B 1,328,357
OUR
DESTINY
GROTEND
HX
528
G88
1891

---་་་་་་་་་་་བ་་་་་་་་་་ཟེ་
ARTES
LIBRARY
1837
VERITAS
SCIENTIA
OF THE
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
E-PLURIBUS-UNUM
TUE BOR
SI-QUAERIS PENINSULAM AMOENAME
CIRCUMSPICE
:
་-
•
ปี
.
!
I
22
HX
528
·G88
1891
OUR DESTINY
The Influence of Socialism on Morals and Religion
AN ESSAY IN ETHICS
BY
LAURENCE GRONLUND, M.A.
CC
AUTHOR OF
=
THE CO-OPERATIVE COMMONWEALTH," AND "ÇA IRA."
"Hitch thy wagon to a star."-EMERSON.

SECOND
FARDYA QVÆ• PVLCRAF
EDITION
LONDON
SWAN SONNENSCHEIN & CO.
PATERNOSTER SQUARE
1891.
Reclass 5-12.28M.V.P
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
1. My Object -
CHAPTER I.-THE SOIL.
2. Roots of Morals.-3. The Impending Change.-4. System.
-5. Abundance.-6. Freedom.-7. Leisure.-8. Insufficiency of
all these
-
CHAPTER II.-THE SOCIAL BOND.
9. Order.-10. Authority.-11. Patriotism.-12. Collective
Conscience.-13. Love of Approbation.-14. Equality.-15. In-
dividuality
CHAPTER III.-CONTRADICTIONS.
16. The Intellectual Atmosphere.-17. Liberty.-18. Demo-
cracy.-19. Social Functions.-20. Struggle for Life.-21. Social
Self.-22. End of Data of Ethics
CHAPTER IV.-DUTY OR JUSTICE.
23. Pessimism.-24. Conventional Morality.-25. Tempta-
tions.-26. Diligence.-27. Obedience.-28. Integrity.-29. The
Ideal
CHAPTER V.-LOVE.
30. Purity.-31. Conjugal Love.-32. Parent and Child.—33.
Servants.-34. Sympathy.-35. Sacrifice.-36. A Typical Life
CHAPTER VI.-GOD IN HUMANITY.
37. Blossom of Morals.-38. Purpose-God's Presence. -39.
Morality now "Law.”—40. Kingdom of Heaven.—41. What will
be, is His will.-32. Soul of Humanity.-43. The True Mediator
CHAPTER VII.-THE HEREAFTER.
44. Fruit of Morals.-45. Psychic Investigations.-46. Me-
mory.-47. Self-ness.--48. Self-hood.-49.
Destiny.-50. Your Life-Work
Our Common
41013
PAGE
25
49
70
96
126
146
1
·
OUR DESTINY.
MY OBJECT.
'The nineteenth century so far has been nothing but a riddle."
Jules Simon.
Mal-
1. Leslie Stephen claims that ethical problems require to be
discussed in every generation with a change of dialect. This is
emphatically the case now, but the dialect must be very different
from that adopted in his Science of Ethics. Events are at hand
that can be, most fitly, compared with the advent of Christianity.
Three writers have discussed the future that awaits us.
lock, in Is Life Worth Living, warns us that it will be disastrous
if we do not return to the old beliefs; Morison, in The Service of
Man, prophesies it will be glorious if we will only give up all re-
ligious notions, while Professor Graham, in The Creed of Science,
consoles us that our moral and religious acquisitions will not be
seriously threatened. I have arrived at very different and much
more ennobling conclusions (for which the reader, if he be but
patient, will in the course of this essay find, at all events, a
sufficient number of reasons), to wit:
That Nationalism (by which I simply mean American Socialism)
will be the future economic system in all civilised countries, and
that it will be inaugurated, not by violence, but by enthusiasm.
That it will establish virtually the Kingdom of Heaven on
earth, mainly by rendering all humanity precious to each of us
what now to all sensible people must seem an impossible feat.
That it will evolve an irresistible belief in God and Immortality
which will satisfy all the instincts of the human heart as well as
the most developed intelligences.
vi
Our Destiny.
That is to say: I hold that, though it is perhaps a fact that a
majority of those who are called Socialists are avowed Atheists,
yet Atheism is not an integral part of Socialism, but merely an
accretion upon it, like tartar upon the enamel of the teeth.
Such are Atheists, not because they are Socialists, but because
they are Frenchmen and Germans. Socialism is eminently
religious.
Very little has hitherto been done to persuade the higher order
of minds or to place Socialism in its proper light before them. To
speak frankly, I can perfectly sympathise with Sir James Stephen,
who, in the future, generally foreshadowed by the motto of
Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, cannot see "a st .te of society which a
reasonable man ought to regard with enthusiasm and self-dero-
tion."1
I can very well understand that a society confined even
to the most fascinating and abundant material enjoyments, but in
which morality is simply an invention to abate social jars and fric-
tions, is not seductive to such minds.
* *
*
William H. Mallock illustrates his fears by saying: "The path
of thought has taken a sudden turn around a mountain, and we
find ourselves looking bewildered on an utterly unfamiliar pros
pect.
A mist hangs over it, and we have no right to
be sure it is the promised land or not." He is very much afraid
that it means our spiritual degradation and the destruction of our
whole moral civilisation.
our race.
Now, I have ventured on this essay because I firmly believe that
I can dissipate the mist, and prove to unbiassed minds and sym-
pathetic hearts that it is, indeed, towards "the Promised Land"
that the Power behind Evolution has all the time been leading
If this "moral civilisation " must pass away, it is only
because it will grow into something much grander. At present it
is an "immoral" growth: Pharisaism, precisely of a kin to that,
so fiercely denounced by Jesus, which makes self-styled "better
citizens," who, having never known what temptation means, strut
about praising God that they are so much better than their
1 It will become apparent in the course of this essay, that I take a pro-
found interest in this virile book, though it was intended to be a refutation
of Socialism.
My Object.
vii
humble, temptation-ridden brethren who are tempted every
moment of their poor life to act wrongly by this satanic system or
ours. And the morality which will take its place, I am sure,
can be best stated in that sublime precept which embodies the
deepest truth: that in which we are bidden to love our neighbours
as ourselves. Instead of spiritual degradation, American Socialism,
as I understand it, will give us a profound conviction of the
presence of God in Humanity, and confer on Humanity a special
dignity, fit to inherit "endless times and eternities." And if the
American people can be persuaded that Socialism really offers
them such an ideal, the next half century will be a period of change
compared with which the past fifty years will seem tame and un-
eventful.
Such an effort seems now particularly opportune. It is well
known that a constructive form of Socialism has for some years
been evolving among American working-men. The conscience of
the country has during the past twelve months been aroused, as
it has not been since the anti-slavery agitation-witness the
Nationalist and Christian Socialist movements-an evidence that
our comfortable classes are becoming conscience of being part of a
living organism that suffers. The soil then is fertile and prepared,
the time favourable. Throughout our country there is a moral
awakening and a deepening ferment. All the signs and portents
seemingly declare: God wills it!
What a proud distinction for our American civilisation would it
be-compared with that of Europe-if some of the leaders of in-
tellect and conscience among us would, like modern Richards, place
themselves at the head of the new social crusade. Nothing, surely,
would so fill and fire such men with the needed enthusiasm and
devotion as the ideal here presented.
To present this ideal is my present object, and I believe I have
the qualifications for making this effort. I do not refer to literary
ability. I entered upon my works of Socialist exposition, not from
literary ambition, but from a deep conviction that I had some-
thing to tell my fellow-men.
The rise and spread of Pessimism is a fact of great interest and
significance. “A strange protest surely, that, in these days when
viii
Our Destiny.
the jubilant chorus is loudest, the note of desolation and despair
has broken in as a discord that suddenly finds acceptance, first of
all, among the fortunate classes—a philosophy, affirming the nullity
of all things, and asking: Is life worth living?" Yet while
Pessimism is a symptom of the hollowness at the core of the present
order, I, whose lot is certainly not cast among the fortunate ones
of this world, answer: Yes! Life, if lightened and warmed by a
true philosophy, is worth living. My secondary purpose is to
communicate this, my joy in life, to others. In spite of experienc-
ing more than most men the hardships of the established state of
things, in spite of privations and lack of sympathy for many years,
I know that this is the threshold of the Golden Age, and feel that
it is a high privilege to live now, a privilege which I am sure
posterity will envy me. My faith makes me an optimist: of this
faith I proceed to give an account, confident that it will soon be
realised
LAURENCE GRONLUND.
CHAPTER I.
THE SOIL.
Keep hammering away, even at the risk of being deemed a victim of
crotchets. For this is a not over-intelligent world.”—John Fiske.
2. Spencer's Data of Ethics should be rather called "Data of
Selfishness," or "Data of the Animal Well-being of Man," as it does
not go beyond our animal origin, and considers goodness in man
identical in kind with goodness in a dog or in a rock. Mallock, on
the other hand, remains in the clouds, where mankind could not
dwell if it would, and his morality, rooted in these clouds, is thus
a topsy-turvy growth. J. C. Morison, lastly, who has a practical
eye for the needs of our immediate future, unfortunately opens
his book, The Service of Man, with this simile: "A ruined
temple, with its fallen columns and broken arches, is a suggestive
type of the transitory nature of all human handiwork," and applics
this to all human activities, even the highest. Such a view is
dispiriting enough to make one, entering upon this service, throw
up at once and commit suicide; but what is more to the point,
it is false, because one-sided; just as false as is that of a person
with the jaundice, who sees all things yellow. This essay, what-
ever it is, will be found radically different from either of those
three works.
it
In order to get a type that would appear to me adequate of
man's highest work, of that which he has been sent into this
A
2
Our Destiny.
world to do, let me outline a stately tree, a tree whose germ was
planted with the advent of life upon this planet; which has been
growing ever since, and which is destined to reach a marvellous
height and girth, until its rich foliage shall finally overshadow and
shelter the whole world, and its one blossom and one fruit, more
precious by far than all mythological apples, shall fill the earth
with gladness. Such is an approximate, and yet inadequate,
type of man's distinctive work, his permanent work, since by its
fruit it is connected with all eternity; for by the one blossom I
typify his belief in God and by the one fruit his belief in Immor-
tality. This tree, in other words, is a type of what in Greek is
called Ethics, in Latin, Morality, and in Saxon, Righteousness.
Mark, I say, is destined to, for morality is yet but very small, a
stunted bush, and what I wish to emphasise is, that under the
circumstances by which it is and has hitherto been surrounded,
it could not be anything else. I repudiate all physical, materia-
listic morality as utterly false-the gross, initial mistake of
Evolution-moralists-and I contend that the germ of morality has,
sometime and somehow, come upon earth from on high or from
elsewhere. But there is another point, equally important and
certain, which the Intuitionists are just as wrong in ignoring:
namely, that material surroundings, almost exclusively, condition
the growth of this germ; or as the Evolution-moralists rightly
put it: "The moral development of a given period is determined
by the corresponding state of the social evolution."
First, then, it is a fact, that economics, or our material, indus-
trial relations, are the soil in which the roots of morals bury
themselves and from which they draw their nourishment; next, it
is equally a fact, that the state of morals is much dependent
on whether the social atmosphere is cloudy and chilly or
sunny and warm; a third fact is, that just as an apple-tree
produces small, sour fruit, if left in natural neglect, but delicious
pippins, if a skilful gardener gives his attention to it; precisely so
it is with morals. These three facts, soil, cultivation, and atmo-
sphere, the variable and phenomenal phases of morals, together with
its essential nature, are the true "Data of Ethics," and these
we shall study in the first three chapters. In the remaining part
The Soil.
3
of the book we shall follow the growth of morality itself; the per-
manent, eternal essence of man, "the proper science and business
of mankind in general," as Locke says.
This first chapter, then, will be devoted to the impending change
in our industrial system. It may, therefore, contain little novel
to Nationalists or Socialists. But I beg them to remember that
this book is written mainly for outsiders; and also that these
preliminaries are the necessary stepping-stones to what follows.
Few can deny that it is now a very barren soil. Carlyle sneers
at the Englishman's hell: that of "not making money." But,
surely, under our present system lack of wealth is hell, is a true
penal servitude for a man's natural life, together with the tortur
ing consciousness of leaving a like hopeless heritage to his offspring.
With our present conception of life as a competitive race, property
is the sole thing worth a sane man's pursuit, simply because we
cannot be independent, indeed can scarcely be honest without it.
But is not such a life-theory about the most demoralising that
could be promulgated? Certainly it is one which, systematically
acted on, would be fatal to all high aims. "It is a conception of
life which, if true, would make Falstaff the sensible fellow, and all
disinterested servers of mankind noble fools." In what a terrible
dilemma does the fact, that there is no safety for the unpropertied
man, place us! How serious the responsibility for urging choice
spirits to seek higher things than wealth!
}
Again, modern Political Economy, entirely disregarding the
fact that both the Ancients and he who is called its founder in-
sisted upon the unity of morals and economics, has entirely
divorced them. Wealth has thus become an ultimate, instead of
a mediate end, and this has caused Political Economy to be styled
"the dismal science," for it sacrifices human beings to capital;
and makes our national wealth, controlled by shrewd, capable
men, whose object is gain, act like a malarial poison upon a
population of operatives.
To expect robust morals from such a soil would be as unreason-
able as to expect grapes from a vine planted on an iceberg. No
wonder that our professional moral teachers are uncertain what to
teach. In his so-called "Science" of Ethics, Leslie Stephen comes
4
Our Destiny.
to the conclusion, that "in exhorting a man to be virtuous, you
exhort him to acquire a quality which will in many cases make
him less fit than the less moral man for getting the greatest
amount of happiness from a given combination of circumstances,"
and that " as a matter of fact, prudence and virtue often empha-
tically differ." But there is something worse yet. Not only is
conventional morality nothing but calculating prudence, but our
church morality makes selfishness an end; it makes one consider
himself superior to others of his fellow-men; differentiates him
from other poor sinners, and is thereby positively a vicious thing.
No wonder that the blossom and fruit of such a morality must be
correspondingly insignificant, to wit: a God who is simply a bulky
policeman governed by partiality, and an Immortality, consisting
in "such a good time" for our favoured selves in the next world,
while the vast majority of the race goes to perdition.
But morality, true morality, is now avenged! Our present
condition is such, that it may well be doubted if there ever were
more misery in the midst of so much wealth.
We are fast coming to see that the production of wealth is not
the chief interest of a nation; and also that Political Economy
will be forever "dismal and accursed," if it does not change.
3. Sober and well-informed observers, however, perceive that a
large social transformation is actually now going on. Unfortunately,
many leaders of thought are yet profoundly ignorant respecting
these matters. Never was I more amazed, than when I read in a
work, published in 1889, on "State-Socialism," by Claudio.
Jannet, Professor of Political Economy at the Catholic Institute of
Paris, these words: "The State must not pursue the chimera of
bringing production and consumption into equilibrium. Obser-
vation, indeed, shows that there is in humanity, by reason of the
original fall, a certain amount of economic suffering which no
material progress can possibly remedy. The crises of over-pro-
duction are the scourges inherent in our modern economic con-
dition. Catholics who talk of suppressing our economic anarchy,
and of harmony and equilibrium of interests, forget that one of
the consequences of the fall of Adam has been to render labour
The Soil.
5
painful, to make the earth grow thistles." (The professor's own
italics !) "No progress of science, no social institutions, can ever
make them disappear."
