profession having for its object the "catching" of a male supporter. Fine senti- ments and moralities do not alter these conditions in the least ; they merely white the sepulcher. And so throughout the length and breadth of our social institutions we find the same truth holding good. Everywhere the basis of power is economic; everywhere, in Bebel's phrase, "the root of all oppression is economic dependence upon the oppressor." To say that this is so is simply to repeat the old adage that "self-preservation is the first law of nature," a scientific truth that will not allow itself to be denied. This is the obvious truth that Socialist researches have laid bare, * "The Rothschilds, and the other great Hebrew bankers who habitually cooperate with them, have long been recognized as forming one of the great powers of Europe. They may, indeed, be reasonably regarded as the mightiest of human agencies, if supreme control consists in holding, as between the nations, the scales of peace and war." — N. Y. 5'7^«, June 17th, 1891, in an article entitled " Is Israel too much for Russia ? " 196 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. following it throughout its countless ramifications. This, therefore, is the truth on which Socialism rests. This truth is like America, which is so big that Columbus couldn't help stumbling on it. Mr. Spencer naturally stumbled on it forty-nine years ago when he first began to examine the laws of life. He therefore expressed himself most emphatically upon the iniquity of private property in land, as necessarily involving slavery because placing the landless at the mercy of the land- owning class. Had he kept to that straight and obvious path he would have become a Socialist, and his work would have endured. He would have shown how, step by step, the evolution of our wage system separates the worker more and more completely from his means of subsistence ; renders more and more absolute the divorce between the worker and his tools. He would have shown that the development of the colossal machine-industry of this century has been, at bottom, nothing but the taking of the tools out of the hands of the worker and placing them in the frame- work of a machine, which the capitalist owns, and which the workingman may, if he is lucky, get the chance of oiling and keeping in repair.* He would have * " On a closer examination of the working-machine proper, we find in it, as a general rule, though often no doubt under very altered forms, the apparatus and tools used by the handicraftsman or manufacturing workman ; with this difference, that, instead of being human implements, they are the implements of a mechanism, or mechanical implements. Either the entire machine is only a more or less altered mechanical edition of the old handicraft tool — as, for instance, the power-loom ; or the working parts fitted in the frame of tlie machine are old acquaintances, as spindles are in a mule, needles in a stocking-loom, saws in a sawing-machine, and knives in a chopping-machine. . . The machine proper is, there- fore, a mechanism that, after being set in motion, performs with its tools the same operations that were formerly done by the work- man with similar tools." Karl Marx's Cfl/Z/a/. (Humboldt Publish- ing Co. ed., pp. 226 and 227.) THE SLAVERY THAT HAS COME. 197 shown that this separation of the worker from his means of HveHhood, becomes continually more and more pronounced with every increase in the size of the machine ; that it necessarily becomes more and more impossible for the work- ingman to own the machine he has to operate, and that the machine thereby becomes more and more the exclusive monopoly of the capitalist. He would further have shown that, as the machine continues to increase in size, and, uniting with other machines, develops into a machinery system, it becomes more and more exclusively the monopoly of the capitalists ; and that these uniting, as their machinery unites itself into a colossal plant, force the small capitalists out of the ranks of the employing class and into those of the proletariat. Thus, starting from the simple law of self- preservation, and noting the first separation of the worker from his tools, Mr. Spencer would have traced the whole evolution to its ultimate development of a gigantic class struggle between the monopolists and the disinherited — a class struggle that has for its object the permanent abolition of all classes by placing the opportunities of life at the equa'l disposition of all. Had he done this he would have become, it is true, a Socialist, but, as I have already said, his work would have endured. As it is, the mind that, in 1842, was a marvel of precocity, has remained exactly where it stood in 1842. Unable then, as all his middle-class contemporaries were unable, to grasp the conception of an evolution that, within a short fifty years, would divide the whole civilized world into two hostile camps, his mind acquired a set from which it has never since recovered. He trusted, as all his con- temporaries trusted, that, somehow or other, from the blind play of conflicting interests, a condition of general equality would result ; and there have actually resulted such con- 198 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. trasts of wealth and poverty as the world has never previously seen. It could not have been otherwise. The conditions necessary to the realization of equality were wanting from the very start. The philosopher, who started in his youth as the champion of the rights of man, is now, therefore, the wall against which a plutocracy, driven to the last ditch of argument, desperately sets its back. It is not that his powers have failed ; it is that he took originally a stand that faced both ways ; and that, having finally to chose his path, he elected to turn his back upon the rising sun. Hence his continued silence upon the land doctrine which he originally expounded, and has never dared to withdraw ; hence the bitterness of his criticisms on ' ' the undeserving poor." A PLEA FOR LIBERTY. 199 CHAPTER III. A PLEA FOR LIBERTY. THE Fabian Essays, from which I have repeatedly quoted, were published in September, 1890; and, according to the Society's report of April, 1891, nearly twenty-five thousand had by then been sold. The report continues :—" The essays were extensively noticed by the press, and were in all cases favorably reviewed. So much interest did it excite that Mr. John Murray thought it profit- able to publish a counterblast, entitled A Plea for Liberty, to which Mr. Herbert Spencer contributed a preface. The price of this work is twelve shillings, and all that need be said of it is that it does not appear likely to reach a shilling edition." The preface alluded to is the last of Mr. Spencer's pub- lications on the social question, and upon this account I have thought it desirable to give it in its entirety. It is entitled From Freedom io Bondage, and is as follows : "Of the many ways in which common-sense inferences about social affairs are flatly contradicted by events (as when measures taken to suppress a book cause increased circulation of it, or as when attempts to prevent usurious rates of interest make the terms harder for the borrower, or as when there is greater difficulty in getting things at the places of production than elsewhere), one of the most curious is the way in which the more things improve the louder become the exclamations about their badness. 200 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. "In days when the people were without any poHtical power their subjection was rarely complained of; but after free institutions had so far advanced in England that our « political arrangements were envied by Continental peoples, the denunciations of aristocratic rule grew gradually stronger, until there came a great widening of the franchise, soon followed by complaints that things were going wrong for want of still further widening. If we trace up the treat- ment of women from the days of savagedom, when they bore all the burdens and after the men had eaten received such food as remained, up through the middle ages, when they served the men at their meals, to our own day, when throughout our social arrangements the claims of women are always put first, we see that along with the worst treat- ment there went the least apparent consciousness that the treatment was bad ; while now that they are better treated than ever before, the proclaiming of their grievances daily strengthens, the loudest outcries coming from ' the paradise of women,' America. A century ago, when scarcely a man could be found who was not occasionally intoxicated, and when inability to take one or two bottles of wine brought contempt, no agitation arose against the vice of drunken- ness ; but now that, in the course of fifty years, the volun- tary efforts of temperance societies, joined with more general causes, have produced comparative sobriety, there are vociferous demands for laws to prevent the ruinous effects of the liquor traffic. Similar again with education. A few generations back ability to read and write was practically limited to the upper and middle classes, and the suggestion that the rudiments of culture should be given to laborers was never made, or, if made, ridiculed ; but when, in the days of our grandfathers, the Sunday-school system, initiated by a few philanthropists, began to spread and was A PLEA FOR LIBERTY. 20 1 followed by the establishment of day schools, with the result that among the masses those who could read and write were no longer the exceptions, and the demand for cheap literature rapidly increased, there began the cry that the people were perishing for lack of knowledge, and that the State must not simply educate them, but must force education upon them. ' ' And so it is, too, with the general state of the popula- tion in respect to food, clothing, shelter and the appliances of life. Leaving out of the comparison early barbaric states, there has been a conspicuous progress from the time when most rustics lived on barley bread, rye bread and oatmeal, down to our own time, when the consumption of white wheaten bread is universal — from the days when coarse jackets reaching to the knees left the legs bare, down to the present day, when laboring people, like their employers, have the whole body covered by two or more layers of clothing — from the old era of single-roomed huts without chimneys, or from the fifteenth century, when even an ordinary gentleman's house was commonly without wainscot or plaster on its walls, down to the present century, when every cottage has more rooms than one, and the houses of artisans usually have several, while all have fire-places, chimneys, and glazed windows, accompanied mostly by paper-hangings and painted doors ; there has been, I say, a conspicuous progress in the condition of the people. And this progress has been still more marked within our own time. Any one who can look back sixty years, when the amount of pauperism was far greater than now and beggars abundant, is struck by the comparative size and finish of the new houses occupied by operatives — by the better dress of workmen, who wear broadcloth on Sundays, and that of servant girls, who vie with their mistresses — 202 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. by the higher standard of Hving which leads to a great demand for the best qualities of food by working people ; all results of the double change to higher wages and cheaper commodities, and a distribution of taxes which has relieved the lower classes at the expense of the upper classes. He is struck, too, by the contrast between the small space which popular welfare then occupied in public attention, and the large space it now occupies, with the result that outside and inside Parliament, plans to benefit the millions form the leading topics, and every one having means is expected to join in some philanthropic effort. Yet while elevation, mental and physical, of the masses is going on far more rapidly than ever before — while the lowering of the death-rate proves that the average life is less trying, there swells louder and louder the cry that the evils are so great that nothing short of a social revolution can cure them. In presence of obvious improvements, joined with that increase of longevity which even alone yields conclu- sive proof of general amelioration, it is proclaimed, with increasing vehemence, that things are so bad that society must be pulled to pieces and reorganized on another plan. In this case, then, as in the previous cases instanced, in proportion as the evil decreases the denunciation of it increases ; and as fast as natural causes are shown to be powerful there grows up the belief that they are powerless. " Not that the evils to be remedied are small. Let no one suppose that by emphasizing the above paradox I wish to make light of the sufferings which most men have to bear. The fates of the great majority have ever been, and doubt- less are, so sad that it is painful to think of them. Unques- tionably the existing type of social organization is one which none who cares for his kind can contemplate with satisfaction ; and unquestionably men's activities accom- A PLEA FOR LIBERTY. 