What a monumental stupidity in a modern Professor of Politi-
cal Economy! But fortunately, day by day, thoughtful people are
in greater numbers discarding the notion once almost universal,
that social customs and institutions enter into the eternal order of
things in such a way that any thorough-going change must involve
universal ruin. The fact is being recognised, that our world is
everywhere in a constant flux, is at every moment becoming, like a
flowing river which is ever in a condition of change. There is,
however, in this connection, another point of very great practical
importance to which we shall several times in this essay have to
recur, which is not sufficiently recognised, and about which even
Herbert Spencer is apparently at sea, and this is that there are in
human affairs two kinds of evolution which it is highly important
to keep apart. There is the natural evolution-the only one that
Spencer seems to recognise-and that other, brought about by the
voluntary intervention of man: the conscious evolution. The latter
will certainly by-and-bye play far the most important role. That
human intervention can modify social phenomena is the scientific
foundation for all rational hope of a systematic reform of human
affairs; but it is to natural evolution that we so far have been
and, undoubtedly for some time yet to come, will be, almost ex-
clusively, indebted for our progress.
Many have of late been studying this natural evolution, and
think that they now clearly see the direction in which it works,
in one word, its "trend." They think that they have especially
learned the nature of the startling revolution through which our
forefathers passed. The spirit of invention—the most important
thing for our race since Christianity-had fallen upon them,
stirred the human mind and given it a fresh impulse. This im-
pulse has never ceased, but has multiplied human efforts in a hun-
dred new directions and increased a hundredfold man's power
over nature. In all civilised countries it has raised up from the
masses the greatest plutocracy the world has ever seeu, and
this in a century which seemed bent on making equality one of
6
Our Destiny.
its chief social goals--a plutocracy that is now everywhere at its
zenith.
But events are still marching on with their relentless logic. No-
where has this plutocracy had such perfect liberty of action as in
the United States. And there has now come over industry and
business here a startling change which is going on with such rapi-
dity as to suggest the complete abandonment of the principle by
which the industries of the nation have hitherto been developed.
This change is the formation of the "trust:" the merging of our
corporations into a body, outside the control and ignoring the
consent of the State, a body whose Executive Board has full power
of management and full authority to limit or centralize production,
consolidate establishments, purchase raw materials, and supervise
selling prices, terms and conditions. The object of this is greater
regularity of production, steadiness of prices, and a uniform system
of credit, as well as the prevention of unhealthy competition.
But this phenomenon has an inner, underlying meaning. It
presents the question, whether under present conditions society
can continue to develop normally and healthfully in all its parts.
In particular, it brings before the public mind the dilemma:
whether we are to have organized capital, or organized govern-
ment; for this one thing is perfectly evident, that we must in the
future have organized business action of some sort. In other
words, it prepares the public mind, as nothing else could, for—
Socialism.
Observe, there is a good kind, and a bad kind of Socialism, a
Socialism of mutual good will and mutual help as well as a
Socialism of hatred and spoliation. It is the good kind that is
here meant, what we now in America call "Nationalism."
The fact is that competition is the individualistic way of doing
business, and combination, the principle of the trust, is the
socialistic way. Every trust is a concession to Socialism and its
working principles. It is even more: it is a practical confession
of the socialist charges, that competition necessarily involves
great waste, and that by concentration the cost of production can
be materially lessened; while at the same time the market can be
so controlled that no goods need remain unsold. Thus, to take
The Soil.
7
but one example, the Whisky Trust, consisting of eighty dis
tilleries, absolutely finds its advantage in operating but thirteen.
This is an exceedingly important matter and points to several
lessons that should be learned by the public precisely at this
moment. It shows how blindly and stubbornly our political
leaders persist in leading the wrong way. Everyone knows that
just now the Courts of New York are trying to put down the
Sugar Trust by declaring this combination to be for an "unlawful
object." But what matter how many thousand times unlawful a
thing may be, if it only be in the direction of progress, which this
evidently is? What should be seen by our leaders is, that a
"Trust" is a use of Socialism for the benefit of capitalists; and
attention should be called to the practicability of socialist
principles everywhere, and the lesson taught that in no country
can these principles be so easily and quickly applied to business
life as here. If this natural evolution be simply allowed to go on,
and no stumbling-blocks be put in its way, in a very short time,
certainly by the commencement of the twentieth century, we shall
find all social activities conducted by Trusts, from the Atlantic to
the Pacific. What then?
Few people pause to consider that the year 2000 is not farther
ahead of us than the American Revolution is behind us: that it is
our grandchildren who will then be living. Still fewer reflect
upon the extent to which we shall have grown in all respects by
that time, not only in population, in wealth, and in the concentra-
tion of wealth, but, if things continue as they are, also in misery
and discontent. Can any sensible man doubt that long before
that time our children will demand a radical change? And will
they not trust their own Government, properly organised, rather
than organised capital? The State is already becoming a very
practical power among us in the regulation of industry and in as-
suming what have hitherto been regarded as private functions.
The Inter-State Commerce Law is an indication. As Higginson
says pointedly: "Since Government can profitably conduct a
bankrupt railroad by means of a receiver, a good many persons
come to think that it can also carry on a successful one."
The outcome, then, that all this points to is, that our children
8
Our Destiny.
will second this natural evolution by eliminating all useless
functionaries-those whose only "function" is to put the profit
into their own pockets-and by placing the central management
in the hands of the collectivity. Our country, being a self-con-
tained one, is for that reason precisely the one that ought to take
the lead in inaugurating Socialism. There is even now no more
inherent improbability of a Socialist State than there was two
hundred years ago of Democracy. Meanwhile, by the full in-
formation which they are now collecting relative to the various
productive agencies, the Trusts are preparing for such Government
control.
4. It is really a curious fact, and one that furnishes food for
reflection, that while our people are shuddering at the spectre of
destructive Socialism, there is being constructed under our very
eyes a socialist régime, showing us how the environment of the
individual will be changed.
What we now especially suffer from is planlessness; what we
need and must have, what the coming social order will give us,
and what the "Trust" to some extent already provides, is system.
Planlessness, anarchy, is the great trouble, inherent in our in-
dustrial system. Division of labour, as everyone knows, is our
great principle, but it has peculiar dangers. No one now does the
whole of anything, but hands his work over to men of comple-
mentary trades; further, our greatest industries are those which
turn out parts only of things, parts which in themselves are use-
less for human needs, if not complemented by other processes.
This is the world's industry, carried on as a vast co-operation of
labour-an extremely complicated machine in which each trade
represents a wheel. Such a machine makes exceptional demands
on the organising powers of the human brain. The organisation
of industry, as we know it, is kept going by the individual self-
interest of many men, working without the knowledge one of
another, or of one another's doings and intentions. Everyone is
thus guessing, and generally guessing pretty wildly; the wonder
then is, not that there is periodical depression, but that the in-
dustrial machine works at all. The very perfection of organised
#
The Soil,
9
and divided labour demands system: that is the keystone which
is to unite the infinity of human wants and the willingness of un-
employed hands. Its proper working absolutely requires one
mind to look after it, that all its parts may be balanced and
harmonious. Suppose that one head could say to the planters :
"Next season our country will need so many thousand bales of
cotton;" to the spinners: "Have your spindles ready to take up
so many bales;" to the weavers : "Be ready to weave so much
yarn," there would, of course, be insured a steady demand, a
steady supply, continuity of employment, and an absence of de-
pression everywhere.
In this connection, it is important to note that by the actual
state of things the labouring classes have been more pinched than
any other classes of society, and that this has made them more far-
and clear-seeing-self-conscious. It is this that has made them
form their Trades Unions, in which they have had to postpone
their private interests and defer their personal judgments to those
of their fellows and their class. And this brings us to a proposi-
tion, of a most remarkable kind, considering the source whence it
emanates, which is none other than Wm. H. Mallock, who certainly
is best known by his anti-socialistic crusade. He, in a late paper,
proposes to incorporate Trades Unions in a closer and more
recognised way, "in the life of the country;" to enlarge their
powers and character, and at the same time to define their limits,
so that they may come to embrace all the various divisions of the
labouring population. He contends that "the welfare of the
country depends on a balance between the claims, not of a
numerical majority and a numerical minority, but of a variety of
bodies that rank as equals on account of the equally essential
services which each renders to the community." He goes on to
advocate that such legally recognised labour organisations should
represent all interests common to all working-men, "as distinct
from exceptional talent," and be enabled to enforce their claims,
should form "an estate of the realm," as he terms it. "The
justification of such an arrangement," he adds, "lies deep in the
nature of things, and is the only one in complete harmony with
facts,” and is “the only way to lift the masses into a recognised
IO
Our Destiny.
and permanent place in the solid structure of the Commonwealth."
This remarkable advance by Mallock is, in truth, a theoretical
concession to Socialism-as the trust is a practical concession,-
showing that it is in "complete harmony with facts," and has the
force of logic on its side, for the above proposition is virtually what
Socialists and organised labour reformers contend for. We all
know how objectionable the "scab" is to the latter; nothing,
certainly, would please the organised workers better than to see
the law compel all workers to enter a Union, submit to the collec-
tive judgment of their trade, and concur in electing representatives
who should watch over and force forward labour's interests in the
management of the shop and store, as Charles Francis Adams,
jun., President of the Union Pacific Co., has lately suggested in
regard to railroad employees.
"But it is a pity if an employer cannot manage his own business
to suit himself." It may be a pity, but it is true, even now, that
this is exactly what he cannot do. The truth is, it is not "his
"business; the men are in reality his business partners, and
he must manage the business in their interest as well as his own.
own
Well, when the people resolve to have done with all private
business, and to disestablish Trusts, what about the "sacredness
of property?" This simply means, that what the law pronounces
"property" is sacred. The law so styles it because it is thought
most expedient for the social welfare, but as soon as it is found
expedient to announce that for the future certain forms of wealth
shall not be "property," that they shall be used in certain ways
and not in "certain other ways," it will also be discovered that the
State has a perfect right to do this, and that for the wealth thus
appropriated a Socialist State can without difficulty compensate, to
its full value,—without interest. Moreover, whenever wealth is
the fruit of little labour, and much questionable manipulation,
and audacious gambling, under legal forms, such property is
easily regarded as much less sacred, and the legalisation as much
less divine.
Those who are fond of assuming a nation's inability to manage
business affairs should be asked to read in Adam Smith the passage
which criticises public management. Here they will find enum-
The Soil.
II
erated certain enterprises which that author regarded as necessarily
private, and which, nevertheless, are now in the hands of the
State. Indeed, this assumption is now entirely obsolete, since so
many enterprises have taken the form of limited, or joint-stock
companies, the managers of which have no more personal interest
in them than has the superintendent of a well-conducted public
office in it. Such a business can now, without the least difficulty,
be transferred into the hands of the public without any change in
the system of administration.
Albert Stickney has written a book to convince his readers that
the most pressing political need of the people of the United States
is the calling of a national constitutional convention, in accordance
with the provisions of our present constitution, to consider the
question of constitutional amendments. This is, undoubtedly,
the desirable way to make our country a Socialist republic. But
it is very fortunate, that there is no prospect of such a conven-
tion during the next quarter of a century, or before the natural
evolution can have done its work of enlightening the people. It
will need that length of time at least, for the interested capitalists
know how to create public sentiment in their favour, and to them
is due all the talk about the inability and the corruption of the
State. The more lucrative a private enterprise is, and therefore
the greater need that society should conduct it in the interest and
for the benefit of all, the stronger will private parties oppose the
change. Meanwhile all our influence should be directed toward
inciting or compelling the party (or rather the faction), that in
principles stands nearest to us, to apply the principles of Socialism
to enterprises wherein the Constitution is no obstacle; and, on
reflection, we may find a great number of instances where the
several States can adopt these principles to the great advantage of
their people.
5. We now come to the very kernel of this preliminary—the
first great proximate effect of a Socialist régime.
This is Increased Production, the second great desideratum of
our times, but to which the Trusts do not help us a bit. They
12
Our Destiny.
do bring harmony between production and consumption, but this
they do precisely by decreasing the former.
It is a most profound truth which Professor Walker teaches :
"We need a new Adam Smith, to write the economics of consump-
tion, in which will be found the real dynamics of wealth;" yet a
truth to which our employers seem totally blind, since they be-
have as if it were their ideal to have production carried on without
"hands" at all, except perhaps a stoker and an engineer. They
seem constantly to lose sight of the fact, that their boots and shoes
and other products are not consumed by people of another planet;
that we are not even in the position of England, whose products
still, to a great extent, are consumed by foreigners-while we pro-
duce for our own people. Suppose, then, each large factory could
produce millions of dollars worth of goods with but a stoker and
an engineer, would not these goods be valueless in the hands of
producers, since the masses could not buy them, however much
they might want them? Of what use is a wealth of nails if they
cannot be sold? This is brought into still stronger relief in cases
where the "wealth" is in products that only serve as raw materi-
als for other processes-these, when not sold, being entirely value-
less.
Consumption, especially in our country, is, then, truly "the
real dynamics of wealth." Increased production can be sustained
only by increased consumption, and thus the latter is the first
consideration. It is impossible to emphasise this point too much ;
we cannot too strongly insist, that current political economy is
dismal," merely because it has an eye for nothing but production.
It is with that as with happiness-in order to attain it, you must
not make it your goal. Our capacity for production is already
absolutely boundless; it only needs a sufficient stimulus con-
sumption is that stimulus, and the urgent question is how the
coming change will affect consumption.
66
If one go to the root of the matter it will be found that the pre-
sent economic system-because it is a
wage" and a
"profit "
system—artificially limits consumption and destroys the purchas-
ing power of the masses. In thus doing, it chokes production as
if with a ring of granite, just as much as, by bringing inventions,
The Soil.
13
machinery and the division of labour to their present state, it at
first advanced it. What is now needed is simply to destroy this
granite ring, to abolish this profit-mongering, to promote produc-
tion for the satisfaction of social wants, and consumption will then
immediately vastly increase and this will expand production with
a rebound. This is what Nationalism or Socialism means and
what it purposes doing: to enable society—the nation, state, or
municipality, each in its proper sphere-to set all willing hands
and brains to work, by furnishing them the necessary capital;
then we shall have, not the artificial harmony between production
and consumption which the trusts create, but perfect natural
harmony between the capacity for producing and the capacity for
consuming, both of which are even now illimitable. No pamper-
ing, no poverty any longer, but the whole country vibrating with
the music of joyful labour !
It must be evident that this will be a far greater blessing of
Socialism than the equitable distribution which hitherto, even by
Socialists, has been thought to be its greatest effect. What need
we care, if a few get more than their share, if only all others can
have all that they need? But profit-mongering must go, and its
abolition, Mallock warns us, will be disastrous.
He claims that the 500 million pounds, which is now annually
produced in Great Britain, over and above the incomes of forty
years ago, by an equal number of workers, are "evidently" not
the product of labour, but of the "ability" of the Minority.
Then he criticises the position of this writer in these words :
"Laurence Gronlund has been misled in his belief that each step
of industrial progress is a step which, once gained, is gained for-
ever, and that the capitalistic classes have done their work and
given to energy all the productivity required. This is a delusion.
Whatever ability has been needed to cause progress is needed
to keep it from retrogression. The progress of the life of Society
must forever be formed and maintained by the Minority." There-
fore the coming democracy will have to be careful not to "rob the
world of wealth and leisure, the main sources of progressive
industrial energy, of their prizes," i.e., of the results of profit-
mongering, or we shall surely return to barbarism.
14
Our Destiny.
The place and function of THE ABLE MAN in a Socialist Common
wealth will be hereafter discussed; in this place I will say merely
a few words about Mallock's "ability," which is supposed to have
created the above surplus, and which makes its activity contingent
upon profits.
He has in another place explained it. He supposes a capitalist
to buy a bankrupt factory, and during the first year to make a
profit of 100,000 dols. by changing, in an infinitesimal degree,
the products to suit the fancy of certain customers. This profit,
and the whole of it, he now claims to be the fruit, exclusively, of
the "
ability" of this capitalist, and to belong, and to belong
justly to him, and to him alone. You are perfectly right, we
reply; under the present competitive system it would be sheer
folly to confiscate these profits for the benefit of the operatives,
simply because under this system it is the special function of the
wise organiser and manager to keep a watchful eye on what con-
sumers need, and to have it ready at the time and place, and in
the form in which it is wanted, and in no greater quantities than
is needed. But in the Socialist republic, while the Able Man
will be far more in demand than now, this special sort of "ability"
will become perfectly superfluous, because system will have been
introduced everywhere. No huge quantities of goods will then be
produced in anticipation of an uncertain demand; no guesswork
and no secrecy will be requisite anywhere.
In passing, it may be remarked, that the functions of the
capitalistic employer of a hundred years ago and the period im-
mediately following are in our time being increasingly performed
by salaried managers of impersonal companies, officials who
certainly ought to find their advantage in being turned into the
ministers of a democratic state.
And this has the closest possible connection with the move-
ment, soon to assume practical shape in our country, for a normal
working day of eight hours. In this connection it is worth while
to recall Professor Walker's declaration: "self-assertion by the
working classes is an important factor in the beneficent distribu-
tion of wealth-" and, we add, in the production of wealth.
Organised labour proves itself far more intelligent and clear-
The Soil.
15
sighted than does such a journal as the New York Evening Post,
when it sneeringly asks, "if reduction of hours of labour leads to
increased production, why should not the condition of the race
be infinitely improved by a general cessation of industry?"
Organised labour can give the Post the economic instruction it
so sadly needs. The lack of consumption in "the masses," of
which we have spoken, is almost synonymous with the low level
of "working-class" comfort, because (though of course the wage-
workers are not literally the same as the masses, and still less are
the labourers out of employment), depression in one place quickly
propagates itself by contagion. We are, in other words, shut up
in a circle we cannot have steady production if we have not
steady consumption; we cannot have the latter if the workers,
and all the workers, are not kept in steady production. A reduc-
tion in the hours of labour will certainly have the result of giving
employment and decent wages to the large numbers of labourers
now in enforced idleness, and thereby of increasing the effective
demand-the ability to buy-of the entire working-class. Again,
such a reduction will increase the intelligence, the good-will and
the social estimation in which the labourer is held, and that, in
subtle ways, will react on production, both as to quantity and
quality.
6. We have now reached the second proximate effect of a
Socialistic régime and the immediate consequence of System and
Abundance of Independence or Freedom, as opposed to the in-
security—or so-called Liberty, which is now the lot of the masses.
The conception of life as a "competitive race" is bad enough, but
even this is only for the comfortable ones. Most men do not
know about any "race;" they have trouble enough to live.
Ask them what they are striving for, and they will reply: "God
knows, we have no time to think of the future; we have enough
to do in protecting ourselves and our children from the pressure
of the present." The great crime of the fortunate ones has been
that hitherto they have neither known, nor cared to know, how the
vast majority lives, but have stood aloof from it and left it in degrad-
ing want and abject helplessness.
16
Our Destiny.
Look at the wage-earner in steady employment and see what his
“independence” in this blessed country amounts to. The Census
of 1880 tells us that the average wage is less than seven dols. a
week. The chiefs of labour statistics in two of the most favoured
states of the Union, Massachusetts in the East, and Illinois in the
West, inform us that the majority of working-men, those who are
sober and industrious, cannot make both ends meet, without
sending their tender children to the factory. And for the
privilege of earning this "livelihood" the wage-earner is indebted
to the favour of some individual, his master, upon whose will and
whim he is constantly dependent during the whole term of his
employment.
The wage system is founded on the pestilent heresy, that
labour is a commodity, a ware. By denouncing this doctrine in
their late pastoral the bishops of the Episcopal Church nobly did
their duty. The worst effect of the system, that which makes it
almost satanic, is, not that it makes some rich and makes others
poor, but that, by placing one class in the power of the other,
to be used as means to its ends, it destroys all truly human
relations, fills the one with lordly hauteur, the other with servility,
divides the nation against itself and defeats the ends of humanity.
Ah, but what shall we, then, say of those who can find no work,
who would consider themselves happy, blessed, if they had a
"master?" That is the terrible fact which finally moved
Mallock. He now admits that insecurity is the real injury to, and
grievance of, the modern labourer. "To be discharged means to
be cut off from society, thrust out of all connection with civilisa-
tion; this makes want of employment a real torture to him.
Not alone the actual pain of being out of work for a time, but the
anxiety the worker experiences in securing another engagement —
all this forms not alone inconvenience, but sometimes bitterness,
and, more than that, it is a constant reminder to him how insecure
is his tenure of his individual share in civilisation." Now, the
nationalisation of industries will necessarily be attended with the
following results:
First, everyone will become a public functionary and will be
entitled to suitable work from the Commonwealth.
Our progress
The Soil.
17
so far has been from status to contract-the latter, we shall after-
wards see, can be but a transition stage; we shall in the future
have status once more, but on a higher plane; formerly, birth
determined condition, henceforth capacity will be the controlling
factor. Dependence on individuals and on their pleasure will
consequently cease, while all, without exception, will equally
depend on the impersonal collectivity in a far purer form than do
our present public functionaries who owe far more to favour than
to merit.
This demands a true civil service reform. It is to be regretted
that the petitions for a national telegraph system did not embrace
a demand for an administrative system, similar to what President
Adams proposes for railroad employees. In substance this would
consist of a Board, nominated by the employees, which would
have to adjudicate upon all grievances, secure to those already in
the service tenure during good behaviour and due promotion to
even the highest places, as well as to make all new appointments.
A similar system should apply to each service as soon as
nationalised.
Professor Graham insists that there are three "deep, dominant
and not decreasing " desires, which the social system of the future
must not contravene. The first of these is freedom of speech and
action; that, we now have shown, will be guaranteed by
Socialism.
Second, we can surely say, without here entering into details,
that there will result a more equitable distribution of wealth,
which has hitherto been thought to be the principal effect of
Socialism, but which we have seen must give precedence to in-
crease of production. Without discussing the principle of distri-
bution, we can say that those performing the lowest offices will
be paid sufficient to lead a life worthy of a man; and that dis-
agreeableness of occupation will increase rather than diminish the
pay. Imagine the man carting muck paid as well as he who sells
tape! This alone will grind existing arrangements to powder.
Hence, we insist, that Professor Graham's second desire" the
instinct,” as he calls it, "of private property "—will also be grati-
fied by Socialism. Far from doing away with private property, it
B
18
Our Destiny.
will enable everybody to acquire property; it will consecrate it by
placing it on the unimpeachable basis of personal, useful effort.
If a man desires to accumulate and save his earnings, let him do
so, and let him use them in any way he pleases, except in fleecing
his fellow-citizens therewith. How tremendous will be the gain
to Society when pauperism, the social Inferno which is the shame
and danger of our civilisation, has disappeared! This pauperism
is nothing but the necessary fruit of the wage-system which im-
peratively requires a reserve army of labourers.
Third, Graham's last "deep and dominant" desire—" free scope
for choosing one's career," with all that this implies, will to an
extent now unknown be guaranteed by Socialism, as everyone
must see on reflection.
career.
At present it is almost exclusively chance that determines one's
Under Socialism the youth will, first, have every oppor-
tunity of discovering that for which he is especially adapted; and
it will be to the interest of Society that he be assigned a place in
conformity with his capacity. Then, he will enter a Trades Union
which, as "an estate of the realm," in Mallock's language, will do
its work in perfect liberty, subject only to the superintendence of
the central management. Rules, of course, there must be; but
they will mainly be such as are made by the Union of which he
is an active member; i.e., they will be self-made.
7. But we have not finished with the hardships of which the
new order will relieve the wage-earners and which have now to be
borne by them, unknown to our comfortable people. Insecurity
and dependence are bad enough; but how many of our leisured
class ever reflect upon what it means to toil day in and day out,
from early morning till six at night, merely for a living, for a
livelihood, that, as we have seen, cannot in the majority of cases
make both ends meet? And, mark, this is the lot of the more
fortunate portion of the masses! Think of this, for once, and say
if it be not an outrage, that our "glorious" civilization has brought
the masses nothing but the poor privilege of living in order that
they may work ?
The masses now groan, some under excess of toil, others under
The Soil
19
its monstrous opposite, enforced idleness. Socialism will give
them blessed Leisure. There is a radical distinction between leisure
and idleness. The former means the free time that follows upon
a proper period of pleasant labour, rewarded by a secured, decent
existence. Enforced idleness is infinitely worse than toil, is the
industrial horror that serves as invisible chains, more potent than
actual chains, to keep the modern serf to his daily task, in-as-much
as for him who is emancipated a more terrible fate is in store:
that of being suspended over the abyss of pauperism.
To live in order to work-what a miserable contrast to to
work in order to live!" That life was given us to enjoy, few in
their sober senses doubt.
of enjoyments for all-for the greatest number at least; a few
possibly are destined to the grander, and, to them, the more con-
genial task of being severely but divinely sad." So clear is this,
that we cannot hesitate to pronounce that the man who is not
happy is not fulfilling the purpose of his existence. I do not for-
get, I rather wish to note, that it is not only the toilers, but
frequently also the employers, who suffer from lack of leisure.
We need only to recall what physicians tell us, that they meet
with numerous instances of nervous exhaustion among merchants
and manufacturers, a consequence of the great strain which the
industrial leaders are under to attain the impossible--and this is
as little from choice with them as with the operatives. Among
that class we find weariness, satiety of material sweets, ruined
nerves, and the relish for life gone.
"The earth is arranged to be a scene
The more we study these facts, the nearer we arrive at the cer-
tainty that the scantiness of man's joys is traceable to his unskil-
ful use of the existing provisions, and to his contravention of the
evident design, and that this scantiness is the fruit of our indus-
trial system.
It is, further, noteworthy that this lack of leisure is very unpro-
fitable to society. Genius is now looked upon as a rare gem, and
mediocrity is considered rather our normal condition. This, as
Lester Ward insists upon, is not at all as it should be.
As a
matter of fact, in all the civilized nations, and certainly not least
among Americans, there is an abundance of genius everywhere,
20
Our Destiny.
and again, there is a complete equality among the different classes,
in the sense that the opportunities for discovering native genius
are the same in the various classes. Yes, even in the "dregs"
of society, in "the belly of the abyss," there are men of genius;
men intended for poets, philosophers, artists, inventors, equipped
and endowed by nature for such careers, may be found in the
mournful company of the "lack-alls." "What might be grain is
now grass, because, especially by their excessive hours of labour,
these classes are crushed into a condition far below their possibili-
ties." All that is required to find and expand this genius is to
extend opportunity to all members of society-particularly leisure.
Then so-called feats of genius will be found to be the normal ac-
tivity of the race.
""
Our "self-made men show what grand individual types our
working classes may develop-no, we might rather say, they do
not show, and cannot show this at all, because the way by which
they have raised themselves is radically wrong. In order
to succeed, they have had to carry on a life-long battle
against obstacles, to display inordinate individuality, amounting
to conceit, thus immensely narrowing their mental horizon. For,
observe, genius is not strengthened by struggling, as is generally
supposed. It is universally true that real greatness is timid; the
finer it is in quality, the more it recoils from obstacles and shrinks
from hostility; true merit, indeed, as a rule, never creates its op-
portunities. Society has hitherto lost tremendously by its
negligence. Merely by furnishing leisure and opportunity
Socialism will convert latent talent into an enormous civilising force,
of which the little that now shines forth is but a glimmer.
8. For the purpose of this essay, it is assumed that all these
acquisitions, Leisure, Security and Plenty are, within a measure-
able period, to become the birthright of all as the products of
natural evolution. We have a right to assume this, for everyone
who will open his eyes and be honest to himself must admit that
the tendency of things is in this direction. Of course, we cannot
dispute with Professor Gide of Montpelier, France, his right to
The Soil.
21
say that he believes this tendency will soon be reversed.¹ All
signs and portents show that the face of mankind has already been
set in a socialist direction, and so far there has been no looking
backward. And as it has been, so will it continue to be, a matter
of natural evolution, of which the change in our brains forms
part. There has been the access of a new, radical, divine order
in human life, that is disintegrating the old, outworn, temporary
organisation, and gradually creating the new. When the socialist
régime is born, then will it be time for society to second this
natural evolution, time for the conscious evolution. Lester F.
Ward 2 is premature when he insists we should commence now
and begin with education. Mankind will not be ready for this
until hunger has ceased and leisure has been obtained.
But these attainments, far from being the end, form but the
starting point. Here is where Herbert Spencer is radically wrong.
He, who knows nothing of men's assisting natural evolution,
fancies that this transition principle of competition and "sphere
of contract" will ultimately lead us to what he apparently con-
siders an ideal state:
"A Society is conceivable of men leading inoffensive lives,
scrupulously fulfilling their contracts, who yet yield to each other
no other advantage beyond those agreed upon."
To this it may be observed, first, that in supposing it possible
that the present system could ever bring in such a social state,
Spencer proves himself a true representative "middle-class" man;
for a distinguishing trait of the present narrow-minded ruling
classes, the "bourgeoisie," is the assumption that everyone is, or
might and ought to be, a "bourgeois." Next, it is doubtful
whether a society like the above is conceivable, except it be com-
posed of a crowd of monads, each governed by independent, in-
herent laws. At all events I deliberately avow my firm con-
viction, that a company composed of all the present inmates of
our penitentiaries would be preferable to such an “ideal” com-
munity; these would, at any rate, be men with human virtues as
¹I, however, understand, that M. Gide, ed. of La Revue Economique,
now admits this to be a mistake.
2 In Dynamic Sociology.
22
Our Destiny
At
well as frailties. Again, if the evolution in the midst of which we
now find ourselves should issue in such a race of "bourgeois,"
"scrupulously fulfilling their contracts:" if it should end by
merely procuring material well-being to all the inhabitants of the
United States, and nothing further, I frankly declare that I would
not lift my little finger to help bring about such a result. And I
have had a sufficiently practical, though a short, experience of such
a community, for Spencer's "ideal State" is actually realised on
a small scale in our day. I refer to the so-called Familistère in
Guise, France, founded thirty years ago, by the late M. Godin. This
is the only successful instance of the practical application of Fourier-
ism to business, a wave of which in the forties passed over the United
States and resulted in several short-lived experiments, like the
Brook Farm, scarcely any of which survived into their teens.
Guise nearly 2,000 persons live together in two huge buildings,
and enjoy some of the material advantages which we have supposed
Socialism will bring to our people. They have an abundance of
the necessaries and material comforts of life and enjoy security of
existence. They do not work quite so many hours a day as is usual
in France, and have somewhat higher wages, together with un-
interrupted employment. In addition to this, if their income, for
any reason, falls short of a given minimum, they are compensated
from a fund set apart for that purpose; if they fall sick they are
paid from the sick fund, and on reaching old age they receive a
pension. Among them pauperism, and we may say poverty in its
harshest form, are thus unknown. If this result could be accom-
plished throughout such a country as ours, a great step,
undoubtedly, would have been taken. Godin has done this great
thing: shown that it can be done. He said to this writer:
"Make of France 18,000 Familistères and la misère is abolished."