203 panying this type are far from being admirable. The strong divisions of rank and the immense inequaHties of means are at variance with that ideal of human relations on which the sympathetic imagination likes to dwell ; and the average conduct, under the pressure and excitement of social life as at present carried on, is in sundry respects repulsive. Though the many who revile competition strangely ignore the enormous benefits resulting from it — though they forget that most of the appliances and products distinguishing civilization from savagery, and making possible the maintenance of a large population on a small area, have been developed by the struggle for existence — though they disregard the fact that while every man, as producer, suffers from the under-bidding of competitors, yet, as consumer, he is immensely advantaged by the cheapening of all he has to buy — though they persist in dwelling on the evils of competition, saying nothing of its benefits, yet it is not to be denied that the evils are great, and form a large set-off from the benefits. The system under which we at present live fosters dis- honesty and lying. It prompts adulterations of countless kinds ; it is answerable for the cheap imitations which eventually in many cases thrust the genuine articles out of the market ; it leads to the use of short weights and false measures : it introduces bribery, which vitiates most trading relations, from those of the manufacturer and buyer down to those of the shopkeeper and servant ; it encourages deception to such an extent that an assistant who cannot tell a falsehood with a good face is blamed ; and often it gives the conscientious trader the choice between adopting the malpractices of his competitors, or greatly injuring his creditors by bankruptcy. Moreover, the extensive frauds, common throughout the commercial world and daily 204 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. exposed in law courts and newspapers, are largely due to the pressure under which competition places the higher industrial classes ; and are otherwise due to that lavish expenditure which, as implying success in the commercial struggle, brings honor. With these minor evils must be joined the major one, that the distribution achieved by the system gives to those who regulate and superintend a share of the total produce which bears too large a ratio to the share it gives to the actual workers. Let it not be thought, then, that in saying what I have said above, I underestimate those vices of our competitive system, which, thirty years ago, I described and denounced. But it is not a question of absolute evils ; it is a question of relative evils — whether the evils at present suffered are or are not less than the evils which would be suffered under another system — whether efforts for mitigation along the lines thus far followed are not more likely to succeed than efforts along utterly different lines. ' ' This is the question here to be considered. I must be excused for first of all setting forth sundry truths which are to some, at any rate, tolerably familiar, before proceeding to draw inferences which are not so familiar. "Speaking broadly, every man works that he may avoid suffering. Here, remembrance of the pangs of hunger prompts him ; and there, he is prompted by the sight of the slave-driver's lash. His immediate dread may be the punishment which physical circumstances will inflict, or may be punishment inflicted by human agency. He must have a master ; but the master may be Nature or may be a fellow man. When he is under the impersonal coercion of Nature, we say that he is free ; and when he is under the personal coercion of some one above him, we call him, according to the degree of his dependence, a slave, a serf A PLEA FOR LIBERTY. 205 or a vassal. Of course I omit the small minority who inherit means ; an incidental, and not a necessary, social element. I speak only of the vast majority, both cultured and uncultured, who maintain themselves by labor, bodily or mental, and must either exert themselves of their own unconstrained wills, prompted only by thoughts of naturally resulting evils or benefits, or must exert themselves with constrained wills, prompted by thoughts of evils and benefits artificially resulting. "Men may work together in a society under either of these two forms of control ; forms which, though in many cases mingled, are essentially contrasted. Using the word cooperation in its wide sense and not in that restricted sense now commonly given to it, we may say that social life must be carried on by either voluntary cooperation, or compulsory cooperation ; or, to use Sir Henry Maine's words, the system must be that of contract or that of status — that in which the individual is left to do the best he can by his spontaneous efforts, and get success or failure according to his efficiency, and that in which he has his appointed place, works under coercive rule, and has his apportioned share of food, clothing and shelter. "The system of voluntary cooperation is that by which, in civilized societies, industry is now everywhere carried on. Under a simple form we have it on every farm, where the laborers, paid by the farmer himself and taking order? direcdy from him, are free to stay or go as they please. And of its more complex form an example is yielded by every manufacturing concern in which, under partners, come clerks and managers, and under these timekeepers and overlookers, and under these operatives of different grades. In each of these cases there is an obvious working together, or cooperation of employer and employed, to 2o6 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. obtain in one case a crop and in the other case a manufac- tured stock. And then, at the same time, there is a far more extensive, though unconscious, cooperation with other workers of all grades throughout the society. For, while these particular employers and employed are severally occupied with their special kinds of work, other employers and employed are making other things needed for the carrying on of their lives as well as the lives of all others. This voluntary cooperation, from its simplest to its most complex forms, has the common trait that those concerned work together by consent. There is no one to force terms or to force acceptance. It is perfectly true that in many cases an employer may give, or an employee may accept, with reluctance ; circumstances he says compel him. But what are the circumstances? In the one case there are goods ordered, or a contract entered into, which he cannot supply or execute without yielding ; and in the other case he submits to a wage less than he likes because otherwise he will have no money wherewith to procure food and warmth. The general formula is not — 'Do this, or I will make you:' but it is — 'Do this, or leave your place and take the consequences.' ''On the other hand, compulsory cooperation is exem- plified by an army — not so much by our own army, the service in which is under agreement for a specified period, but in a Continental army, raised by conscription. Here, in time of peace the daily duties — cleaning, parade, drill, sentry work and the rest — and in time of war the various actions of the camp and the battle field, are done under command, without room for any exercise of choice. Up from the private soldier through the non-commissioned officers and the half-dozen or more grades of commissioned officers, the universal law is absolute obedience from the A PLEA FOR LIBERTY. 207 grade below to the grade above. The sphere of individual will is such only as is allowed by the will of the superior. Breaches of subordination are, according to their gravity, dealt with by deprivation of leave, extra drill, imprison- ment, flogging, and in the last resort, shooting. Instead of the understanding that there must be obedience in respect of specified duties under pain of dismissal ; the understand- ing now is — 'Obey in everything ordered under penalty of inflicted suffering and perhaps death.' "This form of cooperation, still exemplified in an army, has in days gone by been the form of cooperation through- out the civil population. Everywhere, and at all times, chronic war generates a militant type of structure, not in the body of soldiers only but throughout the community at large. Practically, while the conflict between societies is actively going on, and fighting is regarded as the only manly occupation, the society is the quiescent army and the army the mobilized society : that part which does not take part in battle, composed of slaves, serfs, women, etc., constituting the commissariat. Naturally, therefore, throughout the mass of inferior individuals constituting the commissariat, there is maintained a system of discipline identical in nature if less elaborate. The fighting body being, under such conditions, the ruling body, and the rest of the community being incapable of resistance, those who control the fighting body will, of course, impose their control upon the non-fighting body : and the regime of coercion will be applied to it with such modifications only as the different circumstances involve. Prisoners of war become slaves. Those who were free cultivators before the con- quest of their country, become serfs attached to the soil. Petty chiefs become subject to superior chiefs : these smaller lords become vassals to over-lords ; and so on up to the 2o8 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. highest : the social ranks and powers being of like essential nature with the ranks and powers throughout the military organization. And while for the slaves compulsory coopera- tion is the unqualified system, a cooperation which is in part compulsory is the system that pervades all grades above. Each man's oath of fealty to his suzerain takes the form — 'I am your man.' ' ' Throughout Europe, and especially in our own country, this system of compulsory cooperation gradually relaxed in rigor, while the system of voluntary cooperation step by step replaced it. As fast as war ceased to be the business of life, the social structure produced by war and appropriate to it slowly became qualified by the social structure pro- duced by industrial life and appropriate to it. In propor- tion as a deereasing part of the community was devoted to offensive and defensive activities, an increasing part became devoted to production and distribution. Growing more numerous, more powerful, and taking refuge in towns, where it was less under the power of the militant class, this industrial population carried on its life under the system of voluntary cooperation. Though municipal governments and guild regulations, partially pervaded by ideas and usages derived from the militant type of society, were in some degree coercive ; yet production and distribution were in the main carried on under agreement — alike between buyers and sellers and between masters and work- men. As fast as these social relations and forms of activity became dominant in urban populations, they influenced the whole community : compulsory cooperation lapsed more and more, through money commutation for services, mili- tary and civil ; while divisions of rank became less rigid and class-power diminished, until at length restraints exer- cised by incorporated trades have fallen into desuetude, as A PLEA FOR LIBERTY. 209 well as the rule of rank over rank. Voluntary cooperation became the universal principle. Purchase and sale became the law for all kinds of services as well as for all kinds of commodities. "The restlessness generated by pressure against the conditions of existence perpetually prompts the desire to try a new position. Everyone knows how long continued rest in one attitude becomes wearisome — everyone has found how even the best easy chair, at first rejoiced in, becomes after many hours intolerable ; and change to a hard seat, previously occupied and rejected, seems for a time to be a great relief It is the same with incorporated humanity. Having by long struggles emancipated itself from the hard discipline of the ancient regime, and having discovered that the new regime into which it has grown, though relatively easy, is not without stresses and pains, its impatience with these prompts the wish to try another system ; which other system is, in principle if not in appearance, the same as that which during past generations was escaped from with much rejoicing. " For as fast as the regime of contract is discarded the regime of status is of necessity adopted. As fast as volun- tary cooperation is abandoned compulsory cooperation must be substituted. Some kind of organization labor must have ; and if it is not that which arises by agreement under free competition, it must be that which is imposed by authority. Unlike in appearance and names as it may be to the old order of slaves and serfs, working under masters who were coerced by barons, who were themselves vassals of dukes or kings, the new order wished for, constituted by workers under foremen of small groups, overlooked by superinten- dents, who are subject to higher local managers, who are controlled by superiors of districts, themselves under a 2IO ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. central government, must be essentially the same in princi- ple. In the one case as in the other, there must be estab- lished grades, and enforced subordination of each grade to the grades above. This is a truth which the Communist or the Socialist does not dwell upon. Angry with the existing system under which each of us takes care of him- self, while all of us see that each has fair play, he thinks how much better it would be for all of us to take care of each of us ; and he refrains from thinking of the machinery by which this is to be done. Inevitably, if each is to be cared for by all, then the embodied all must get the means — the necessaries of life. What it gives to each must be taken from the accumulated contributions ; and it must therefore require from each his proportion — must tell him how much he has, to give to the general stock in the shape of production, that he may have so much in the shape of sustentation. Hence, before he can be provided for, he must put himself under orders, and obey those who say what he shall do, and at what hours, and where ; and who give him his share of food, clothing and shelter. If com- petition is excluded, and with it buying and selling, there can be no voluntary exchange of so much labor for so much produce ; but there must be apportionment of the one to the other by appointed officers. This apportionment must be enforced. Without alternative the work must be done, and without alternative the benefit, whatever it may be, must be accepted. For the worker may not leave his place at will and offer himself elsewhere. Under such a system he cannot be accepted elsewhere, save by order of the authorities. And it is manifest that a standing order would forbid employment in one place of an insubordinate member from another place. The system could not be worked if the workers were severally allowed to go or A PLEA FOR LIBERTY. 21 1 come as they pleased. With corporals and sergeants under them, the captains of industry must carry out the orders of their colonels, and these of their generals, up to the council of the commander-in-chief, and obedience must be required throughout the industrial army as throughout a fighting army. ' Do your prescribed duties and take your apportioned rations,' must be the rule of the one as of the other. ' Well, be it so ; ' replies the Socialist. 'The workers will appoint their own officers, and these will always be subject to criticisms of the mass they regu- late. Being thus in fear of public opinion, they will be sure to act judiciously and fairly ; or when they do not, will be deposed by the popular vote, local or general. Where will be the grievance of being under superiors, when the superiors themselves are under democratic control?' And in this attractive vision the Socialist has full belief "Iron and brass are simpler things than flesh and blood, and dead wood than living nerve ; and a machine constructed of the one works in more definite ways than an organism constructed of the other — especially when the machine is worked by the inorganic forces of steam or water, while the organism is worked by the forces of living nerve centers. Manifestly, then, the ways in which the machine will work are much more readily calculable than the ways in which the organism will work. Yet in how few cases does the inventor foresee rightly the actions of his new apparatus ! Read the patent list, and it will be found that not more than one device in fifty turns out to be of any service. Plausible as his scheme seemed to the inventor, one or other hitch prevents the intended operation and brings out a widely different result from, that which he wished. ■ ' What, then, shall we say of these schemes which have 212 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. to do not with the dead matters and forces, but with complex living organisms working in ways less readily foreseen, and which involve the cooperation of multitudes of such organisms? Even the units out of which this rearranged body politic is to be formed are often incom- prehensible. Every one is from time to time surprised by others' behavior, and even by the deeds of relatives who are best known to him. Seeing, then, how uncertainly any one can foresee the actions of an individual, how can he with any certainty foresee the operation of a social structure? He proceeds on the assumption that all con- cerned will judge rightly and act fairly — will think as they ought to think, and act as they ought to act ; and he assumes this regardless of the daily experiences which show him that men do neither the one nor the other, and forgetting that the complaints he makes against the existing system show his belief to be that men have neither the wisdom nor the rectitude which his plan requires them to have. ' ' Paper constitutions raise smiles on the faces of those who have observed their results ; and paper social systems similarly affect those who have contemplated the available evidence. How little the men who wrought the French revolution and were chiefly ^concerned in setting up the new governmental apparatus, dreamed that one of the early actions of this apparatus would be to behead them all ! How little the men who drew up the American Declaration of Independence and framed the Republic, anticipated that after some generations the Legislature would lapse into the hands of wire-pullers ; that its doings would turn upon the contests of office-seekers ; that political action would be everywhere vitiated by the intrusion of a foreign element holding the balance between parties ; that electors, instead A PLEA FOR LlBEkTY. 213 of judging for themselves, would habitually be led to the polls in thousands by their 'bosses,' and that respectable men would be driven out of pubHc life by the insults and slanders of professional politicians. Nor were there better provisions in those who gave constitutions to the various other States of the New World, in which unnumbered revolutions have shown with wonderful persistence the contrasts between the expected results of political systems and the achieved results. It has been no less thus with proposed systems of social reorganization, so far as they have been tried. Save where celibacy has been insisted on, their history has been everywhere one of disaster ; ending with the history of Cabet's Icarian colony lately given by one of its members, Mme. Fleury Robinson, in The Open Court — a history of splittings, resplittings, re-resplittings, accompanied by numerous individual secessions and final dissolution. And for the failure of such social schemes, as for the failure of the political schemes, there has been one general cause. ' ' Metamorphosis is the universal law, exemplified throughout the heavens and on the earth; especially through- out the organic world ; and above all in the animal division of it. No creature, save the simplest and most minute, commences its existence in a form like that which it eventually assumes ; and in most cases the unlikeness is great — so great that kinship between the first and the last forms would be incredible were it not daily demonstrated in every poultry yard and every garden. More than this is true. The changes of form are often several ; each of them being an apparently complete transformation — (tg%, larva, pupa, imago, for example. And this universal metamorphosis, displayed alike in the development of a planet and of every seed which germinates on its surface, 214 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. holds also of societies, whether taken as wholes or in their separate institutions. No one of them ends as it begins ; and the difference between its original structure and its ultimate structure is such that, at the outset, change of the one into the other would have seemed incredible. In the rudest tribe the chief, obeyed as leader in war, loses his distinctive position when the fighting is over ; and even where continued warfare has produced permanent chieftain- ship, the chief, building his own hut, getting his own food, making his own implements, differs from others only by his predominant influence. There is no sign that in course of time, by conquests and unions of tribes and consolidations of clusters so formed with other such clusters, until a nation has been produced, there will originate from the primitive chief one who, as czar or emperor, surrounded with pomp and ceremony, has despotic power over scores of millions, exercised through hundreds of thousands of soldiers and hundreds of thousands of officials. When the early Christian missionaries, having humble externals and passing self-denying lives, spread over Pagan Europe, preaching forgiveness of injuries and the returning of good for evil, no one dreamed that in course of time their representatives would form avast hierarchy, possessing everywhere a 'large part of the land, distinguished by the haughtiness of its members, grade above grade, ruled by military bishops who led their retainers to battle, and headed by a pope exercising supreme power over kings. So, too, has it been with that very industrial system which many are now so eager to replace. In its original form there was no prophecy of the factory system or kindred organizations of workers. Differing from them only as being the head of his house the master worked along with his apprentices and a journeyman or two, sharing with them his table and A PLEA FOR LIBERTY. 215 accommodation and himself selling their joint produce. Only with industrial growth did there come employment of a larger number of assistants and a relinquishment on the part of the master of all other business than that of superintendence. And only in the course of recent times did there evolve the organizations under which the labors of hundreds and thousands of men receiving wages are regulated by various orders of paid officials under a single or multiple head. These originally small, semi-socialistic groups of producers, like the compound families or house- communities of early ages, slowly dissolved because they could not hold their ground ; the larger establishments, with better subdivision of labor, succeeded because they ministered to the wants of society more effectually. But we need not go back through the centuries to trace trans- formations sufficiently great and unexpected. On the day when ^30,000 a year in aid of education was voted as an experiment the name of idiot would have been given to an opponent who prophesied that in fifty years the sum spent through imperial taxes and local rates would amount to ;!^ 1 0,000, 000, or who said that the aid to education would be followed by aids to feeding and clothing, or who said that parents and children, alike deprived of all option, would, even if starving, be compelled by fine or imprison- ment to conform and receive that which, with papal assumption, the State calls education. No one, I say, would have dreamed that out of so innocent-looking a germ would have so quickly evolved this tyrannical system, tamely submitted to by people who fancy themselves free. "Thus in social arrangements, as in all other things, change is inevitable. It is foolish to suppose that new institutions set up will long retain the character given them by those who set them up. Rapidly or slowly they will be 2i6 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. transformed into institutions unlike those intended, so unlike as even to be unrecognizable by their devisers. And what, in the case before us, will be the metamorphosis ? The answer pointed to by instances above given and warranted by various analogies is manifest. ' ' A cardinal trait in all advancing organization is the development of the regulative apparatus. If the parts of a whole are to act together there must be appliances by which their actions are directed, and in proportion as the whole is large and complex and has many requirements to be met by many agencies, the directive apparatus must be extensive, elaborate and powerful. That it is thus with individual organisms needs no saying, and that it must be thus with social organisms is obvious. Beyond the regu- lative apparatus such as in our own society is required for carrying on National defense and maintaining public order and personal safety, there must, under the regime of Social- ism, be a regulative apparatus everywhere controlling all kinds of production and distribution and everywhere appor- tioning the shares of products of each kind required for each locality, each working establishment, each individual. Under our existing voluntary cooperation, with its free contracts and its competition, production and distribution need no official oversight. Demand and supply, and the desire of each man to gain a living by supplying the needs of his fellows, spontaneously evolve that wonderful system whereby a great city has its food daily brought round to all doors or stored at adjacent shops ; has clothing for its citizens everywhere at hand in multitudinous varieties ; has its houses and furniture and fuel ready made or stocked in each locality, and has mental pabulum from half-penny papers, hourly hawked around, to weekly shoals of novels and less abundant books of instruction, furnished without A PLEA FOR LIBERTY. 