Very true. But he added, "and the social problem is solved."
Oh, no! It is just when I imagine the United States divided into
23,000 such “Familistères" that I shudder, and decline to move
a finger to help to bring it about.
For that something is the matter appears from this fact; now
and then one of the intelligent Parisian artisans, moved by the
evident material advantages of the institution, goes there, but if
The Soil.
23
he has means to get away, he hardly ever stays more than three
months. Then he directs his steps back to Paris. What is the
matter?
The truth is, this so-called "Social Palace" is not at all a
"Socialistic Model," as Godin unfortunately held it up to be.
Intellectually and, moreover, socially, it is a failure. The people
are unsocial and unsympathetic; there are absolutely no social
gatherings, no clubs, no literary or debating societies among them,
as one would naturally expect; and the reason is a simple one ;
the material success as well as the failures are due to the character
of the founder. It will sound incredible, when I say, as I do on
good authority, that during the thirty years of the existence of
the institution, Godin, a social reformer, never once crossed the
thresholds of the people, among whom he resided, to sympathise
with them or press their hands in token of his sharing their joys
and their sorrows. This characterises his sociability and explains
that of his people. His intellectual standing will be sufficiently
shown by stating that he habitually consulted his "spirit friends,"
and that his principal efforts to raise his people intellectually
consisted in attempts to initiate them into Spiritualism. It may
be added, that respecting Karl Marx he once made this remark to
the writer: "Pooh! he did not found a Familistère !"
But in Godin's experiment we have indeed Spencer's ideal:
"an industrious people, leading inoffensive lives, and scrupulously
fulfilling their contracts, but yielding to each other no advantages
beyond their contracts." The Familistère was, indeed, worth the
three months' study that I devoted to it, if simply to become
convinced that material well-being is not sufficient for a people
and must not be made an end. But yet for all intellectual and
moral advancement it is a pre-requisite as necessary as the soil.
Subserviency to material interests has hitherto degraded human
life to the ground, but ere long, by providing for his honest,
orderly, physical subsistence, society will relieve everyone of her
members from this, and leave the heart and the mind free for
higher aspirations.
This chapter commenced with noting the fundamental difference
between this book and the The Service of Man. It is now evident
24
Our Destiny.
that we have made our start, not from the clouds, like Is Life
Worth Living? but from our actual environment. The next
chapter will-unlike the Data of Ethics, which derives our whole
manhood from our animal basis-emphasise the higher element in
human nature, which I maintain is fully as much a fact as our
animal inheritance, that is, we shall pass to the examination of the
essence of morality.
CHAPTER II.
THE SOCIAL BOND.
"Morality would subsist to all eternity, though all religions were swept
into oblivion."-W. S. Lilly.
9. The great question is: Will the future society be a pigsty,
filled with well-fed hogs, or the kingdom of heaven on earth?
The answer depends, I hold, entirely on what morality really is.
Many men look upon morality as mere sentiment, really of no
practical import to themselves. The first Napoleon stands for a
large class of brainy, practical intellects, who see in it something
only for bibs and tuckers and stupid people. Our churches teach
an almost equally mischievous doctrine, that it mainly serves to
divide us into saints and sinners. This depreciation and mis-
apprehension of true morality constitutes our greatest mis-
fortune, and is the main cause why we all, even men of the
greatest material and mental endowments, lead such unsatisfactory
lives.
I honestly believe I have something important to say on this
subject. It is, that Socialism, so despised or so feared by my
fellow-men in their blindness, is, if profoundly studied, a bearer of
a revelation to us: that it reveals morality in all its grand
proportions, and shows it to us as the prize of life, the proper
object of our life work.
We must start from a point that all will agree upon.
First, our world is a cosmos, a world of Order. Morality is an
off-spring of this Order, of the Empire of Necessity that surrounds.
us.
The most persistent advocates of Free-will must agree to this
proposition as well as the firmest "Determinists." In spite of
our metaphysical differences, that is what we all rely upon in
25
26
Our Destiny.
practice. Whenever governments legislate to restrain crime,
whenever teachers train pupils, whenever political economists put
their theories into practice, they all assume, that by influencing
motives, they can direct the actions both of so-called "good" and
"bad" men.
And what a fatal possession would an absolutely
free will be to us! It would in truth be an evil, more disastrous
than any actual misery whatever to which we are now subject.
If something, if sympathy and duty could not determine our will,
we should constantly tremble at thinking what our actions would
be the next moment. It is because our will fortunately is not
"free" in this sense, that we feel insulted by being supposed
capable of a mean action; and that men of healthy judgment
know that every man cannot be bribed, and every woman cannot
be led astray.
Aye, hence it is that every one of us now relies,
even for life itself, on the aptitude and integrity of a multitude of
unknown agents, whose folly or wickedness might effect the
destruction of us all. Could we possibly be tranquil for a single
moment if the locomotive engineer was not every moment
subject to ordinary motives? All co-operation depends on our
not being "free."
But, like thoughtless children, we do not reflect on the inner
meaning and significance of this suggestive fact. This empire of
necessity which science everywhere discloses in the world of mind
as of matter, in the succession of thoughts and volitions is not a
prison, is not a tyrannical master that necessarily oppresses us.
It does not make this world a world of fatalism, but it does forbid
anarchy and makes it a world of order. It prevents us from
making a tangle of existence. Indeed, natural evolution has
prepared for us a path from which it has been made impossible
for us to deviate considerably. And it has done very much more.
Far from being a necessity to which we only can bow our heads,
we, by that very necessity, acquire practical freedom as soon as we
come to self-consciousness. By obeying nature, we rule it. By
knowledge of its uniform behaviour, we can press the laws into
our service; the more completely nature, including our own
bodily and mental states, passes under the dominion of established
laws, the more we can avail ourselves of them. We can increase,
The Social Bond.
27
vary, modify, neutralise the operation of laws, but only by the
action of other laws. We can summon one law to our aid, to
deliver us from the evil effect of another law. Though each item
of our deliberation is controlled by motives, we can labour for
distant ends and choose appropriate means to reach a foreseen
goal. As we progress, less of chance is pressing on us and more
choice allowed us. We may even be able to subdue the maleficent
forms of disease. This very necessity, while it prescribes to us
our goal and our destiny, makes us the seconders, the co-workers oj
natural evolution, and to that extent "in action like an angel, in
comprehension like God."
Again, this empire of necessity lays the foundation for the
important distinction, later to be made, between conventional
morality and true morality. The delusion, that we are wholly
the smiths of our own character, has filled our moral" men, who
never experienced temptation, with a foolish, selfish, anti-social
pride, divided us into two bodies, each going its separate way to
all eternity, and nourished a sneaking private design on God's
bounty in the shape of personal salvation. But the empire of
necessity, when it is thoroughly appreciated, will lead to three
important conclusions. First, it will demolish this unsocial pride
and teach us that a criminal who has at times loved what is good,
true and beautiful, and has striven after it, is nobler than a
"moral
man who is selfish and never has wished to become
better. Second, that there is a spark of the divine in even our
thieves and murderers; that they are what they are, to a great
extent, because our better circumstanced people have kept aloof
from them; and third, that our destiny, whatever it be, is the
same for us all. Sir James Stephen very strongly blames the
sentimental twaddle of indiscriminate love for all humanity, and
insists that it is part of a wholesome character to detest sin and
wickedness. True enough, but at the same time we shall be made to
understand that the Empire of Necessity is a fact which imposes
upon us a burden we cannot throw off: to look after and im-
prove our bad characters.
>>
Thus Order is the natural foundation for Socialism, and so far
from disposing us to inaction, regulates our activity, so as to in-
28
Our Destiny.
crease its range and render it effective. A vagrant and visionary
liberty-because after all in constant subjection to unforeseen
influences, external and internal—is thus superceded by a noble
law of common progress, which not only regulates the individual,
but combines bodies of men, fostering the dispositions that bring
men together and suppressing those which put men asunder.
10. Now what is Morality? I answer, just as a physical "law"
is the expression of the relation of the order of the world to things,
so Morality is the expression of its relation to men.
As a pre-
liminary definition, we can say that Morality is the force that
binds men in Societies, as the force of gravitation binds men to
the earth.
This fact shows us the blunder in the position of the Anarchists.
One of their spokesmen says: "the duty of the individual to
sacrifice himself to God, the state, the community, the 'cause' of
anything is a superstition that always makes for tyranny." In
other words they stubbornly refuse to see facts as they are. Is it
not poor philosophy to call a "superstition" that fact of whose
existence their own disciples furnish abundant proof? What in-
dividuals have in their generation more readily sacrificed them-
selves for a "cause than the Russian and the Chicago Anar-
chists? The worst in these teachings, however, is, not that it is
poor philosophy, but that it is shockingly and dangerously im-
moral.
""
Yet this must be granted: that the Anarchists are logical, far
more logical than Herbert Spencer; it is their premises that are
wrong. These premises are furnished them by Spencer's Data of
Ethics and Mill's Utilitarianism, to wit: that we are a crowd of
monads, each governed by independent, inherent laws, and that
we have come into this life, each for the sake of himself—these
doctrines are a corollary to Spencer's ideal state, and Mill's teach-
ing that sexual "experiments in living" are outside the sphere of
social sanction, and that men have always acted, and particularly
have formed society, from motives of utility. These teachings,
carried out to their logical conclusion, evidently end in Anarchism.
But these doctrines are false; they do not harmonize with facts.
The Social Bond.
29
Take the last. A social state would never have existed, if its
rise had depended on a conviction of its utility to the individual.
Such utility did not and could not manifest itself till after a long
preparatory development of the society which it was supposed to
have created. And then the fact is, that its utility is less than its
burdens. No, undoubtedly, society arose from a radically different
cause, one that is in the closest possible connection with our de-
finition of Morality. We have said that it is "the force that
binds us together in Society" and it is this same force, an innate,
social sentiment, that originally drew man and his fellows together,
and in so doing formed Society—whether clan, tribe or nation. A
far more correct conception of the matter than is enunciated by
Spencer with his "monad" theory, and the old philosopher, Aris-
totle, when he defined man as a "social animal;" that is to say,
that only in unity with one's fellows does the individual ego realize
its true being. To be "moral" can thus be said to be synonymous
with being "social" in its profound sense.
But let us go deeper. To form a Society and live in it involves
co-operation from the start; this, again, elementary subordina-
tion; that is to say, both in forming Society and co-operating
with our fellows we-obey. To be sure, this word in our age of
individualism is almost tabooed; at least, it jars on our nerves, but
it really cannot be helped; if we honestly interpret the facts of
existence, we must say that to obey is the very foundation both of
society and sociology. Indeed, we may say, that the germ of
morals is, in its very essence, obedience. Man is truly made to
obey, and to feel remorse if he does not obey.
There is a much stronger inclination to obedience in the gener-
ality of men than it is customary in our day to suppose.
If men
were as rebellious as they are represented to be, it would be diffi-
cult to see how they ever could have been disciplined. I affirm,
on the contrary, that there is in all of us a natural disposition to
obedience; it is certain that we are all of us more or less disposed
to respect any real superiority, especially intellectual and moral,
in others, independently of any advantage that may accrue to us.
Who, in these anarchic times of ours, has not in his secret mind
often felt how sweet it would be to obey, if he could have the rare
30
Our Destiny.
privilege of assigning burdensome responsibility for his conduct to
wise guidance ?—a feeling, in fact, strongest in those best fitted to
rule. Indeed, as to the fact of obedience, there is no difference
between the Anarchists and us; the difference comes in somewhere
else. They obey as much as anybody. Whenever the spirit of
revolutionary destruction was abroad in France, the hottest revolu-
tionists manifested a scrupulous obedience to their chosen guides.
Trades Unionists are distinguished by their perfect trust and
confidence in their leaders. The instinct of submission is so
great in us that we lavish it far too often on deceptive appear-
ances.
But obedience is one side of the shield, the other is-authority.
Here is where the difference comes in. Anarchism wants to
abolish and discredit authority. Socialism, on the contrary, exalts
it. This is a difference as radical as that between the North and
the South pole; and to confound the two systems, as is constantly
being done, is positively disastrous. This is the principal reason
why the new term "Nationalism," even if not absolutely adequate,
should be welcomed by American Socialists. Since Anarchists, as
a matter of fact, do not get rid of obedience, they cannot logically
get rid of authority—"even Anarchy must have a centre," as
Carlyle, with a really profound apprehension of human nature,
said. All co-operation needs a representative organ; if not so
concentrated, it is sterile. Hence society without government is
impossible.
The question is not, whether we shall, or shall not, have
authority, but whether it is a sham or a true authority. The
only true authority, at bottom, is the order of the world, the
Universal Order, and every other authority must agree with it.
Every social authority, furthermore, is constituted by a correspond-
ing assent, spontaneous or deliberate, of various individual wills
which concur in a common action, and of which it is the organ.
This aggregate of individual wills, the effective majority, those
who have come to social consciousness, and from whom issues the
categorical imperative, constitute the sovereignty of a nation. The
authority that occupies the seat of this sovereignty is hence
derived from concurrence, and in no other way; and the more
The Social Bond.
31
extensive the society, the more irresistible the correspondence-
such is, even, the authority of the German Kaiser and the Czar
of Russia. It is no use to quarrel with this arrangement any more
than with the force of gravitation. There is in every nation a seat
of sovereignty as surely as in every body there is a centre of
gravity, and some person or persons are sure of occupying it.
Only when the occupant is in touch with this effective majority,
the socially conscious portion of the people, or (what is really the
same thing) the trend of social evolution, is it a true authority;
otherwise, it is a sham.
Here we meet with the other constituent element of Morality,
subordinate, however, to order: Freewill; so that now we can
define Morality subjectively as: the conscious, voluntary co-operation
with the Universal Order, with true authority. Herein is to be
found the dignity of man.
Spencer, Stephen, and all Evolution-moralists are really astray,
when, in place of the supernatural system, which is supposed to
be tottering to its fall, they seek to set up "a new regulative
system," which shall restrain the moral conduct of future genera-
tions. They are not a bit wiser than Mallock, but like him, they
fancy that current morality has its roots in the clouds. We do
not need any regulative system from them or anybody else. The
forces which produced Morality are ever present to sustain it, and
are, age after age, acquiring an increasing power. Morality faces
us everywhere with its categorical imperative, while, at the same
time, it is coming more and more to surround us with an atmo-
sphere of love.
11. Let us recall our definition of Morality objectively: that it
is the "force that binds us together." Now this force consists of a
threefold strand: home is our affectional, country our practical,
and humanity our intellectual force. All these are requisite to
our development; and great as is the misfortune, that continental
Socialists want to dispense with the second, with country and
patriotism, actually stamping the latter a vice, just so fortunate is
it, that the very sound of "Nationalism" consecrates patriotism as
an ethical sentiment. It is geographical considerations that
32
Our Destiny.
explain and excuse the former, for Socialism is impossible in any
one continental country, so long as any others of those countries
maintain the old régime; therefore the working-classes there clasp
hands, ignoring their national characteristics; but the United
States is in the unique position of being able to successfully in-
augurate Socialism, and thus best serve humanity, by pursuing the
even tenor of her history.