217 stint for small payments. And throughout the kingdom, production as well as distribution is similarly carried on with the smallest amount of superintendence which proves efficient ; while the quantities of the numerous commodities required daily in each locality are adjusted without any other agency than the pursuit of profit. Suppose now that this industrial regime of willinghood, acting spontane- ously, is replaced by a regime of industrial obedience, enforced by public officials. Imagine the vast' administra- tion required for that distribution of all commodities to all people in every city, town and village, which is now effected by traders ! Imagine, again, the still more vast adminis- tration required for doing all that farmers, manufacturers and merchants do ; having not only its various orders of local superintendents, but its sub- centers and chief centers needed for apportioning the quantities of each thing every- where needed, and the adjustment of them to the requisite times. Then add the staffs wanted for working mines, railways, roads, canals ; the staffs required for conducting the importing and exporting businesses and the administra- tion of mercantile shipping ; the staffs required for supply- ing towns not only with water and gas, but with locomotion by tramways, omnibuses and other vehicles, and for the distribution of power, electric and other. Join with these the existing postal, telegraphic and telephonic administra- tions, and finally those of the police and army, by which the dictates of this immense consolidated regulative system are to be everywhere enforced. Imagine all this, and then ask what will be the position of the actual workers. Already on the Continent, where governmental organiza- tions are more elaborate and coercive than here, there are chronic complaints of the tyranny of bureaucracies — the hauteur and brutality of their members. What will these 2i8 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. become when not only the more public actions of citizens are controlled, but there is added this far more extensive control of all their respective daily duties? What will happen when the various divisions of this vast army of officials, united by interests common to officialism — the interests of the regulators versus those of the regulated — have at their command whatever force is needful to suppress insubordination and act as * saviors of society ? ' Where will be the actual diggers and miners and smelters and weavers, when those who order and superintend, every- where arranged class above class, have come, after some generations, to intermarry, with those of kindred grades, under feelings such as are operative in existing classes ; and when there have been so produced a series of castes rising in superiority ; and when all these, having every- thing in their own power, have arranged modes of living for their own advantage : eventually forming a new aris- tocracy far more elaborate and better organized than the old? How will the individual worker fare if he is dissatis- fied with his treatment — thinks that he has not an adequate share of the products, or has more to do than can rightly be demanded, or wishes to undertake a function for which he feels himself fitted but which is not thought proper for him by his superiors, or desires to make an independent career for himself? This dissatisfied unit in the immense machine will be told he must submit or go. The mildest penalty for disobedience will be industrial excommunica- tion. And if an international organization of labor is formed as proposed, exclusion in one country will mean exclusion in all others — industrial excommunication will mean starvation. "That things must take this course is a conclusion reached not by deduction only, nor only by induction from A PLEA FOR LIBERTY. 219 those experiences of the past instanced above, nor only from consideration of the analogies furnished by organisms of all orders ; but it is reached also by observation of cases daily under our eyes. The truth that the regulative struc- ture always tends to increase in power, is illustrated by every established body of men. The history of each learned society, or society for other purpose, shows how the staff, permanent or partially permanent, sways the proceedings and determines the actions of the Society with but little resistance, even when most members of the Soci- ety disapprove : the repugnance to anything like a revolu- tionary step being ordinarily an efficient deterrent. So it is with joint-stock companies — those owning railways for example. The plans of a board of directors are usually authorized with little or no discussion ; and if there is any considerable opposition, this is forthwith crushed by an overwhelming number of proxies sent by those who always support the existing administration. Only when the misconduct is extreme does the resistance of shareholders suffice to displace the ruhng body. Nor is it otherwise with societies formed of workingmen and having the interests of labor especially at heart — the trades unions. In these, too, the regulative agency becomes all powerful. Their members, even when they dissent from the policy pursued, habitually yield to the authorities they have set up. As they cannot secede without making enemies of their fellow-workmen, and often losing all chance of employ- ment, they succumb. We are shown, too, by the late Congress that already, in the general organization of trades unions so recently formed, there are complaints of 'wire- pullers,' and 'bosses' and 'permanent officials.' If, then, this supremacy of the regulators is seen in bodies of quite modern origin formed of men who have, in many of the 220 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. cases instanced, unhindered powers of asserting their inde- pendence, what will the supremacy of the regulators become in long-established bodies, in bodies which have grown vast and highly organized, and in bodies which, instead of con- trolling only a small part of the unit's life, control the whole of his life ? "Again there will come the rejoinder : ' We shall guard against all that. Everybody will be educated ; and all, with their eyes constantly open to the abuse of power, will be quick to prevent it.' The worth of these expectations would be small even could we not identify the causes which will bring disappointment ; for in human affairs the most promising schemes go wrong in ways which no one antici- pated. But in this case the going wrong will be necessitated by causes which are conspicuous. The working of institu- tions is determined by men's characters, and the existing defects in their characters will inevitably bring about the results above indicated. There is no adequate endow- ment of those sentiments required to prevent the growth of a despotic bureaucracy. "Were it needful to dwell on indirect evidence, much might be made of that furnished by the behavior of the so-called Liberal party — a party which, relinquishing the original conception of a leader as a mouthpiece for a known and accepted policy, thinks itself bound to accept a policy which its leader springs upon it without consent or warn- ing — a party so utterly without the feeling and idea implied by liberalism, as not to resent this trampling on the right of private judgment which constitutes the root of liberalism — nay, a party which vilifies as renegade Liberals those of its members who refuse to surrender their independence ! But without occupying space with indirect proofs that the mass of men have not the natures required to check the A PLEA FOR LIBERTY. 221 development of tyrannical officialism, it will suffice to con- template the direct proofs furnished by those classes among whom the socialistic idea most predominates, and who think themselves most interested in propagating it — the operative classes. These would constitute the great body of the socialistic organization, and their characters would determine its nature. What, then, are their charac- ters as displayed in such organizations as they have already formed ? * ' Instead of the selfishness of the employing classes and the selfishness of competition, we are to have the unselfish- ness of a mutually-aiding system. How far is this unselfish- ness now shown in the behavior of working men to one another? What shall we say to the rules limiting the numbers of new hands admitted into each trade, or to the rules which hinder ascent from inferior classes of workers to superior classes ? One does not see in such regulations any of that altruism by which Socialism is to be pervaded. Contrariwise, one sees a pursuit of private interests no less keen than among traders. Hence, unless we suppose that men's nature's will be suddenly exalted, we must conclude that the pursuit of private interests will sway the doings of all the component classes in a Socialistic society. "With passive disregard of others' claims goes active encroachment on them. ' Be one of us or we will cut off your means of living,' is the usual threat of each trades union to outsiders of the same trade. While their mem- bers insist on their own freedom to combine and fix the rates at which they will work (as they are perfectly justified in doing), the freedom of those who disagree with them is not only denied but the assertion of it is treated as a crime. Individuals who maintain their rights to make their own contracts are vilified as 'blacklegs' and 'traitors,' and meet 222 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. with violence which would be merciless were there no legal penalties and no police. Along with this trampling on the liberties of men of their own class, there goes peremptory- dictation to the employing class ; not prescribed terms and working arrangements only shall be conformed to, but none save those belonging to their body shall be employed — nay, in some cases there shall be a strike if the employer carries on transactions with trading bodies that give work to non-union men. Here, then, we are variously shown by trades unions, or at any rate by the newer trades unions, a determination to impose their regulations without regard to the rights of those who are to be coerced. So complete is the inversion of ideas and sentiments that main- tenance of these rights is regarded as vicious and trespass upon them as virtuous. ' ' Along with this aggressiveness in one direction there goes submissiveness in another direction. The coercion of outsiders by unionists is paralleled only by their subjection to their leaders. That they may conquer in the struggle, they surrender their individual liberties and individual judg- ments, and show no resentment however dictatorial may be the rule exercised over them. Everywhere we see such subordination that bodies of workmen unanimously leave their work or return to it as their authorities order them. Nor do they resist when taxed all round to support strikers whose acts they may or may not approve, but instead ill-treat recalcitrant members of their body who do not subscribe. ' ' The traits thus shown must be operative- in any new social organization, and the question to be asked is — What will result from their operation when they are relieved from all restraints ? At present the separate bodies of men dis- playing them are in the midst of a society partially passive. A PLEA FOR LIBERTY. 223 partially antagonistic; are subject to the criticisms and reprobations of an independent press ; and are under the control of law, enforced by police. If in these circum- stances these bodies habitually take courses which override individual freedom, what will happen when, instead of being only scattered parts of the community, governed by their separate sets of regulators, they constitute the whole com- munity, governed by a consolidated system of such regu- lators ; when functionaries of all orders, including those who officer the press, form parts of the regulative organiza- tion, and when the law is both enacted and administered by this regulative organization? The fanatical adherents of a social theory are capable of taking any measures, no matter how extreme, for carrying out their views, holding, like the merciless priesthoods of past times, that the end justifies the means. And when a general socialistic organ- ization has been established, the vast, ramified and consoli- dated body of those who direct its activities, using without check whatever coercion seems to them needflil in the interests of the system (which will practically become their own interests) will have no hesitation in imposing their rigorous rule over the entire lives of the actual workers ; until, eventually, there is developed an official oligarchy, with its various grades, exercising a tyranny more gigantic and more terrible than any which the world has seen. "Let me again repudiate an erroneous inference. Any one who supposes that the foregoing argument implies contentment with things as they are, makes a profound mistake. The present social state is transitional, as past social states have been transitional. There will, I hope and believe, come a future social state differing as much from the present as the present differs from the past with its mailed barons and defenseless serfs. In Social Statics, 224 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. as well as in the Study of Sociology and in Political Institu- tions, is clearly shown the desire for an organization more conducive to the happiness of men at large than that which exists. My opposition to Socialism results from the belief that it would stop the progress to such a higher state and bring back a lower state. Nothing but the slow modifi- cation of human nature by the discipline of social life can produce permanently advantageous changes. ' ' A fundamental error pervading the thinking of nearly all parties, political and social, is that evils admit of imme- diate and radical remedies. * If you will but do this the mischief will be prevented.' 'Adopt my plan and the suffering will disappear.' 'The corruption will unques- ably be cured by enforcing this measure.' Everywhere one meets with beHefs, expressed or implied, of these kinds. They are all ill-founded. It is possible to remove causes which intensify the evils ; it is possible to change the evils from one form into another, and it is possible, and very common, to exacerbate the evils by the efforts made to prevent them ; but anything like immediate cure is impos- sible. In the course of thousands of years mankind have, by multiplication, been forced out of that original savage state in which small numbers supported themselves on wild food, into the civilized state in which the food required for supporting great numbers can be got only by continuous labor. The nature required for this last mode of life is widely different from the nature required for the first ; and long-continued pains have to be passed through in remold- ing the one into the other. Misery has necessarily to be borne by a constitution out of harmony with its conditions ; and a constitution inherited from primitive men is out of harmony with the conditions imposed on existing men. Hence it is impossible to establish forthwith a satisfactory A PLEA FOR LIBERTY. 225 social state. No such nature as that which has filled Europe with millions of armed men, here eager for con- quest and there for revenge — no such nature as that which prompts the nations called Christian to vie with one another in filibustering expeditions all over the world, regardless of the claims of aborigines, while their tens of thousands of priests of the religion of love look on approvingly — no such nature as that which, in dealing with weaker races, goes beyond the primitive rule of life for life, and for one life takes many lives — no such nature, I say, can by any device be framed into a harmonious community. The root pf all well-ordered social action is a sentiment of justice, which at once insists on personal freedom and is solicitous for the like freedom of others, and there at present exists but a very inadequate amount of this sentiment, "Hence the need for further long continuance of a social discipline which requires each man to carry on his activities with due regard to the like claims of others to carry on their activities ; and which, while it insists that he shall have all the benefits his conduct naturally brings, insists also that he shall not saddle on others the evils his conduct naturally brings, unless they freely undertake to bear them. And hence the belief that endeavors to elude this discipline will not only fail, but will bring worse evils than those to be escaped. " It is not, then, chiefly in the interests of the employ- ing classes that Socialism is to be resisted, but much more in the interests of the employed classes. In one way or other production must be regulated ; and the regulators, in the nature of things, must always be a small class as compared with the actual producers. Under voluntary cooperation as at present carried on, the regulators, pur- suing their personal interests, take as large shares of the 226 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. produce as they can get ; but, as we are daily shown by trades-union successes, are restrained in the selfish pursuit of their ends. Under that compulsory cooperation which Socialism would necessitate, the regulators, pursuing their personal interests with no less selfishness, could not be met by the combined resistance of free workers ; and their power, unchecked as now by refusals to work save on prescribed terms, would grow and ramify and consolidate till it became irresistible. The ultimate result, as I have before pointed out, must be a society like that of ancient Peru, dreadful to contemplate, in which the mass of the people, elaborately regimented in groups of lo, 50, 100, 500 and 1,000, ruled by officers of corresponding grades and tied to their districts, were superintended in their pri- vate lives as well as in their industries, and toiled hopelessly for the support of the governmental organization." Mr. Spencer's work, From Freedom to Bondage, first made its appearance in this country, I believe, in the N. Y. World of March 22nd, 1891. As the essay contains but little that has not been reviewed in previous pages, it would be tedious to enter upon an analysis which readers will certainly be able to make for themselves. The Twentieth Century of New York, however, contained, on April 2nd, 1 89 1, a criticism by myself from which I venture to quote, as it expresses, in comparatively few words, my own view of the value of the essay: "Mr. Spencer's argument opens with a statement of the progress already achieved ; a sub- ject upon which he is remarkably emphatic. As to this I care to note only that one of the proofs he adduces is ' the contrast between the small space which popular welfare then occupied in public attention, and the large space it now occupies, with the result that, outside and inside Parlia- ment, plans to benefit the millions form the leading topics, A PLEA FOR LIBERTY. 227 and every one having means is expected to join in some philanthropic effort.' This is curious when one considers Mr. Spencer's well-known hostility to private or parlia- mentary philanthropy, as the term is generally understood. He then lays down as axiomatic the proposition that ' social life must be carried on either by voluntary cooperation or compulsory cooperation ; ' and the remainder of the essay is devoted to a portrayal of the superiority of the existing system, which he describes as an 'industrial regime of willinghood,' over 'a r%ime of industrial obedience.' "It is needless to follow Mr. Spencer in his analysis of the evils of the military regime. What he says is by no means new, and is generally accepted as unquestionably true. What I point the finger at is his definition of our present system as an 'industrial regime of willinghood.' What one feels justified in sneering at is his complacent declaration that 'this voluntary cooperation (the existing system), from its simplest to its most complex forms, has the common trait that those concerned work together by consent.' He even particularizes. He tells us that 'the system of voluntary cooperation is that by which, in civilized societies, industry is now everywhere carried on. Under a simple form we have it on every farm, where the laborers, paid by the farmer himself and taking orders {sic) directly from him, are free to stay or go as they please. . . The general formula is not — 'Do this, or I will make you;' but it is — 'Do this, or leave your place and take the consequences.' ' And this, as Carlyle would have said, is — freedom ! ' ' This idyllic picture is followed with a gloomy sketch of the tyrannies that Socialism, with its necessarily colossal directive apparatus, must engender. The argument is from the present to the future ; the iron discipline of the 228 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. trades-unions and political parties of to-day gives the forecast of our fate beneath their rule to-morrow. ' ' I believe, sir, that your readers will agree with me when I say that the freedom to take the job or 'git' is the cruelest of satires on liberty, and that its advancement by Mr. Spencer in this essay, which has been widely adver- tised and will be as widely read, is a piteous descent. For note that not a word is said as to the inequality upon which the contracting parties meet — the one in possession of all the means of life, the other bargaining for leave to use them. My contention is that, at the outset, the plaintiff's position is so evidently false as to throw the gravest suspicion on whatever else he may advance. Let us, nevertheless, have the patience to investigate. "Political bossism is an unquestionable and lamentable fact ; so are the tyranny of trades-unions, the assaults on 'scabs,' and the many other instances of violence that Mr. Spencer cites. So also are land monopoly, protective tariffs, and a thousand similar evils too numerous to mention. Whence come they? That is the question we have to settle ; for, knowing their origin, we shall be able to dig down to their roots and tear them up. There is not one of them that does not come directly from that system of individual warfare which, under the denomination of militarism, Mr. Spencer so ruthlessly condemns. In politics we fight for power, with all that it implies, and we submit to the rule of this or that simply because it appears to us as the only means of winning what we feel is our individual fight. In trades-unionism we are engaged in a conflict against overwhelming odds, and we submit, therefore, still more implicitly to leadership. Playing each for our own hand we try to get a corner on the earth, and, if we cannot do it by seizure through the armed hand or the purse, we A PLEA FOR LIBERTY. 22Q try the legislature. Trading, each on his own account (or, at best, on his ring's account), we inevitably seek the monopoly a protective tariff grants, however loudly we may cry out for free trade in other industries. If you doubt this look at the insincerity of the English free trade move- ment, in which, as soon as the manufacturers got the supplies of which they happened to stand in need, their enthusiasm promptly vanished. And so throughout. The tyrannies and injustices so bitterly complained of are the direct outcome of the individual struggle ; with individual combination adopted, not partially but in its entirety, they will all, without exception, disappear.* ' ' ' The root of all well ordered social action, ' says Mr. Spencer, 'is a sentiment of justice.' Precisely. Who made the earth? Obviously, no one. It has come down to us, improved and unimproved, as a joint inheritance. To whom do we owe- the inventions that have put the muscles of the universe at our command? As obviously to no one of the monopolists in possession to-day, but to the continuous toil of countless generations. Justice and expediency alike demand that the rightful owners should be put in possession of their inheritance. This is the Alpha and Omega of the Socialists' demand. It is for us, as * " Strife is the normal condition of the whole industrial world ; capital strives against labor, and labor against capital, lock-outs and strikes being the pitched battles of the struggle ; capitalists strive against capitalists for profits, and the list of the vanquished may be read in the bankruptcy court; workers strive a»^ainst workers for wage, and injure their own order in the fratricidal combat. Everywhere the same struggle, causing distress, waste, hatred, in every direction ; brothers wronging brothers for a trifling gain ; the strong trampling down the weak in the frantic race for wealth. It is the struggle of the wild beasts of the forest transferred to the city ; the horrible struggle for existence, only in its ' civilized' form hearts are wrenched and torn instead of \\mhs."