One's country, we then say, is the practical force, where primarily
authority resides. The home and family frequently create an
obnoxious bias, arouse a sort of aggregate selfishness, and even
become a centre of personal selfishness. Hence it is the office of
democracy to put down family pride and exclusiveness, or, by
means of country, to raise it one step higher-converting it into
collective egoism. Humanity, on the other hand, is too vague to
be practical at present, although, by its universality, it is our
intellectual force. Love of mankind or aspirations after universal
association are yet too weak a sentiment to move any but
the choicest spirits. Moreover, the nation seems to be a necessary
stage in
our evolution toward the highest unity.
Let me
use an illustration. Suppose we have a vessel and in it a liquid
which we want to convert into a solid. One way to accomplish
this is to cause it to coagulate gradually and equally throughout
the entire mass; another way would be to make the liquid
thicken at various points throughout the mass, so that a number
of gradually increasing nuclei would be formed which, during
this process, would seem to repel, and actually would repel one
another; when this absorbtion was complete the nuclei them-
selves would attract each other, till we had the one compact
solid. Is not this the way in which actually the solidarity of
mankind seems to be accomplished? We can apply this illustra-
tion to the formation of nations out of classes and provinces (or
out of our states), and also of humanity out of nations, which like
the above nuclei show a considerable mutual antagonism during
the process.
But the common destiny, i.e., the organic unity,
of Europe was a fact, even when every European nation looked
on every other as its natural and permanent enemy.
This intermediate stage is, in our days, nothing narrower than
The Social Bond.
33
one's country, the nation. In ancient Greece it was the city. At
present it is also with the municipality that the individual is
chiefly concerned. It determines the sum of existences proper to
each family, since even in our anarchic days the general distribu-
tion of labour determines men's respective occupations everywhere.
Hence, every one is, in the first place, a citizen. But the leaders
of the Paris Commune were egregiously in the wrong, positively
reactionary, when they insisted on the Commune, the municipality,
as the sovereign collectivity. The city has now, historically, ex-
panded into the nation, "the fatherland;" and it is history that
settles the matter. The nation it is that has subordinated all
individual efforts to a public activity, carried on by successive
generations, and thereby it has become the symbol to the mind
and heart, when our memories of the past, our feelings as to the
present, and our wishes for the future seek a centre for common
efforts. This centre we express by the word sovereignty, and this
is the historical acquisition of the nation, and therefore it
the authoritative and practical force. Both history and practical
politics unceremoniously disregard the protests of Spencer and
the Anarchists. Every nation asserts itself as a power that spends
the property and person of the individual without regard to his
wishes, and that destroys his life in punishment such as no
"Social Contract" can explain by the most palpable fiction. Yet
the people do not seem to call in question the morality of such
procedure.
Herbert Spencer, further, denies the expediency and rightful-
ness of the State, alleging that it is no longer needed for the
personal security of the individual. This is very shallow indeed,
and nothing but prejudice. There will be more said on this
important point in another place; here only this: that the State
or Government has a function, far more important than that of
restraining—which in fact is only temporary-and that is that
of regulation, accommodation and amelioration. It is the cohesive
force of society, absolutely needed, so long as our self-regarding
instincts are more energetic than those that prompt us to union;
but afterwards it will be needed to combine and direct and adjust;
it is by it that we establish a sense of real solidarity throughout
3.4
Our Destiny.
all generations, and it alone is able to fuse the various industrial
classes, which now is so much needed. That is why it is growing
in influence.
Till then patriotism will remain the type of the ideal social
feeling; but it needs to be transformed into a persistent dis-
position to perfect our country as a servant of humanity, without
concealing her shortcomings. We should be glad that so broad
and wide a feeling as that, embracing our country, has the
influence that it has. We shall have plenty of use for it, for
we are not yet truly a nation, nor, for that matter, is any other
people.
American Socialists, or Nationalists, have every reason to foster
patriotism, because, as already said, our country needs only to
pursue the line of its previous history; we need only point to our
Constitution, our Declaration of Independence, and the founda-
tion laid by the Puritans. We probably shall realise Socialism
in advance of other nations, and thus be called upon to show
them the way; first, because we are a self-sufficing country-in
that respect having a great advantage even over Great Britain;
next, because we have had most practice in self-government; and
lastly, because there really exists good-will between our various
classes. Moreover, in spite of our reputation abroad of worshipping
the "almighty dollar," our two great wars have shown that we know
how to risk our lives for ideals: that of the Revolution was
waged for a point of honour, that of the Rebellion for human
liberty and union. Every fibre of ours ought to thrill with
patriotism.
12. So far, we have seen that morality is the conscious voluntary
co-operation with what has shown itself to be true authority. But
all co-operation involves an end, an object. We therefore ask,
for what purpose, to accomplish what? Here I state simply the
conclusion, leaving the details of the argument for the following
chapters.
First, experience, and especially the highest experience, teaches
us that if we pursue our individual happiness with conscious and
relentless purpose, we surely fail. It teaches us further—and this
The Social Bond.
35
is certainly a point of the greatest importance-that the highest
development of the individual is evidently not what man is designed
for. Is it not a fact, which the fearful penalties undergone by so
many ought by this time to have knocked into our heads, that
one of man's component elements cannot reach the highest develop-
ment of which it is susceptible except by maltreatment of, and
injury or peril to the other? That the mind, especially, which is
regarded as the noblest part, can only attain supremacy under
bodily conditions which imply or threaten disease? Again, does not
the individual appear to have reached his perfection centuries ago?
It is universally admitted, that for the highest reach and range
and power of mental capacity in every line, the lapse of two to
three thousand years have shown no sign of increase. Our
knowledge, to be sure, has gone on increasing. But very early, I
should say, in history the power behind evolution gave to us
patterns and types to imitate and approach—not to transcend.
Does this not clearly intimate to us our appointed work? 1
In forbidding us to surpass the limits of the thoroughly but
harmoniously developed specimens of humanity, we have assigned
to us the feasible—and what ought to be the welcome-task of
bringing up the whole human race to these limits. Not to urge
the exceptionally few to still more exceptional attainments, not to
put our own minds and brains into a hot-bed, not to attempt the
surpassing development of our own highest faculties, but to put
all our fellow-men into a fertile and wholesome soil, to make all
more vigorous, and wise and good, and holy in the measure of
their just and well-balanced capacities: this is the perfection we
ought to seek after, our true ideal, the end of morals.
This greatly clears our practical course and speculative diffi-
culties. It shows that the timid fugitives from the duties and
temptations of the world—whether it be the ascetics of old or the
many cultivated moderns, who, having become disgusted with
politics and with "the masses," have gone in for self-cultivation—
have all turned their backs on the right goal. It indicates that
this is the bottom fact of our existence; that it is the common life
of all which each should develop in himself; that one cannot aim
* See Enigmas of Life by W. R. Greg.
36
Our Destiny.
at one's own true well-being without aiming at that of others.
These others are not mere means to myself, but are involved in my
essence; and this essence is superior to, and gives law to us all in
a higher sense than our bodily organism gives law to its members.
This makes morality logical in theory and real in fact.
Now we have the complete definition: Morality is the conscious
and voluntary co-operation of men towards the brotherhood and
fellowship of man. When, therefore, men look down upon morality
as mere vague sentiment fit only for babies and sunday schools,
we may be sure it is sham morality they have in mind. True
morality, on the other hand, must be considered by every earnest
and sensible person as the most important thing in life, the main
business for us all: indeed, the prize of life-the only reality,
in truth, worth living and dying for. The more Socialism is
studied, the more I am sure it will prove this to be true.
This definition, as the next chapter will show, does not ignore
our own selves; we shall there see, that we are equally entitled
to define the moral end as self-realisation, if we are careful to con-
sider "self" as a member of the whole. I am morally realised
when I am aware of myself as a member, when my private self
has ceased to be my exclusive self. By perfecting the world, and
thus only, I perfect myself.
This
Compare now this view with the position of Herbert Spencer :
"When the aggregate is no longer in danger from wars, the final
object of pursuit, the welfare of the units, no longer needing to be
postponed, becomes the immediate object of pursuit." That
means, of course, that when, in our days, private and public claims
clash, the latter must give way; and that as society progresses,
the force that unites its members loosens more and more.
is, surely, as immoral teaching as any can be. What a philosophy
of history! And that by the foremost modern English philoso-
pher! What a curious idea he must have of an organism !"
His society has certainly more likeness to a heap of grains of sand
than to even the lowest form of organisms. Yet, as Prof. Clifford
says: "That society is an organism, the highest of all, is one of
those great facts which our own generation has been the first to
state rationally."
(C
The Social Bond.
37
How much sounder is Sir James Stephen's idea: "The strong
metaphor that we are all members one of another is little more than
the expression of a fact; a man would be one, outside society, as
little as a hand would be a hand without the body."
Since, then, our most popular philosophers inculcate such ideas, it
is no wonder that but very few minds gladly postpone their own
interests to the public welfare, and as long as this state of things
lasts, it is impossible for conscious evolution to take place. But
natural evolution goes serenely on. Let us assume that the eco-
nomic changes, outlined in the previous chapter, have taken place;
that the monopolies have become unbearable, so that the nation is
forced to announce, that for the future the industries will be
carried on by the collectivity-which, by virtue of the authority
vested in it, it has a perfect right to do—and we shall witness a
radical, a tremendous change in the moral consciousness of the
people. They will quickly turn their backs on Spencer and his
ideas. They will not need to be told, as children in the schools of
France are said now to be taught, that it is to the State they are
indebted for their schooling and various other good things. No,
immediately after this change, the citizens will have an object les-
son daily before their eyes. They will know for certain; they will
see that they owe their abundance, their freedom, and their leisure
to the Nation. They therefore will know for certain, they will
"feel in their bones" that the welfare of the collectivity-whether
of the Nation, the State, or the Municipality—means their own
welfare; that the general interests are, as a matter of fact, iden-
tical with their individual interests. Their country will then, for
the first time, become a true "fatherland” to them, and they will
naturally cherish for it the feelings which children have for their
father, and look up to it as the guardian of their destiny and of
their welfare as units.
But what is of by far the greatest importance, is that public
opinion will be evolved into a Collective Conscience. The great
trouble now is that public opinion is at sea on all great moral
questions, and therefore neither speaks nor claims to speak with
authority on any. We have a dim sense of a constraining ought
that, like a life-instinct of the race, always compels man to do
38
Our Destiny.
what he does not choose and what he cannot foresee will benefit
the individual at all. There is an impulse within us to consider
moral ideals as true and not illusory lights, and of binding obliga-
tion, to the extent that they must be followed, sometimes at all
hazards. Duty must be done at whatever cost, or it is not duty.
But then thinkers arise among us like Leslie Stephen, who confine
themselves to society as it is, and thus bring in fundamental
discord by telling us that there is a "path of duty" and "a path
of happiness." For society as it is, almost as a rule, gives success
to the cunning, the unscrupulous, the worthless, the impotent,
rather than to the worthy. That is to attack these moral ideals
in a vital part, to regard moral rules as nothing else than a useful
invention to abate social jar and friction; and to bring them down
to the level of police regulations is to oppose their binding obliga-
tion.
What a wonderful, beneficent change in this respect, when the
Social Commonwealth is evolved with its Collective Conscience.
It will really make Duty an obligation, meaning in Jeremy Taylor's
appropriate phrase: something" tied by bands;" for to the Common-
wealth it will tie us all by the very strongest bands of interest, of
personal well-being, of happiness. It will imperatively, with
authority, with a sense of being infallibly right, point out to all
the welfare of the aggregate, the solidarity of the social organism,
as the end of morals. That is to say, the Collective Conscience
will become that "skilful gardener" without whose care no tree
can be expected to bear its choicest fruit, the conscious guardian,
and trainer of morality. Lastly, it will inaugurate the conscious
evolution of the race, the Golden Age ahead, when society will
consciously second natural evolution.
And as soon as the common destiny of the race becomes a
universal article of faith, what a pettiness will be infused into all
mere private ends! We have yet to witness the moral superiority
of a philosophy which connects each of us with the whole of
human existence, in all times and places, inspiring all with an in-
vincible repugnance to moral offences, with an irresistible impulse
to steady practical devotedness!
The Social Bond.
39
13. Not alone does the Power behind Evolution clearly and dis-
tinctly outline the end of morals to us, it has already furnished
us with a motive sufficiently powerful to make us respond almost
spontaneously to the promptings of the Collective Conscience.
This is Love of Approbation.
Understand, I do not say that there are not even now choice
spirits who do not need any ulterior motive at all. They are
moral because they like it. "My duties are my rights," they say.
But, of course, it is the vast majority of men with whom we are
concerned, and they, we know, need a motive and a strong motive.
What I contend is, that Love of Approbation is such a motive, of
enormous strength, and—I am tempted already here to say,
providentially-present in all, even in the choice spirits, who
perhaps have acquired their moral spontaneity simply by frequent
exercise.
It is trite to say that there are many forms of this faculty.
The familiar judgments of companions or contemporaries which
fill up everyday life in business, workshop, social intercourse, are
all, however slight, so much social pressure on this faculty; but
let us instance one example which will show that probably no
stronger social force could be born in us.
That is furnished by the duel. Reflect on it! This custom,
imposed by military morals, induced knights of the greatest piety
to brave the strongest religious condemnation in the most brilliant
ages of the Church, thus showing that religious precepts are not
nearly so strong as the judgment of one's fellows. This is put
into still stronger relief by the notorious fact, that this very
duelling is, in our days, spontaneously disappearing under the sway
of industrialism.
As this is evidence of its strength, we have an evidence of its
universality in the fact that much of the mischief done by our
loafers, street-urchins, and criminals, is due to the applause of
comrades. It is only love of approbation misdirected.
It may be objected that our choicest spirits, our martyrs, run
counter to this faculty, bid defiance to the judgment of their con-
temporaries and follow their own conscience. But is not the
explanation this: that their love of approbation is not less, but it
40
Our Destiny.
must, of course, be the approval of those whose judgment they
value, and that they do not value the judgment of their contem-
poraries? May not such men at the same time fancy themselves
standing before a court, with God for judge and his saints and all
good men of future ages for jury, and fortify themselves with their
imagined applause?
By the way, a unique instance of the strength of the faculty
here suggests itself to me: Suppose a sensitive youth to be in the
company of others to whom chastity is a folly, how often has such
a one blushed for a chaste action of his own which excites the
others' mirth? This blush shows that his virtuous impulses are
for the moment overshadowed by his love of approval.
Place now
our old human nature, as we know it, no whit
changed, subject to the same old motives, under a socialist régime.
How will this Collective Conscience, evolved by Socialism, act on
this love of approbation?
It is unfortunate that health is not infectious as disease is; but
most happily, "while vice is as catching as disease, virtue is too."
In our present state of anarchy we, of course, see nothing that can
give us an idea of the energy and tenacity of this conscience. We
cannot fancy to ourselves a plenitude of assent, such as yet
never has existed to the same degree: the difference between now
and then is the whole gamut between a weakly whispering instinct
and a swelled chorus of harmony. Next, we, equally of course,
must eliminate all conception of external "force" which has no
relation to the feeling of which we now speak. But doing the
best we can, we can see that if a divided public opinion can act,
as it does, as a great engine for protecting and sanctioning the
whole mass of beliefs, habits and customs which collectively
constitute current morality, the consciously unanimous Collective
Conscience must be able to act as a gigantic magnet of tremendous
attracting power. Natural Evolution will thus furnish us, in the
socialist régime and our old human nature, with a complete self-
acting machinery.
All that mass of difficulties which Leslie Stephen, as an indi-
vidualist, meets with does not at all apply to this new régime.