— Annie Besant, 230 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. individuals, to see that these owners, of whom we are a part, be put in possession of their just inheritance. The details of administration they, and we, can subsequently settle." It seems desirable to say a few more words upon the question of "Government" — a point to which much atten- tion is given in The Sins of Legislators, and The Great Political Superstition. It is greatly misleading to say that ' ' Government has everywhere had its origin in oppression. ' ' Thanks to modern investigation the genesis of written law, with its necessary accompaniment, an organized power for the enforcement of the law, has been clearly traced. In this particular field of inquiry Socialists have been extremely active, Frederick Engels (Karl Marx's illustrious co-worker) having done especial service. The results are well summed up in the new edition of Bebel's Woman and Socialism, and, though a translation will soon be issued in this series, I venture here to anticipate it in part. Bebel examines the various relationships between the sexes in which our fore- fathers indulged, and reaches finally that stage in the history of evolution where the ' ' Mother-right ' ' prevailed. Through- out that long, and most progressive, period descent was traced exclusively through the female members of the tribe. As I have already pointed out, it was the period when communism was in vogue. The evidence, it may also be remarked, is overwhelming, that during this period woman exercised an influence such as she is only now beginning again to aspire to. Bebel then traces the over- throw of the mother-right by the father-right, and the break up of the gens or family system, to make way for a class system founded upon property. The argument is again an economic on.e, economic changes carrying others A PLEA FOR LIBERTY. 231 in their train. He tells us that, as long as production remained in the simple stage, the earning capacity of both men and women was about the same ; but that, with increased division of labor, and the growth of invention that accompanied it, wealth set in, man's superiority in many of the industrial pursuits of the day began to declare itself, and he commenced to think himself superior to woman. The growth of population — especially in the cities of Greece, whose territory was very limited and comparatively unpro- ductive — cut a figure in the change, and woman the meri- torious child- bearer began to be regarded as woman the too-fruitful. The special skill which certain men acquired, and the conflicts that arose over the possession of new territory, gave them another thought, viz. : that he who got, or he who made, should keep. This private property grew into favor. Rome, in particular — upon whose codes our common law to-day rests — started with the then original ideas of father-right and private property. The gens was an integral part of Roman life, but property finally proved too strong for that, and tore it all to pieces. The entire process is well summed up in the following passage : "As production developed, and private property arose, the ground upon which the old family union of the gens had stood was cut from beneath its feet. The old ideas to which the gens had given birth remained, however, for some time to come in force. At first, after the gens had given way before the father- right, the equal rights of women were still recognized, but new elements kept exercising constant pressure tending to the overthrow of the old con- ditions. With the founding of cities began, as I have already shown, the distinction between agriculture and manufacture. The construction of dwellings and public 232 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. buildings, ship-building, the making of tools, implements and weapons, the constant advances in pottery and weaving, all these led to the gradual establishment of a manufacturing class with interests that had nothing in common with the old geiis, and were frequently opposed to it. The intro- duction of slavery, and the admission of strangers to citizen- ship were additional elements that rendered the old gens an impossibility, by awakening interests that demanded the institution of a new regime. "Inheritance through the father called for settlements that stood in the roughest contradiction to established customs, and could only be carried out by authority. Moreover, the inequalities of fortune that qiiickly made their appearance ; the conflicts of interest between agriculture and manufacture, between master and slave, rich a^id poor, debtors and creditors, necessitated laws, which, on the one hand, were very complicated, and on the other hand, could be enforced only at the cost of establishing powerful machinery therefor. Thus arose the State as the necessary outcome of the opposing inte^'ests that manifested themselves under the new rigime : the State which, whatever its form, is always the true mirror of the class interest that for the time being has the upper hand. ' ' Observe the difference. Mr. Spencer speaks, as does the Pope, of the rights of property as sacred, inalienable rights that have existed from time immemorial, and have their origin both in the natural promptings of the instincts, and in the necessity for preserving the lives of parents and offspring alike. He speaks of Government as arising from the force that overthrew these rights. What is the actual evidence? The actual evidence is that during a long and most progressive period man found — not, most assuredly, that he could do without life's necessaries, but that those A PLEA FOR LIBERTY. 233 necessaries were amply furnished under the communistic system then in vogue. Moreover, it was a time of general peace, and furthermore it was a time when woman rose to a dignity she has never since attained. The actual evidence also is that law, and the class-ruled State, came in, not for the overthrow of property rights, but to maintain the inequalities which property rights succeeded in speedily engendering. To clinch the matter further yet, and dissipate any lingering fears occasioned by Mr. Spencer's glowing prognostications, I quote from a tract recently issued by the Fabian Society. Under the heading of ' ' What Social- ism is," it says: " Remember that Parliament, with all its faults, has always governed the country in the interest of the class to which the majority of its members belonged. It governed in the interest of the country gentlemen in the old days when they were in a majority in the House of Commons ; it has governed in the interest of the capitalists and employers since they won a majority by the Reform Bill of 1832; and it will govern in the interest of the majority of the people when the numbers are selected from the wage-earning class. Inquirers will find that Socialism can be brought about in a perfectly constitutional manner through democratic institutions, and that none of the practical difficulties which occur to everyone in his first five minutes' consideration of the subject have escaped the attention of those who have worked at it for years. Few now believe Socialism to be impracticable, except those with whom the wish is father to the thought." There are timid reformers who consider that, as the economic is the root question, it would be far better to confine our efforts to that, leaving such dangerous subjects as the woman question, religion, etc., severely alone. But it would be impossible, were it even desirable, to criticise 234 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. a faulty economic system without calling attention to the most prominent manifestations of that faultiness. Inde- pendent of the fact that upon the relationship between the sexes depends the welfare and very existence of the race, it is certain that the defects of our economic system, as shown in compulsory marriages, impossibility of marriage, and a prostitution that, open or concealed, permeates all society, are among the severest and most telling counts in the long indictment that is now being brought against existing insti- tutions. It offers accordingly a field for criticism that we can by no means afford to neglect, neither can we shut our eyes to the fact that it is woman in particular whom the present system crushes with remorseless cruelty. She stands, therefore, sorely in need of such a champion as Socialism promises to be. Here, however, I have been chiefly concerned with pointing out the service which the woman question, in such hands as those of Engels and Bebel, has already done for Socialism, by elucidating the true development of that institution for the defense of monopoly and class-rule which to-day calls itself the State. The State which society, through Socialism, will ulti- mately succeed in establishing will be one worthy of the name. It will not be a machine kept running for the defense of robberies that imagine time can turn a wrong into a right, nor for the bolstering up of a class that knows but one religion — its own material self-interest. It will be simply the consensus of the people ; the general council, in which such mutual arrangements will be made as the cir- cumstances of the community may from time to time demand. Such a State, democratic through and through, is an impossibility so long as a thousand conflicting interests part the community into hostile camps. To put an end to such conflicting interests, the first inevitable step must be A PLEA FOR LIBERTY. 235 the abolition of the great division, which, since the first great struggles over private property, has split society from top to toe. That division is the one into master and servant, employer and employed. The wage-system is thus necessarily the center of the whole attack. Thus far we can safely tread with sure and certain foot ; that is unquestionably the next great struggle, and its flames are already beginning to light the sky. With service for the master abolished, the next step must be necessarily service for ourselves, and the only way in which this can be rendered possible is the putting the means of production and distribution — the latter being but a branch of the process of production — at the disposition of the toiler. That this will be the central aim of society it seems to me impossible to doubt ; that it will be easily accomplished I also cannot doubt, for the organization of industry is already so far advanced that, in many cases, almost all that would be necessary would be to strike the names of dividend-drawing parasites off the roll. Of this, however, I, at least, feel sure, viz. : that when society is in a position to make the new arrangement it is society that will make it. Nevertheless I think it more than likely that for some time to come reward will be by the community in proportion to the fancied value of the services done to the community, a value that will be calculated in various ways. I also think that we shall rapidly evolve to a Communism more and more complete, though for this, at the outset, we shall most assuredly not be ripe. We squabble over bread only when bread is scarce : with bread to be had for the picking up the man who would insist upon his "natural right" to a loaf would be a fool. If we do so evolve it will be a proof of Bebel's saying that "Evolution is a spiral, continually climbing higher, whose apex is directly perpen- 236 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. dicular to its base." We shall return to the communism from which the private-property era sprang. The only other point I care to touch on is Mr. Spencer's remark that "a cardinal trait in all advancing organizations is the development of the regulative appara- tus." This is unquestionably true, and the "Trusts," which have created so much consternation among the ignorant, are the sure and certain sign of the advanced industrial position we have attained. They show us just exactly where we stand ; they demonstrate, beyond all possibihty of refutation, the utter folly of the dream that one can tinker with the social question. It is now clearly one thing or the other — oligarchy or democracy — plutocrats or people. For the " Trust " is «z^/<7<:rfl;//c Socialism. It is the industries of the country seized by plutocratic rings, who, having learned the folly of competition and adopted the Socialistic principle of cooperation, administer those industries for their own profit. It marks the definite sub- stitution of the "regulative apparatus" for the anarchic principle of free competition which our money kings have discovered to be ruinous as among themselves. It is this that free competition has ended in, even among those who assuredly had all the means wherewith to compete. Need I point out that such an autocratic Socialism, imposed from above, and regulated, not by the wants of the people, but solely by considerations of how most can be squeezed out of the people, is preeminently unsatisfactory? Surely not. What patriot thinks it advisable that his country should be seized, and administered to fill the stomachs of the army of invaders ? What, however, should be here insisted on is that this plutocratic invasion has not been deliberately planned, but that it has developed, in an A PLEA FOR LIBERTY. 