Thus he says: Individualist "morality has no leverage. A true
The Social Bond
41
theory of motives will not even tend to make me moral if I care
nothing for society." "The search for some reason, binding every
man simply as reasonable, is hopeless, unless a man has certain
sensibilities, character." That is most true now, but Socialism
supplies the leverage. At first, indeed, we must expect a few
cases of vicious inclinations and entanglement of passion where
even such collective conscience will not restrain; for we must not
ask too much of change of the generation that brings in the new
régime. But, to the hardihood of braving the discredit of this
conscience, add a socialistic education and training that will keep
the young, from infancy till adult age, under the eye of the teacher,
and such cases will afterwards be extremely rare. Public disap-
proval will prove itself far more effective than our present "do it
and be damned" theory of morals, not to speak of the deliberate
selfishness of this theory.
Spencer's idea that now "the moral check to theft is a conscious-
ness of the evils, caused by a disregard of proprietary rights," is
another really funny illustration of his manner of looking upon us
all as bourgeois, “making contracts with each other." But it is im-
possible to understand how he can think such a check effective in
the actual state of mankind, with its motto of "the devil take the
hindmost," when lack of wealth is hell and when there is no safety
for the unpropertied man. Ah, but in a socialist common-
wealth-Spencer's bête noir with its community of interests-there
it will apply. By the way, we have to-day in Switzerland, which is
as complete a nation as any, an interesting instance of the superior-
ity of common interests over even ethnic and religious sympathies
as a social bond.
We are now ready to enter upon a consideration of the last of
our data of Ethics: the change in our intellectual views, the atmo-
sphere to morality; but it is advisable to discuss first two questions
that might otherwise prove stumbling-blocks to inquirers.
are Equality and Individuality, which really hang together.
These
14. The majority cry for equality, the minority for individuality,
and both cries are warranted. The former means that men of the
same race, with something of an education, will not endure gross
42
Our Destiny.
inequality of fortunes. The latter means that nature's inequality
of gifts, which furnishes the only superiority of divine right, has
been nullified and trampled on by present society's artificial inequal-
ity; that the one inequality, founded on fact, has been set aside by
another founded on chance or chicane, and favoured by existing
institutions. The socialist commonwealth will realise both this
rational equality and this rational inequality or individuality-at
bottom one and the same thing, and its citizens will recognise real
inequalities where they exist, as much as substantial equality where
it exists.
It will, I apprehend, realise equality in three different forms:
Equal rights to the inheritance of mankind: that is to say, we
shall be equal partakers of the commonwealth and its well-being;
note, I say partakers, for it is in consumption where Equality
appears, as Individuality does in production.
We claim an equal right to this "inheritance of mankind” which,
by our institutions, a minority is at present enabled to monopolise,
and which it does monopolise and use in order to extort thereby an
unearned increment; and this inheritance is true Capital. We
mean thereby the principle, potentiality, embodied in the axe, the
spade, the plough, the steam-engine, tools of all kinds, books or
pictures, bequeathed by thinkers, writers, inventors, discoverers,
and other labourers of the past, a social growth to which all indi-
vidual claims have lapsed by death, but from the advantages of
which the masses are virtually shut out, for lack of means. The
very best definition of government, even that of to-day, is that it
is the agency of society which procures title to this treasure, stores
it up, guards and gives access to it to every one, and of which all
must make the best use, first and foremost by education. Not the
least mischief is the terrible waste that we make of it.
The socialist republic will realise this equality by giving to all
an equal opportunity to earn all they need and want.
This is a
very different thing from the suggestion that all citizens should
receive equal remuneration. I do not believe in the latter; it
seems curious to me that they who suggest it cannot see that this
would be highly unjust, since men have very different needs and
wants. Communism is far more just, since it would give to
The Social Bond.
43
everybody according to his needs, but this is altogether too
generous. Society could not stand such generosity.
The next is a higher form of equality: social rather than
economic; that is to say, all citizens will be independent of each
other, but all equally dependent on the commonwealth.
It was
for this social equality that the cry burst out in the eighteenth
century, no longer a barren phrase, an abstraction of jurists and
philosophers, but a fiery, living force, taking possession of the
hearts of men. It has sunk deep into the soul of our century and
entered into all the master spirits of the age.
We have already seen that the most invidious powers of the
prosperous classes now are these two: that the giving or the
withholding of employment is a matter of arbitrary favour and
that they have the right to arbitrarily discharge their employees.
These will be two immense gains: security during good behaviour
and the right of all to demand suitable-not a particular-employ-
ment on demand. That disposes of the objection that we shall
all be dependent on political bosses. There will be no spoils,
hence no standing parties, or rather factions, hence no
"bosses."
France is the classical land of equality. At the Polytechnic
School in Paris, the pupils are unaware of the bursars' names,
which are known only to a committee, pledged by honour to
secrecy-such is the delicacy of the spirit of equality. This is the
terrible stumbling-block of Socialism in England. Dr. Arnold ob
served of France that there, "well-dressed men and women converse
familiarly with persons of the lowest rank," as something that
shocked him; we know how servile "tuft-hunters" at Oxford are
to their "noble" fellow-students, and that a physician who has
ever held out his hand for guineas cannot possibly hope to take a
place among peers of the realm; that, as is said, "talents lose
twenty-five per cent. in value on reaching England." But-a
most happy omen for us!—we are still better off here than in
France. We are not yet, and it is to be hoped will never bc,
divided into these two sorry classes, as everywhere in Europe :
gentlemen, with decent clothes, who are expected to give tips on
all occasions, and the balance who expect to get tips.
44
Our Destiny.
But the most important, as well as by far the most practicable
form of equality, undoubtedly, is the last, that of the co-ordination
of equal corporate bodies. It is impossible that there can be
equality between all individuals in their productive capacity, and
yet this is the equality that is most prized and most valuable.
It can, however, be secured by having all useful citizens gathered
into trades-unions-for lack of a better term-all, however,
distinctly unlike, ranking as equals, on account of the equally
essential services which each renders, and these, perhaps, con-
solidated into "estates of the realm." The confidence enjoyed by
the most eminent thinker, since no one can know or judge of
everything, is analogous to that which in a measure he in turn
accords to the humblest intelligence on subjects best understood
by the latter. This "in a measure" drops away when we come
to corporate bodies. There is a public utility in the humblest
offices of public bodies, not a whit less truly than in the loftiest
functions of government, and whatever difference in dignity may
exist, as some might fancy, is more than made up by the preponder-
ance of numbers necessarily to be found in the former. Every
citizen's dignity and equality is then secured by his membership
in one of these bodies.
With the attainment of rational equality we can at last frankly
deny the so-called "rights of man "in theory, as we must do if
society is ever to be the arbiter of its own destiny, and as the
"rights" have practically always been denied. They have only
made it easier for unscrupulousness to accomplish its personal
aggrandisement. Social duties take the place of personal rights.
I may choose my own station, but its duties do not depend upon
my liking, or upon that of any other person; they are the
appurtenances of the station, and "these duties are my rights.”
We may yet come back to the medieval ideal of the "freedom" of
the various functions.
It is noteworthy, as showing the trend of individual minds, that
not alone has Mallock broached this idea of "estates of the realm;"
but Felix Adler has suggested that, instead of having our legisla-
tures and boards of aldermen elected as at present, they should
be composed of representatives of the various business, working,
The Social Bond.
45
and farming classes, each group to decide with authority on all
matters, especially concerning their own interests.
Equality is thus by no means anything like monotony of
external conditions, but simply harmony, cessation of conflict, the
sign of health. The fact that a single healthy human body exists.
is a warrant for a future healthy human society. Man will surely
enter the gate that the flaming sword so long has guarded, and
when the socialist commonwealth is fully evolved, it is equality
that will establish the Kingdom of Heaven on earth.
15. The weightiest objection of educated minds to Socialism.
seems to be what one of our foremost novelists once expressed to
the present writer in these words: "I might accept your Social-
ism, if the fear did not haunt me that your collective authority
would crush out all individuality."
This, if valid, would surely in my eyes be an insuperable
objection. While I detest individualism, I hold Individuality—
that is, the sum of all the qualities which differentiate me from
others—most sacred. It is not what entitles us to the divine re-
gard, but it is that which enables us to serve our country and
humanity, and to wipe it out would, indeed, be a calamity, greater
even to society than to ourselves. Equality in enjoyment as I have
defined it, is a most sacred thing, but equality in production would
be deplorable-actually deplorable.
Individuality—in which is included ability, talents, genius-
will, indeed, be needed much more by the socialist common-
wealth than by the present social order. In all co-operative pro-
duction a single brain must be the responsible head which governs
and guides those who perform the mechanical processes and manual
dexterities. And so Socialism, while it has no use for Mallock's
"ability" to watch the market, will need intelligence to control,
over a much larger field, the whole course of labour from start to
finish, and appoint to each worker his suitable part in the division
of labour.
Yes, Socialism will give to nature's inequality its heaven-born
right: high place, not high pay. This is the question of modern
democracy: how to find and utilise nature's aristocracy, always
46
Our Destiny.
existing, and of it form a hierarchy, according to capacity in each
generation, ignoring all other claims as illegitimate. A sound
stable democracy must run on lines opposed to a dead-level com-
munism.
To do this, individuality must have a basis and a stimulus.
Socialism furnishes both, thus doing entirely away with the objec-
tion,
The basis we have already shown: Independence and Leisure,
principally the former, which in itself is the very essence of
individuality. If a class of men have an independent living, their
individualities are almost sure to assert themselves, even if other
conditions are not particularly favourable. But if not, then, alas !
then individuality is their curse. For that reason, what high spirits.
are now crushed, poisoned and perverted? What heaven-sent
capacity now repressed and frozen that should have rejoiced the
world! What progress in science, arts, inventions, letters and
thoughts we might have had!
And now as to the other condition of individuality: incentives?
Can any one who seriously reflects on what has been said, doubt
that Socialism will far surpass the present order in furnishing
these? Ah, some will quote from what has been said above: "no
high pay." Yes, that is the saddest part of our age, that money
rewards have come to be the chief and only incentive. But then
it was not always so. Phidias and Michael Angelo surely never
thought of money; the golden calf has been made our god only
by this Satanic individualism. When this is overthrown, the old
incentives will regain their ascendency over noble minds: the joys.
of creative genius, social distinction, and the honour of directing
affairs—and these the socialist commonwealth will furnish on a
scale never before known; besides this, I am sure that the gifted
will have all the material enjoyments they will care for. Yes,
ability will be exalted to a degree hitherto unheard of! In parti-
cular, Socialism will take care that the élite of the children of the
people gain access to the highest prizes, therein imitating the
Church of the Middle Ages, which searched for and fostered talent
in the poor, with the result that genius of the highest order com-
monly sprang from the people, in spite of the weight on its wings.
The Social Bond.
47
But what the objectors especially have in mind is an idea that
the central authority will control every action of every member.
This is nothing but an absurd misapprehension, which should be
already cleared up by what has been said above on the co-ordina-
tion of the corporate bodies, and which will become still more
evident in the following chapter. Only this much here, that there
will at the very utmost be as much " authority" as now, only,
private control will have changed into public control. A word as
to the term "authority" applied to individuality. Is it not a fact
that authority, in the sense of restraint, is frequently blessed, is
indeed the very first condition for the development of individ-
uality?
The following quotation from Fiske is even more applicable to
our typical self-made employer, and the typical socialist adminis-
trator, respectively, than to those of whom he speaks: "The
primitive type is the man with an enormous sense of his own im-
portance, easily roused to paroxysms of anger, brooking no contra-
dictions, domineering over all within his reach. The modern man
is the type of mild personality, shunning the appearance of self-
assertion, slow to anger, patient of contradiction, unwilling to make
trouble."
In all respects, I think, our favoured country surpasses all
nations in the conditions for successfully inaugurating Socialism
-except one. We have one weak spot: our coloured population.
They must attain to social equality. Socialism cannot exist
with a class of helots. Much patient toil is required on both sides
to attain to that equality. It seems worth while to suggest to the
most elevated and educated of the coloured race, that they can do
much to that end, perhaps far more than all the rest of the race.
If they, or but a few of them, will furnish to the world instances
of great intellectual and moral worth, a very great step will have
been taken toward a change of sentiment toward the whole race.
It is impossible to say how much the coloured people owe simply
to the fact that a Douglass or a Bruce have issued from them.
But if, instead of cultivating politics, they will try to find out if
there is among them a literary or scientific genius, or if—what is
open to them all—they should in a future epidemic, say, of yellow
48
Our Destiny.
fever, manifest the spirit of self-sacrifice, the whole race will be
sensibly lifted up. Such is the power of individuality.
Sir James Stephen, in his book, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity,
gives vent to this observation: "It is a question whether the
rapid production of an immense multitude of common-place, self-
satisfied and essentially slight people in America is an exploit
which the whole world need fall down and worship." This is the
judgment of a superficial observer. It is in our generation becom-
ing clearer and clearer, that the opposite characteristic is fast
taking possession of the hearts and minds of the American people,
of both the toiling masses and the leaders of conscience, that is to
say, that "the bond that binds us together" is becoming remark-
ably strengthened, and that consciousness of this fact will soon
distinguish us among the peoples of the earth.
CHAPTER III.
CONTRADICTION S.
"I see no reason why progress in the moral world should be so slow,
or the return for moral efforts so pitifully small. If the Church would ad-
dress her efforts, not in persuading men to adopt a certain set of opinions,
but to adopt certain habits of life, she would find the work of conversion
easy and rapid."-W. H. H. Murray.
16. I quote the above words not in approval but as a warning.
As we shall see in other chapters, and have already partly seen,
there is ample reason why "progress in the moral world is so
slow." What, however, we are here concerned with is the assumption
that habits of life are independent of, and can be divorced from
opinions. This is a great, a very grave blunder. That our Free-
will may properly co-operate with the Universal Order, it is,
precisely, imperatively necessary that it be governed, moved by
correct opinions, by right reason.
When a gardener takes charge of a young plant, the first thing
he considers is the atmospheric conditions which its nature
demands; whether it can stand the open air or must be placed
inside a hot-house, whether it does or does not crave sunshine; we
may even imagine plants that thrive by getting sunshine through
a red or a blue glass. Our intellect acts as the atmospheric
medium to morality. True, no development of intellect makes a
man moral. Morality has to do with appetites, passions, feelings,
but it makes all the difference in the world, whether the facts of
our environment act on our feelings through an intellect that
interprets them correctly or falsely. Many a warm-hearted man
has had his benevolence stifled by looking on misery through
Malthusian spectacles-being confused by the sophistries of
Malthus.
Man has not yet, as Huxley says, "discovered his true place in
D
50
Our Destiny.
Nature." A philosopher from a higher planet, if he saw our
present predicament, would laugh at our awkwardness if he did
not think our situation too tragical. It is well known that what
we really see is not, say, a house, but the small reversed picture
of the house drawn on the retina of the eye; but every child
learns instinctively in infancy to follow the rays of the picture to
their true source; and then to grasp mentally this source, the house
itself in its true position and dimensions.
The same thing has happened to us in all our relations to the
physical world; experience has everywhere had to come to our aid.
The apparent, when no acquired data existed for directing our
judgment, has differed widely from, and often been the direct
opposite of, the real. The deliverance of sight, we saw, would be
inverted, but for an experience which we simply do not remember.