237 entirely natural way, from the workings of our competitive system, combination and regulation of the market having been resorted to by our plutocrats as the only method of saving themselves from bankruptcy. That the Trust is the logical development of the joint-stock company system, as that in its turn was a development of the private partner- ship system, each development corresponding to the demand for the larger enterprises rendered possible through the introduction of steam — all this goes without saying. Notwithstanding which so-called statesmen vex the country with Inter-State Commerce Laws, and similar abortive attempts to render combination, toward which all evolution moves, a criminal offense. It is certain, in a word, that this * ' regulative apparatus ' ' will be continually enlarged, and at the same time — for such is the history of all inventions — immensely simplified ; that it will substitute for countless individuals one all-powerful corporate master from whose decisions, as the sole employer, there will be no appeal ; that it will stop supply, and, by closing distil- leries, flour-mills, iron-works, etc., throw thousands of workers on the streets whenever it deems it advisable so to do ; and that its judgment as to the advisability will be guided, not by considerations of public utility, but solely by those of its own breeches pocket. 238 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. CHAPTER IV. CONCLUSION. THIS book is an attempt to define the exact position of a philosopher who is quoted as an authority by both sides, and, as it has seemed to me, is often very ignorantly quoted. I have, therefore, done my best to point out exactly where Mr. Herbert Spencer stands. I have shown that those who cite him as a champion of our existing system should not be allowed to forget that he has formulated a communistic land doctrine which he has never taken back. On the other hand, I have endeavored to show that those who rail at him as a reactionist and enemy of progress, forget that, as an evolutionist, he has rendered invaluable service to thought in general, and to the cause of Socialism in particular. This last point I have striven to emphasize on every possible occasion, for it is, in my judgment, all-important. So long as Socialism was in the Utopian stage it could be brushed aside contemptuously as the fancy of some idle dreamer ; but when it is shown to be a part of the inexorable logic of growth, it presents a case that cannot possibly be ignored. The thoughtful will at once perceive that we can hinder or hasten its development, but that to prevent its ultimate realization we are completely powerless. Such a natural force as that which — thanks to modern invention and our cooperative methods oi productio7i — is now making for a "solidarity" that was at no previous period possible, can be guided by human intelligence to an issue whose success the imagin- CONCLUSION. 239 ation of to-day is quite incapable of measuring. On the other hand, ignorantly to oppose such a natural force will be to bring upon ourselves a storm beside which the French Revolution will shrivel into insignificance. This matter, therefore, is largely a matter of the head ; for with the hearts of the masses no serious fault is to be found. Our instincts are almost all for peace ; national antipathies are rapidly expiring ; the railroad, by annihi- lating distance, has made us eminently social ; the immense constructive work that this century has accomplished in the purely mechanical department has stamped its own character very deeply on each one of us. The thoughtful — and the thoughtful are much on the increase — note all these things, and they chafe continually at contradictions which seem more and more illogical. Our modern city life offers such obvious opportunities for cooperation, yet it is in city life that competition is at its fiercest. Moreover, city life is one that must be led in common, yet at every turn fresh evidence confronts us that there is actually nothing that we, who are brought so much together, hold in common. On the many other contradictions that per- petually plague us I do not care now to dwell ; and, indeed, it is always better that people should think a matter out for themselves. There is no lack of subjects for thought to-day, but there is one that is rapidly swallowing all others up — viz., THE Social Question. That is essentially the question of the age, and it is a question upon which we have, first, to think. Everything that stifles thought is an evil of the evils, whether it appear as an intellectual Pope who would tempt you to let him do your thinking for you, or as an intellectual Czar who insists on doing it and will banish you if you rebel. For thought is labor, and it is unfortunately the very labor to which the 240 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. masses are least inclined, because it is the labor to which for centuries they have been least accustomed. It is also the labor which Nature — who honors no drafts but those of labor, and eventually punishes all shirks — delights especially to honor. To feel, and sympathize, and grow hysterical over the miserable muddle we are in is the easiest kind of work ; is indeed no work at all, and, therefore, produces nothing. To seize a fact or two, and thence to draw a hasty, superficial inference, is also useless ; and as, in such cases, the wish is generally father to the thought, the work is all distorted, and even worse than useless. One does not become a Socialist because of the gifts that Socialism has to oifer. Usually one relinquishes slowly orthodoxy after orthodoxy ; and with every one there is a wrench, for with every one a friend is lost. The reform people are oftentimes the worst. The free-trader cannot forgive you for discovering that his nostrum will not cure it all ; the single-tax man, when you get beyond his limits, thinks you are a traitor ; while, as for those who are Social- ists in economics, and bourgeois orthodoxists in everything else, they declare you are wrecking the whole movement by the introduction of foreign and highly dangerous sub- jects. My understanding of the case is this : I cannot find in history a shigle instance of a decided eco7iomic change that has not had as its companions, at every step, corresponding changes all along the lifie. The complaints we hear on every side of the decay of family life, the decay of religious faith, and so forth, are so many contemporary proofs of the truth of this position. For we have been passing, and we are still passing, through the first stage of a vast industrial revolution. I submit that the Socialist analysis is the most correct, because it is the most trulv scientific. It is the most scien- CONCLUSION. 241 tific because it has been the most laborious ; and because, having no vested interests to serve and being only anxious to reach the economic truth that alone can set the wage- worker free, it has not allowed its wishes to be the fathers of its thoughts, or permitted the heart to dictate to the head. That capitalist competition is digging its own grave ; that, by having already introduced cooperative production on the largest scale, it has laid the framework of the future cooperative commonwealth ; that it is rapidly dividing this, and every other nation, into two distinct classes, the very wealthy few and the propertyless many — all these I submit are facts, and show the soundness of the Socialist analysis. I submit further that the proposition that the economic mold is the one from which all other institutions take their shape is profoundly true : has been proved so in the past, and is being proved so daily now. I take no interest, therefore, in, and expect no good whatever from the per- petual whine about decaying morals, the increase of crimes, insanity, suicide and the like, save for the insight they give into the rottenness of the existing order. They will not improve for being preached at : they will steadily grow worse as our present industrial system grows more and more impossible. To complain of this is to complain oi" one of Nature's most essential laws. Pain has a genuine function to perform ; it tells us when we are going wrong ; it is now loudly reminding us of our folly in retaining a system that has had its day. Mr. Spencer's scientific proofs of the necessity of liberty, equality of opportunity, and cooperation, to the develop- ment of life are invaluable ; his praises of them are, how- ever, mere jingles of words, so long as the worker continues to be separated from his tools. These truly great and noble ideas are but ideas so long as that eondition endures, 242 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. and nobody knew it better than Mr. Spencer himself after he had written his chapter upon the land in Social Statics. To talk of a " regime of industrial willinghood ' ' under such circumstances is revolting cant, though a thousand Herbert Spencers should affirm it, and fill a thousand libraries with the attempted proof For this, above all, we one and all must do. We must have done with shams ; we must insist on truth regardless of whom the truth may seem to hurt ; we must hew closely to the line careless of where the chips may fall. Without this our labor at reform is all in vain. In the words of that great unmasker of shams, Thomas Carlyle : — " Liberty, I am told, is a Divine thing. Liberty, when it becomes the 'Liberty to die by starvation,' is not so divine." It is only the studious few who will dip into this volume. But those few are always the movers of the movers. These students are to be found in every class, in the drawing room and the garret, wherever light has chanced to strike, and they are now, by the very nature of the case, increasing with a rapidity unexampled. For here again the economic forces show themselves all-powerful ; here again the growing difficulty which the educated classes find in earning the simplest bread and butter is forcing them with an iron hand into the ranks of the discontented. It is not easy. Prejudice and caste are immensely strong : a man thinks twice before cutting himself off from his early friends, his business associates, and, probably above all, the women of his class. But nevertheless they come, and come in troops, for it is inevitable. The middle-class man sees nothing in apprenticing his son to a trade, for the destitution of the working classes is everywhere, proverbial. The farming industry is gasping for life ; and he sees nothing in putting CONCLUSION. 243 him to commercial business, for there it is notorious that the Httle fish are perishing by the shoal. To clerk is to be a slave, for now-a-days clerks are a drug in every market, and all clerkships are held by the most precarious of tenures. So he risks it in the professions, though he knows them to be already desperately over-crowded, gambling on the chance of the boy showing the unexpected talent which, sooner or later, manages to snatch a prize. Thence it is the shortest of steps to the camp of the discontented, those free-lances whose hunger for destruction ravages every existing institution with its remorseless criticism. There is not an old-established usage to-day that is not made the target of their ridicule, their solid argument, their vehe- ment protest ; for all such usages are seen to serve as buttresses of a system that treats them villainously. Thus, scattered though the clouds may seem to be at present, they are all parts of the same electrical disturbance ; they will all be finally united in the coming storm. That storm will strike upon one central point, toward which the various forces are already obviously beginning to converge — the economic system ; which, shorn of the time-honored sup- ports it has had in the intellectual blindness and prejudices of slaves, will tumble at a blow. What though the clouds appear at present scattered, and even, coming together, clash with one another? It is precisely because the clouds are coming together that they clash ; it is precisely because an enormous army, which has been hitherto pursuing various "isms," is now concentra- ting upon the economic question that there is all this war of words, over which the conservatives pluck up a moment's heart to rejoice. It is merely the necessary tumult of the army falling into line ; a temporary incident. This eager contingent of middle-class free-thinkers ; this huge detach- 244 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. ment of belated farmers that has tarried so long upon the march — the main fact is that they are stepping to the front, that the recruits are coming in from every quarter all animated by the same divinest of discontents. The goose- step, and whatever other drilling may be needed, will develop of themselves. Given the necessary discontent and abhorrence of existing evils, and you have an army that will discipline itself, as Cromwell's Ironsides did, from their very anxiety to rout the enemy horse and foot. They may be led off on false issues for a time — as, in my humble judgment, the farmers are now being led— but they will quickly right themselves ; they may put up for a time with shows of truth, but they will finally insist on getting at the heart of truth. And the heart of the whole thing is this — that a man is a man, and is, however humble, incomparably superior to the most cunningly constructed bank-vault that any plutocrat may order. He is King, and before him all customs, however venerable by reason of their age, have got to courtesy. Whatever hinders his development ; whatever debars him from reaping the rich harvest of his life; whatever needlessly "cribs, cabins and confines" the existence of the poorest woman or child among us has got to go. No class, no creed, no power sheltered behind bayonets, or crouching behind money-bags, can be allowed to shut life out from access to what is necessary to life. The divorce between the toiler and the means of toil must neces- sarily be obliterated before permanent progress can be made ; the instinct of self-support must have opportunity to work. This truth, which stares us in the face whenever we deign to turn to Nature's book, is recognized, as yet, by but a very few. But, more and more pertinaciously the forces are tugging at men's elbows, and urging them to CONCLUSION. 