But the more remote and obscure the relations of the known to
the unknown, the more instruction do we require. Thus no one
of us would ever think of accounting for the revolution of our
earth, were we not taught the true explanation. And so with the
paradox of the earth's support and its shape. The appearance is,
that it is supported and that it is flat; that the reality is the very
reverse we learn from scientific experience.
Now we are in a similar predicament as to our social surround-
ings; and we are, unfortunately, confirmed in it by the fact that
we are living in a transition period from one organic order to
another, which fact veils to us the real state of affairs; and this
predicament is precisely analogous to the one our forefathers
were in under the Ptolemaic system, when the appearance was,
and when they believed, that the earth was the centre of the solar
system. For our intellect likewise turns our relation to society
upside down, makes us fully believe the reverse of the reality.
Here as elsewhere things are not what they appear to be, but are
very frequently precisely what they seem not to be.
It is natural evolution that again here will come to our
assistance; it will give us a correct conception of our environment,
reverse the picture for us in our mind; and how? By leading us
in our progress to a socialist régime into such glaring contradic-
tions that we shall have no peace of mind before we rectify our
Contradictions.
51
conception, and bring ourselves into true relations with the facts
of our environment. It is the various false conceptions we now
cherish, and the contradictions, or logical absurdities, into which
they lead us that will occupy us in this chapter.
Herbert Spencer and his school furnish us with the clearest
exposition of the general form of these false conceptions, of this
reversed picture. "The State is now regarded as existing only
for the sake of the individual." In other words, the individual is
the centre of the social system, and the State, Society, and every
higher unity, is secondary. Prof. Sumner's book, "What Social
Classes Owe to Each Other," is from beginning to end an essay on
social isolation, inculcating that the only relation between
individuals is a cash account; in other words, it is an ingenious
attempt to adjust the universe to a perspective, obtained by
standing on one's head. There is in the essay one sentence that
might stand for its motto: "The State is to me only the All-of-
us,” the intellectual fallacy of which will be evident to everybody,
the moment we utter simply one word: posterity. Whatever else
the State is for, it is clear that its function extends to caring for
posterity, a function which no individual can perform. At this
stage we surely must see, that Prof. Sumner is not nearly so pro-
found a philosopher as Pascal, who defined the State as the social
unit, composed of our ancestors, us the living, and our posterity.
We pass now to the special consideration of these false concep-
tions, each worse than the preceding; and shall see how the
contradictions into which they lead us will make us reverse them.
17. The first false conception of our social relations can be
expressed by the saying: "The State least governed is best
governed." But it is important that the reader at the start should
know wherein I affirm the falsity lies. It is not that I insist that
the State most governed is best governed. I affirm that they are
blind to a fact that we are now at least as much governed as in
the past, and shall be forever. A society cannot exist without
government, and the more developed society is, the more of
government must we have. Now, government is either by private
individuals or by public authority; here it is that "more" or
52
Our Destiny.
"
'less comes in, and what is said in the above phrase by those who
think "government" abominable, is really, that a million private
authorities are better than one public authority. Thus interpreted
into correct language most of them will probably repudiate it.
We know very well by this time how this false conception
originated—that it is a historical growth. First, there was the
feudal society, rich, flexible, varied, thoroughly harmonious, a
compact coherent society, perfectly realising the essential condi
tion of an organism: concurrence to a common end; but "its
head of gold kept out of sight, like awkward feet of clay, its
humble industrial basis." By-and-bye the feet of clay protruded
more and more, while the head of gold retreated; of the feet
certain individuals attained prominence, made themselves in time
private masters and became at last jealous of the head, the
central authority. They created such a public sentiment that
their followers exulted in the degradation of that central authority,
the "tyrant," and called this "liberty," forgetful of the chains
their private masters had put upon them.
The consequences-the contradictions-have meanwhile de-
veloped themselves. It is as if these private masters had stumbled
into power like a Caliban, had become blindly possessed of the
secrets of Prospero, and did not know how to use them. At a
distance of six centuries industrialism is still destitute of a logical
and coherent ideal, and has so far developed without any guidance
or guardianship at all, of which, however, it now more and more
feels its need. For it has resulted in a miserable mal-adjustment
everywhere. The feet become more and more conscious that
they stand in need of the central authority—and perhaps it is not
such a terrible "tyrant " after all.
Indeed, everyone now feels that there is a most pernicious mal-
distribution of energies, due mainly to the fact that no practical
systematic attempt has yet been made to estimate the real needs
of the social organism and to distribute its forces in accordance
therewith. As has been well said, "the theoretical estimate has
been made by many sets of people, according to many principles;
the practical direction is continued by others, in accordance with
customs, habits, traditions, convenience, sentimentalism, prejudice,
Contradictions.
53
fashion-everything except the principles of organic adjustment,
alone serviceable."1
And look at the miserable mal-adjustment which is caused by
this mal-distribution. On one hand, millions crushed down by
their burden of constant toil that ends only with death; on the
other, thousands whose forces waste in enforced idleness. Here
men and women whose hair have become prematurely grey from
nervous strain, and with skin prematurely wrinkled from bodily
exertion, and there men and women, weary from ennui, because
they have nothing to do. Here minds strained by too heavy
responsibilities, and there minds cruelly cramped by far too narrow
duties. Energies that vainly seek employment and work that
much needs to be done, and yet it is left undone, because there is
no one to do it. On the one hand mankind slaving like working
bees and yet starving in the midst of the riches they have created,
on the other unwieldy, fat drones, unable to enjoy. What a waste
of power, all due to the impotence of the central authority! For
people come now more and more to see that this authority need
not be a tyrant at all, but is precisely what they make it. That
its proper name is not so much "government" at all, with the
function of restraining, but rather administration, since what they
need is a guide, a director, a regulator.
Because of the impotence of this authority, the regular evolution
of life is now so often thwarted, its hopes disappointed, its
character degraded. How many of our youths dream ambitious
dreams of what they will do and achieve as men, and when they
have reached forty years, are exceedingly happy if they become
sure of a decent living, by uninterrupted drudgery, for the rest of
their life. How many parents now pinch themselves, in order to
enable their children to pass through our grammar schools, our
high schools and our universities, who, when they are fitted to be
servants of society, are abandoned by the State, which, as it cannot
utilise their attainments, leaves them positively worse off than
before their education-their culture become their curse. Think
of the multitude of criminals; the worst of these were once innocent
children as we all were; it was thoroughly known that the very
• The Value of Life-anonymous.
54
Our Destiny.
atmosphere they breathed was saturated with filth and vice, and
that it would be a miracle if they did not grow up into vicious
men; yet the State left them-had to leave them—in their vice
till it was compelled to grasp them with its iron hand and thrust
them into the penitentiaries.
Only a very few words are here needed to illustrate the further
point, that our private masters are not merely poor substitutes
for a public authority, but that self-interest leads them to enrich
themselves at the expense of the community, turns them into
scoundrels who manipulate demand and supply, and under the
cover of law gamble in the necessaries of life, something which the
feudal society made a heinous crime, as indeed it is. Gambling is
the very antithesis of society. Oil and corn and pork, all the
great staples of the country, the stocks of our great railroads, and
steamship and manufacturing companies and mines, are all
monopolised by gamblers who wear the mask of business, unsettling
values and paralysing society's productive agencies. And it is too
well known, though too little reflected on, that our employers,
finding it to their interests under the present system to have always
a reserve army of needy operatives at hand, have been for years
instrumental in bringing hosts of foreign labourers into the
country, and thus positively been the creators of our pauperism.
18. This false conception of government has been mentioned
first, because, however mischievous, it is yet the least mischievous
of all, and, again, because it is the first to be undergoing rectifica-
tion in our days. The reversed conception is what I call true
democracy.
It is a trite saying, that the civilised world is persistently and
with accelerating steps marching towards democracy. But what
is meant by that term, and where shall we find its embodiment?
That our country is as yet a pure democracy is, of course, arrant
nonsense. A fable says, that once upon a time a farmer called
his fowls together, to consult with them. Seating himself in the
chair, he said: "The question for discussion is with what sauce
will you be eaten?" After a pause an old rooster at the edge of
the crowd gave vent to the general sentiment by the remark;
Contradictions.
55
'But, Mr. Chairman, we do not want to be eaten."
"The remark
is entirely irrelevant; please confine yourselves to the question,"
was the response. The moral of which is, that a democracy, i.e.
political freedom, is out of the question as long as economic
freedom does not prevail. And yet a democracy does not mean
a State where public authority is exercised by the counting of
heads. This is not simply to oppose one opinion to another, but
to call attention to a fact: that we have in our midst bodies where
the democracy of the future is being exemplified before our very
eyes, to wit: trade-unions.
A century or so ago, all social classes were everywhere pro-
nounced theoretically equal and free. That is to say, labour was
to be considered a ware, on equal footing with other commodities,
and the workers were to be equally free to dispose of their ware
as merchants were of theirs. But it was soon seen, and especially
felt by the working-men, that this was a very illusory equality
indeed. The theory that then began to be believed by everybody,
that the individual was the centre, and that self-interest was the
highest law, was first perceived by them to be a fallacy, not at all
because they were wiser or more intelligent than others, but be-
cause they were the first to feel the pinch of the contradiction.
They perceived that the man whose "ware" was inseparable from
himself, and who, therefore, could not sell it without selling him-
self body and soul, was on a very different footing from sellers of
other wares, and that the only way of effecting some real equality
was to renounce the theory of the autonomy of the individual—
and thus our modern trades-unions were formed.
Of course it soon became clear to others who did not yet feel
the pinch, that the policy which the unions pursued was often
distinct from, and sometimes the reverse of, the line of conduct
which the self-interest of any individual member would have led
him to follow. Economists agreed that each one would accept
work at a low rate rather than insist on a general rise by striking.
But precisely this the unions did accomplish, and they put an
effective pressure on employers. Then the unions were pronounced
"tyrannical bodies which enforced a blind obedience from their
miserable members," and economists posed as defenders of the
56
Our Destiny.
"}
"liberty of the individual citizen, and called the leaders un-
scrupulous, deluding agitators. Time reversed this judgment
also. More and more has public opinion had its eyes opened and
come round to the side of the unionists, till at last it has decided
against those who taught that "we must not interfere with a man
in driving his own bargain;" it has come to see that "freedom of
contract" is an illusion in cases where there are children or even
adults on one side and rich employers on the other.
The leaders of organised working-men have the satisfaction of
knowing that they were far more clear-seeing in their way than
our greatest philosophers, and that this will eventually be admitted
by all.
These unions and all organisations of labour proceed on these
two principles: first, that direction of social affairs belongs to the
capable; and, secondly, that all citizens must participate in that
direction by their intelligent co-operation. Each of these principles.
by itself is but a half-truth, and like all half-truths, highly
dangerous; but united they voice a splendid truth and precisely
define true democracy-the democracy which, without a doubt, is
destined to be adopted by all civilised nations. The unions
repudiate the fallacy that "the society least governed is best
governed." They know that some members are wiser than others ;
they critically and thoughtfully sift out their natural leaders and
guides; and, having found them, thrust their whole collective
power into their hands to be retained as long as they prove true,
and so to say grapple them to their hearts with links of steel,
following them "as captains whom they trust." But mark this:
"as long as they prove true," for strict responsibility is the very
essence of the system.
Now we may be sure, that even long before Socialism is in-
augurated, the majority of our people will have become convinced
that the more complex society is, the more is administration
needed; and that the necessity for social adjustment imperatively
requires that the administration be confined to the hands of the
collectivity. The socialist republic, then, will most likely copy
the model which the trade-unions have worked out; it will cause
the administrators to be elected from below, that is to say, will
Contradictions.
57
make the ordinary workmen select their own foremen, these fore-
men elect their superintendents, and so on to the chief of depart-
ments. Perhaps it will improve on the model by placing the
dismissal of these officers in the hands, not of the electors, but
of their immediate superiors. In other words, it will enforce
responsibility by means of the veto of the superiors. 1 The
directing class will thereby be sure of possessing the good-will of
inferiors, equals, and superiors. It will, moreover, exalt ability
and answer the question: How shall we secure our Able Men? It
will put the round men into round holes and square men into
square holes, and everyone will be aware of the fact.
19. We now come to the second false conception, one worse
than the first, blindness to another fact. If you explain Socialism
to the average business man, and come to its essence, that
it proposes to make him a public functionary, he gets indignant at
the very idea. Yet the fact is, he is and has always been a public
functionary, but has not been aware of the fact. A druggist will
not for a moment doubt that his business is entirely a private
affair of his own, that he can say, carelessly: "Ah, we are out of
this thing just now," that he can open and close his store at any
time he pleases, unmindful of the convenience and the necessities
of his customers; while, in sober truth, he keeps his store because
society, or a section of it, has a use for it. In spite of all his pro-
tests, he is performing a social function, and therefore it is his
bounden duty to perform it properly. He may choose his function,
but the duties of it are not of his choosing. As with this, so
precisely with all other occupations, without exception: with
butchers, bakers, tailors, they are what and where they are, only
because society, or some of its parts, requires them to perform
those duties in that place; if they are not wanted they soon get
notice to leave.
There are some cases of which I cannot help mentioning one,
which shows very curiously how little business men are affected by
the fact that they are public servants, and especially how little
this fact is as yet appreciated by the general public: this is the
* For details see The Co-operative Commonwealth,
58
Our Destiny.
case of transportation companies, that admittedly are quasi-public
servants. As is well known, the Old Colony R. R. Co. transports
passengers between Boston and New York, partly by boat. Most
of my readers may also know, that in the summer-when, of
course, by reason of the heavy travel, the cost of the service must
be considerably less than during the remainder of the year-the
fare is actually $1 more than in winter months. Thus, instead of
serving the public, instead of transporting them as safely and
cheaply as possible, which is evidently the reason of its existence,
this quasi-public corporation (very "quasi" indeed) seems to think
its function is to fleece the public. If there were a healthy, a
conscious Public Opinion, this company would very soon be put
into the pillory for such an outrage.
This has already led us into the expected contradiction, i.e.,
logical absurdity. Whole classes of our population have felt the
pinch of this assumption, and have for some time stood open-
mouthed, wondering what it was that pinched, and only of late
have some been bold enough to speak out. This contradiction
is couched in the well-known phrase: "Have I not a right to do
what I please with my own?" My own what? Not the function
-that, as we saw, has been entirely overlooked-but the mere
incidental of the function: the profits. On these the stress has
been laid to such an extent, that our largest industries are
now "owned" by men who have nothing at all to do and
know nothing whatever of the function.
These " owners
are shareholders and bondholders, who live ignorant of the nature
even of their possessions, and leave managers to screw down their
workmen, satisfied so long as they receive the dividends. Nothing
is therefore more common, even with large concerns, when receipts
fall off, than to recoup the loss out of wages rather than to econo-
mise on dividends. One day a hundred porters and signal-men
were discharged from a large railroad, in order to effect a saving
of 325,000 dols. a year in expenses. These industrious men and
their families were turned into the street, rather than deduct five
cents in dividends on every 500 dol. share. No wonder it set
folks to thinking so that some of them blurted out: “But this
railroad is not your own. We are your business partners." They
Contradictions.
59
C
((
had really nearly touched the right spot. If they had gone a little
deeper down they would have seen that it is the function that is
material, and that it is social. They would then have further
seen that the case is really stronger than they had put it, that
the persons who only pocket the profits and have no share in the
function, are interlopers in the concern; that those who do the
business are really the exclusive business-partners. When society
becomes conscious of this fact, it will say to the present owners":
“Have you any human relation to your property' at all? Do
you come together at your meetings to consider how best to ad-
minister it for the public good, how to turn out the most useful
and genuine articles, how to compass the welfare of the men en-
gaged in it? If not, you are doing nothing or worse than nothing
with it--you are using your legal powers to aggrandise yourselves
at the cost of others, you are preventing others from using them
better, you are by just so much strangling the life of the people.