245 look. We can cooperate with these forces, and a most important portion of our cooperation is the struggle with the forces that are urging the masses not to look. Here is a priest who, vowed to a form of life so unnatural that, if generally adopted, the whole race must perish, passes his days in urging the masses not to look. Here is one in authority who fills his mouth with promises, and guarantees to rule on behalf of those who have not wit enough to rule themselves. He too, with a thousand specious arguments, is busily engaged in persuading the masses not to look. Here is a rich man assuring the masses, by the countless agencies that he commands, that they were never so comfortably off as they are under the administration of his class, and that, if they undertake what they themselves know nothing of, they must inevitably perish. He to-day is desperately straining every nerve to keep them from looking for themselves. Yet they unquestionably have to look, and the task of getting them to raise their eyes falls almost exclusively upon the student class. It is the debt it owes to the class that supports it while it studies ; it is the thorn in the rose of knowledge. Our movement is all along the line. There is not a department of human thought or action in which the dis- contented cannot be of use ; there is not an ability so humble that it cannot do good service. History repeats itself, and what Wendell Phillips said thirty-eight years ago of the Abolition movement holds true to-day : — "Our aim is to alter pubHc opinion. Did we live in a market, our talk should be of dollars and cents, and we should seek to prove only that slavery was an unprofitable investment. Were the nation one great, pure church, we would sit down and reason of ' righteousness, temperance and judgment to come.' Had slavery fortified itself in a college, we would 246 ECONOMICS OF HERBERT SPENCER. load our cannons with cold facts, and wing our arrows with arguments. But we happen to live in the world — the world made up of thought and impulse, of self-conceit and self-interest, of weak men and wicked. To conquer we must reach all. Our object is not to make every man a Christian or a philosopher, but to induce every one to aid in the abolition of slavery. We expect to accomplish our object long before the nation is made over into saints or elevated into philosophers. To change public opinion we use the very tools by which it was formed. That is, all such as an honest man may touch." When those words were spoken the Abolitionists were still ' ' a mere handful of fanatics." Within seven years the death knell of chattel slavery had been sounded at Fort Sumter. The question now to be solved is, unfortunately, far larger. THE END. *= CONDENSED CATALOGUE OF THE HUMBOLDT LIBRARY OF POPULAR SCIENCES. Containing the works of the foremost scientific writers of the age. The Great Classics of Modern Thought. 12 i • Henry W. Bates. Single numbers 15 cents. — Double numbers 30 cents. — $3 a year. I — Light Science for Leisure Hours. Rich'd A. Proctor. 2 — Forms of Water in Clouds, Rivers, &c. Prof John Tyndall. 3 — Physics and Politics. Walter Bagehot. 4 — Man's Place in Nature. Prof T. H. Huxley. 5 — Education: Intellectual, Moral, Physical. Herbert Spencer. 6 — Town Geology. Charles Kingsley. 7 — The Conservation of Energy. Balfour STEW.fiRT. 8 — The Study of Languages. C. Marcel. 9 — The Data of Ethics. Herbert Spencer. 10 — Theory of Sound in Relation to Music. Pietro Blaserna. \ The Naturalist on the River Amazons. (Two numbers in one. — 30 cents.) 13— Mind and Body. Alexander Bain. 14 — The Wonders of the Heavens. C. Fl.\mmarion. 15 — Longevity: Means of Prolonging Life, &c. John Gardner. 16 — On the Origin of Species. Prof T. H. Huxley. 17 — Progress: Its Law and Cause. Herbert Spencer. 18 — Lessons in Electricity. Prof John Tyndall. ig — Familiar Essays on Scientific Subjects. Rich'd A. Proctor. 20 — The Romance of Astronomy. R. Kalley Miller. 21 — The Physical Basis of Life. Prof T. H. Huxley. 22 — Seeing and Thinking. Wm. K. Clifford. 23 — Scientific Sophisms. Sam'l Wainwright. 24 — Popular Scientific Lectures. H. Helmholtz. 25 — The Origin of Nations. George R.a.wlinson. 26 — The Evolutionist at Large. Grant Allen. 27 — History of Landholding in England. Joseph Fisher. C Fashion in Deformity. Wm. Henry Flower. I Manners and Fashion. Herbert Spencer. 29 — Facts and Fictions of Zoology. Andrew Wilson. 30 — On the Study of Words. — Part I. ) . ,, . , „, 3x-0„ the Study of Words.-Part II. 1 Archbishop Trench. * The Humboldt Library 32 — Hereditary Traits, and other essays. Rich'd A. Proctor. 33 — Vignettes from Nature. Grant Allen. f The Philosophy of Style. Herbert Spencer. ^^ X The Mother Tongue. Alexander Bain. 35 — Oriental Religions. John Caird. 36 — Lectures on Evolution. Prof T. H. Huxley. 37 — Lectures on Light. Prof John Tyndall. ^8 — Geological Sketches. — Part L > , „ ■^ * „, , ,-, TT f Archibald Geikie. 39 — Geological Sketches. — Part II. J [ Scientific Evidence of Organic Evolution. Geo. J. Romanes. 40 < Paleontology and Doctrine of Evolution. Prof T. H. Huxley. ' Natural Selection and Natural Theology. Eustace R. Conder. 41 — Current Discussions in Science. W. M. Williams. 42 — History of the Science of Politics. Fred'k Pollock. 43 — Darwin and Humboldt. Huxley and others. 44 — The Dawn of History. — Part I. ) r F K 45— The Dawn of History.— Part II. i 46 — The Diseases of Memory. Th. Ribot. 47 — The Childhood of Religions. Edward Clodd. 48 — Life in Nature. James Hinton. 49 — The Sun: its constitution, phenomena, &c. Nathan T. Carr. Money and the Mechanism of Exchange. ) ,,, „ ™ T^ , ( W. Stanley Je (Iwo Parts. — 15 cents each.) J I rJ ^ , " ( W. bTANLEV J EVONS. 51 ( (Iwo Parts. — 15 cents each.) 52 — The Diseases of the Will. Th. Ribot. 53 — Animal Automatism, and other essays. Prof T. H. Huxley. 54 — The Birth and Growth of Myth. Edward Clodd. 55 — The Scientific Basis of Morals. Wm. K. Clifford. t;6 — Illusions: a psychological study. Part I. ) , „ T„ • , , ■ ■ , T, TT^ James Sully. 57 — Illusions: a psychological study. Part II i sS — The Origin of Species. C Two Parts. > „ ._^ Ti, r, • • <-c ■ i . V, > Charles Darwin. 59 — I he Origin 01 Species, t 30 cents each. J 60 — The Childhood of the World. Edward Clodd. 61 — Miscellaneous Essays. Rich'd A. Proctor. 62 — The Religions of the Ancient World. George Rawlinson. 63 — Progressive Morality. Thomas Fowler. fThe Distribution of Life, Animal and ) Alfred R.Wallace. C Vegetable, in Space and Time. 5 W.Thiselton Dyer. 65 — Conditions of Mental Development. Wm. K. Clifford. 66 — Technical Education, and other essays. Prof T. H. Huxley. 67— The Black Death. J. F. C. Hecker ,„ C Laws in General — Origin of Animal Wor- ) ,^ _ 68 < , . -,,..,„.,. \ Herbert Spencer. C ship — Poutical fetichism. (10 cts.) J Published semi-motithly . — $3 a year. — Single mnnbers 15 cents. *- of Popular Science. 71 6g — Fetichism. Contribution to Anthropology. Fritz Schultze. 70 — Essays, Speculative and Practical. Herbert Spencer. f Anthropology. Daniel Wilson. < Archaeology. E. B. Tylor. 72 — The Dancing Mania of the Middle Ages. J. F. C. Hecker. 73 — Evolution in History, Language, Science. Various Authors. 74 ("The Descent of Man. — Part I. \ 75 J The Descent of Man. — Part II. [ 76 The Descent of Man^-Part IIP | ^"^''^^^ ^^'''^™- 77 (.The Descent of Man.— Part IV. J (No. 77 is a double number, 30 cents.) 78 — The Distribution of Land in England. Wm. L. Birkbeck. 79 — Scientific Aspects of Familiar Things. W. M. Williams. 80 — Charles Darwin: His Life and Work. Grant Allen. f The Mystery of Matter — Philosophy of ) . . „ 81 <- i}- Allanson Picton. ( Ignorance. i • 82 — Illusions of the Senses, and other essays. Rich'd A. Proctor. 83 — Profit-sharing between Capital and Labor. Sedley Taylor. 84 — Studies of Animated Nature. Dallas and others. 85 — The Essential Nature of Religion. J. Allanson Picton. „, C The Unseen Universe — The Philosophy ) „, ,, ^ °°i r»i,T>c- \ Wm. K. Clifford. ( of the Pure Sciences. > 87 — The Morphine Habit (Morphinomania). Prof B. B.\ll. 88 — Science and Crime, and other essays. Andrew Wilson. f The Genesis of Science. Herbert Spencer. < Coming of Age of the "Origin of Species." Prof T. H. Huxlev. 90 — Notes on Earthquakes, and other essays. Rich'd A. Proctor. 91 — The Rise of Universities. (30 cents.) S. S. Laurie. Formation of Vegetable Mould through ) _ .^ ^, ,. - , , , > Charles Darwin. the action of earthworms. (30 cents.) i f Scientific Methods of Capital Punishment. J. Mount Bleyer. ( Infliction of the Death Penalty. (10 cts.) Park Benjamin. 94 — The Factors of Organic Evolution. Herbert Spencer. 95 — The Diseases of Personality. Th. Ribot. f A Half-Century of Science. Prof T. H. Huxley. i The Progress of Science from 1836 to 1886. Grant Allen. 97 — The Pleasures of Life.- — Part I. (See in.) Sir John Lubbock. 98 — Cosmic Emotion — Teaching of Science. Wm. K. Clifford. 99 — Nature-Studies. Four Essays. Various Authors. 100 — Science and Poetry, and Other essaySi Andrew Wilson. (■^Esthetics — Dreams. James Sully. c Association of Ideas. Geo. C. Robertson. The Humboldt Publishing Co., 28 La/ay etie Place, New York. .{ The Humboldt Library I02 — Ultimate Finance. — Part I. (See 107.) Wm. Nelson Black. C The Coming Slavery — Sins of Legis- V .,_. „ 103^ , ^ T^ ,• ■ , o •• ? Herbert Spencer. ( lators — Great Political Superstition. } 104— Tropical Africa. Henry Drummond. 105 — Freedom in Science and Teaching. Ernst Haeckel. 106— Force and Energy. Grant Allen. 107— Ultimate Finance. — Part II. (See 102.) Wm. Nelson Black. 108 — English: Past and Present. — Part I. ) , ,, . , ^ " „ T, TT (•Archbishop Trench. 109 — English: Past and Present. — Part 11. J (No. 108 is a double number. — 30 cents.) iio_The Story of Creation. Edward Clodd. Ill— The Pleasures of Life. — Part II. (See 97.) Sir John Lubbock. 112 — Psychology of Attention. Th. Ribot. 113 — Hypnotism: History and Development. Fred'k Bjornstr5m. (Double number, 30 cents.) ■ c Christianity and Agnosticism! A con- ) Huxley, Bishop of ^^^\ troversy. — (Double number, 30 cts.) 5 Peterboro.and others. 115 5 Darwinism: An E.xposition of ^^H Ai.v^^t.'RMai.i.kck. 116 ( Theory of Natural Selection. ) (Two double numbers. — 30 cents each.) C Modem Science and Modern Thought. ) ( Part I. — (Double number — 30 cents.) ) ( Modern Science and Modern Thought. ) „ t < Part II. — (Single number — 15 cents.)) ^ .The Electric Light - The Storing of^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^ { Electrical Energy. J ( The Modern Theory of Heat — The Sun \ „ ,,, 120^ ^ ^ ' ^„ > Gerald Mollov. ( as a Storehouse of Energy. J 121— Utilitarianism. John Stuart Mill. c The Origin of Alpine and Italian Lakes. ) Sir A. C. Ramsay. -^i Part I.-(Double number.-30 cents.) i ri^RrnisoN. f The Origin of Alpine and Italian Lakes. Prof Studer, Favre, '^^iPart II.— (Single number.— 15 cents.) J Whvmper, Spencer. f\f. 124 — The Quintessence of Socialism. Prof A. Schaffle. ' C 'Darwinism and Politics. David G. Ritchie. '"^ < Administrative Nihilism. Prof T. H. Huxley. ^^C Physiognomy and Expression. Part ) p j^^^,^^^^^^^ c I. — (Double number. — 30 cents.) > ^C Physiognomy and Expression. Part ) p ^antegazza. ( II. — (Double number. — 30 cents.) •' .^' ^ '<^, .0 -V^ r - " • o, ^. *.o< '^^^rpp^-. ^ .V ^^^<^ 'V. y *"^(m^\ ^ . J^ ,0- ^K> -rr,'* \ ST. AUGUSTINE ^^ "^^ ''*^^^^.* ^V V "-^^^^^* ^^' 5^ ^