Begone !" 1
Behold the picture reversed! In the co-operative common-
wealth all will be public functionaries, and all our labours, past
and present, will be looked upon as public functions. Instead of
considering "profits" as the more important, and function
secondary, we shall place function first, and make remuneration
incidental, in accordance with the facts.
A far-reaching reversal of our social valuations will follow this
change in our point of view. Every candid man will frankly ad
mit that there is at present a stigma, a social ostracism attached
to manual labour, or when regarded as honourable it is yet looked
upon as a hardship. This is not at all because of the disagreeable
nature of the work; we all know that, without losing caste, a
physician performs, as a matter of course, the nastiest, coarsest,
and most malodorous duties, akin to scavengering. Why is it then?
Because all manual work and disagreeable, nasty occupations, as
such, are now hampered by the consciousness of being performed
only for a living's sake; hence they are left to the poorest classes
of people, and hence, again, they are so badly paid. We may all
know, if we will but do a little thinking, that the reason why the
See Ed. Carpenter's England's Ideal.
1
бо
Our Destiny.
professions are especially honoured is, that they have a quasi-
public character, and are not done or are not supposed to be done
altogether for pay.
This depreciation of labour has been most deplorable, and has
vitiated all our social relations. But now suppose all labours be-
come acknowledged public functions! Is it not clear that a
function which in any way furthers the welfare of the social
organism will become just as respectable as any other-that, in
other words, all useful labours, as such, will be equally honoured?
Surely the function of a coal-heaver will bring him as truly into
relation with the social organism as that of the chief of the State,
since coal-heaving is quite as necessary as are his functions. I
have no hesitation in predicting that the nasty labours, when they
cease to be done for a living, but on the contrary are performed
in a sacrificing spirit, will be honoured accordingly.
Of course the remuneration is now the very first consideration,
most frequently the sole one. It cannot possibly be otherwise,
so long as social arrangements compel us to place self-interest first.
But is it not just as easy to understand, that for the same reasons,
when a living has become the secured provision which society
makes for us to enable us to carry on our functions, remuneration
will retire into the background?
What a wonderful influence this change will have on the train-
ing of our youths! Our common schools necessarily minister to
our regard for "business" and speculation and our depreciation
of manual labour. The agitation for manual training in our
schools is, of course, an excellent one, but so long as this indus-
trial system lasts, it can only result, at the utmost, merely in
making skilled workmen out of the children of our working
classes. When, on the other hand, all social functions are on an
equal footing, manual training will show its splendid effects on all
our children. For it is a branch of instruction in which all young
folks, of both sexes, take an interest; in the schools of Paris
experience shows that the pupils begrudge the time they cannot
spend in the workshops, and frequently pass hours out of school-
time over their iron and wood work. Manual training is destined
to incite to voluntary activity thousands upon thousands of children
Contradictions.
61
that otherwise would be accounted dull and stupid, and will be
the principal means of enabling them and their teachers to find
out and choose the careers for which they are really fitted. But,
as we shall now see, that career will not then be what it now
generally is: will not have for its object to get the better of one's
fellow-men.
20. At length we have reached the third false conception, and,
indeed, by far the worst. For this is not simply blindness to a
fact, but it is the enthronement of a lie! I mean the struggle for
life, which Herbert Spencer glorifies as "the most universal, the
most controlling and comprehensive generalisation." Granted,
that it applies to the animal world and savages, it does not apply
t
was never intended to apply-to civilised men; but here it is
replaced by its very opposite (the fact to which they are blind) :
that we are evidently intended to work in harmony, in order to
struggle against nature. This struggle for existence is in theory
what competition is in practice-indeed, it would be a great gain
for correct reasoning, if we could always substitute the former for
the latter, since, when Socialists speak of destroying competition,
their opponents like to insinuate, that at the same time they will
do away with whatever of emulation there is in competition.
Only such confusion of terms can account for the fact, that
political economists speak of competition as being "what gra-
vitation is in the mechanism of the heavens." Let it, then, be
clearly understood, that when we want to destroy competition, it
is this struggle for life, for existence, we want to abolish forever,
while we desire to foster emulation. We say that labour, still
under bondage to competition-simply because its rational sight
is not yet recovered—is tragical; that restless men making war
upon each other with convulsive energy, as if driven by galvanism,
tearing asunder mountains, is a sad spectacle! This theory of a
struggle for life is satanic, is anti-social and in the highest degree
wasteful. These are some of the contradictions into which it
leads us.
It is satanic, nothing less than atheistic. If you once allow
that the struggle for existence is the all-pervading law, even
62
Our Destiny.
throughout humanity, you will have to admit the pitiless logic of
Haeckel, that "only the idealist scholar who closes his eye to the
real truth can any longer tell the fable of the moral ordering of
the world." But then we also must admit, that there was a good
deal of truth in Robespierre's saying that "atheism is aristocratic;
from refusing to admit a controlling order on earth it is but a step
to denying order in heaven," for none but "aristocrats," comfort-
able people, can rest satisfied with the doctrine, that selfishness is
beneficent in human activity. It deprives virtue of all reality
beyond convention. It is a doctrine of the pit, and has been
bringing hell to earth in large instalments for a good many years.
And the human heart feels-even before its intellectual sight is
recovered—that the relation which systematically allows the un-
successful to go to the wall is not human. The right to take
advantage of another's misfortunes no longer satisfies us. What
a change in our conception of life in that respect has occurred
since political economy was in its zenith, thirty years ago: when
capitalists consciously and greedily sacrificed the national welfare
to the accumulation of "national" wealth, and some even deplored
high wages as a calamity! Then there was a bowing of knees to
Baal, to Mammon! Now we have at last set our faces resolutely
the other way; and many scorn to claim anything, not duly
earned, and feel themselves not degraded by doing work useful to
society, however menial.
Of course the struggle for existence is anti-social. Its very
definition is to advance oneself at the cost of others, to elbow others
aside. When one comes to feel it, it degrades and warps whatever
is human within one. It is a dark, bitter, desolating civil war,
more cruel and keen than that decided by bullets from a barricade,
when all the furniture is pawned and sold, when famine and
misery besiege the home-a war in which they fight over wealth,
produced by joint exertions. And the worst is that it destroys
the moral wealth of the nation faster than its material wealth ;
it tends to make men bitter, suspicious, and cruel; it turns
neighbour against neighbour.
This alone shows that competition is terribly wasteful. It does
not produce or help to produce anything. But when a piece of
Contradictions.
63
wise work-according to Ruskin "so much sustenance "-has
been produced, then some one comes along and " cozens" the pro-
ducer out of it. We have had a striking example in the West
Shore R. R., built in order to share the fleecings of the Hudson
River R. R. If a thorough analysis could be made, it would be
found what immense losses have been sustained by the people of
this country from competition between railroads and telegraph
companies; and these are small compared with what they will be
in the immediate future, when competition sets in for division of
profits in localities (in the West) where ample facilities now exist.
What a loss to the community where rival companies earn
dividends! Two or more offices in each town where one is ample;
two distinct staffs of officers, operators and line men to be main-
tained, and repairs on two separate, parallel lines. But people's
eyes will soon be opened, especially since the prophecy which
Socialists made long ago, that competition necessarily results in
monopoly, is fast being fully felt along the whole line. Competi-
tion, struggle for life, is a standing contradiction. The Co-operative
Commonwealth will be the true embodiment of emulation-the
very reverse of the struggle for existence; it is the generous desire
to see who can best serve the community: this is the source of all
that is great in human endeavour and of all that is excellent in
human achievement. Men can never dispense with it, and the
best communities will never be without it.
Here Mallock steps in and weaves a remarkable web of sophisms,
tending to prove that the working masses and emulation are per-
fect strangers. He says in his Social Equality: "But for the
wealthy classes wealth would never be produced by labour."
"Inequality, so far from being an accidental evil of civilisation, is
the efficient cause of its development and of its present main-
tenance." "If wealth did not exist for the wealthy, it would not
exist at all. If they were not pleased with fine ceilings, fine gild-
ing, harmoniously coloured walls, we should not have them. To
hold it up to him as a prize to which, as a labourer, he has any
right to, or which, as a labourer, he could ever possibly possess, is
simply to delude him.”
Please note, that this is a very different function of wealth from
64
Our Destiny.
that discussed in a previous chapter. There Mallock claimed
that the wealthy classes furnished the "ability" needed for the
production of wealth; here he insists, that if these classes did not
graciously consent to consume wealth, it would not be consumed,
and hence not produced, for the labouring classes have no desire
for anything but the mere necessities of life. In other words,
civilisation can be kept up to its present level only on the condi-
tion that we maintain our present plutocracy.
But was it then the rich that brought Athens to its artistic and
intellectual height, or was it the body of its citizens? Was it
the rich during the Middle Ages that produced a Raphael and a
Michael Angelo? It is evident that, however well Mallock may
be familiar with the aristocracy of his country, he knows nothing
of the elite of the working men of Great Britain, and still less, it
that be possible, of the organised wage earners of America.
No student can fail to notice the remarkable change that the
last century has created in the Anglo-Saxon working-classes: it is
the simple truth to say, that it has made them the intellectual
and moral leaders of progress. Let it be admitted, that thereto-
fore our labourers could not be led to work by anything but
hunger, and that they did not care for anything but the satis-
faction of their coarsest necessities. All this is radically changed,
their whole character is altered. The desires at first implanted
into them with difficulty have now taken root, and having so long
been schooled in producing wealth for others, they are now in a
condition to desire it and to produce it for themselves.
All
But contemplate them in the co-operative commonwealth.
the trades of the country will then centre in trades-unions, ex-
tending from ocean to ocean: our whole land will be dotted over
with small towns, each the centre of a special industry and under
the control of a union-for by that time our people will surely
return from our huge, overgrown cities back to the country.
These towns will possess all the resources of civilisation. Here it
is that emulation will show itself in its most splendid form as
corporate pride; every trade and every town will try to surpass
every other.
Contradictions.
65
21. At length we have arrived at what, as a datum of ethics, is
of cardinal importance, the outcome of the preceding intellectual
rectification of our views of public authority, of our functions and
their inter-relation.
In religious speculations it has often been observed, that two
selves seem to be at war in us, each of which loves what the other
hates, and hates what the other loves-our lower self and our
higher self. We know that the latter is certainly more ourself
than the former, and yet we cannot say, that the lower is not our-
self, and when we enter the lists against it, it is in our own breast
that we lay our lance at rest. This higher self, our true, our real
self, indeed, is our social self: our self as member of society; for
-and this is the important datum—it is only as a member of
society that the individual is at all real.
You may
This is not mere rhetoric or a metaphysical illusion.
reply that surely it is a fact, that individuals make society, that
they are real by themselves, and would remain real if every form
of society were destroyed. No, that is precisely not a fact. Take
a Frenchman. True, he may leave his own country, come over
here, and here remain the same Frenchman he was before. True,
also, that he may be conceived to remain what he now is, if all his
countrymen were suddenly annihilated. But reflect a moment.
Consider that this Frenchman was born into a certain French
family; afterwards he was educated in a French school of some
kind or other; finally, he was sent into the world to make his
living or his fortune-a French world, please observe, of a higher or
a lower character. Suppose you now try to perform the feat of ab-
stracting from our Frenchman all that he derives from his family,
from his teachers and comrades, from the station that he fills in
manhood; abstract his "sameness" with others, that which he has
in common with others, either all other Frenchmen or those of his
own class—what is left? Will you please point out the residuum.
Can you grasp it? Do not for a moment suppose that I affirm
that nothing remains. It will be evident in the following that I
not merely do not deny, but that I assert with emphasis that
something of the highest importance, of almost exclusive im-
portance, remains; but I say that this residuum has never existed
E
66
Our Destiny.
by itself; that if you take away all he possesses as a member of
the French nation, he ceases to be a Frenchman, and more than
that, he ceases to be a man, he ceases to be; you take him clear
away from the world of reality. Instead, therefore, of saying, as
Spencer's school does, that the individual is real and society
abstract, the fact is that society is the real, and the individual
the abstract.
But again, you insist that there certainly was a time when there
was no society of any kind, when therefore individuals must have
existed by themselves. Again, I say, facts contradict you. Go
as far back as history can trace man, and you find him living in
the social state; and if Darwin is right, then this social man
descended from a social animal, and thus society was never made
by individual men, but has all the time been prior to them.
Your instincts are stronger and better than your so-called
"principles." You see the state serenely ignore these thin
theories of "advanced thinkers" like so many cobwebs, and do
things which these theories condemn, and the people morally
approve. And when a national crisis occurs, the claims of indi-
vidualism are contemptuously brushed aside, the heart of the
nation beats loudly in the breast of every one of her members, and
its safety is held far superior to our individual lives.¹
Our other "self," our lower "self," our false "self”—though
our private self as opposed to our social self-is really not our-
self, but only of ourself; that is to say it consists in the impulses,
derived from our animal origin, and constitutes what theologians
call "original sin;" in some of us this lower "self" is an active
enemy of right, in others simply a more or less opposing drag. I
am morally realised when I refuse to identify myself with this
private self, when the whole knowingly wills itself in me, when I
consciously develop the common life of all in myself. That is why,
supposing myself absolutely alone in the world, there would be no
morality at all, and nothing whatever for me to live for, and why
the pure individualist is no member at all, but a parasitical ex-
crescence.
1 Many fruitful thoughts on this subject will be found in Ethical Studies
by F. H. Bradley.
Contradictions.
67
This datum seems to me perhaps the most important of all. It,
in itself, accounts for family, society, and the moral sentiments.
The "social self" accounts for our personality; it accounts for
conscience as being the objective mind, self-conscious in the in-
dividual, the voice of the whole in the breast of each citizen, the
utterance of the public spirit of the race in each social self, and I
here suggest that this "social self" may, when we come to religion,
help us considerably in clearing the atmosphere, for the mischief
there is the intellectual muddle into which the word "personal"
gets us when we apply it to God and immortality.
22. In the three chapters now concluded, we have, I think, the
true data of ethics, thereby meaning the facts, and all the facts,
that concur to constitute and develop morality, whether "absolute”
or relative." It follows that both Herbert Spencer's "data" and
"ethics" are false. If we gather the former into three groups, it
seems to me that this becomes apparent.
The basis of all his sociological speculations is his division of
human affairs into war and industrialism. He coolly assumes, first,
an unchanging warlike state, and following thereupon, a similarly
unchanging industrial state. This involves to my mind a bundle
of absurdities. It is evident that mankind must, to some extent,
have been "industrial" from the very beginning, for how else
could they have existed? Some individuals, clearly, must have
been producers. But the worst absurdity is to consider an in-
dustrial state synonymous with a "sphere of contract," yet this
state, according to Spencer, starts with catching game or fish in
common: "benefits received proportionate to services rendered;
without this there can be no sociological division of labour"—this
dictum with one stroke wipes out slavery, serfdom and the wage-
system. He, further, writes as if the environments of mankind
were stationary, and evolution consisted in more and more adapting
man to this environment, "The superior man is he whose faculties
are best adjusted to the social requirements,"-a judgment which
would make Judas Iscariot far superior to Jesus. It would, indeed,
be much more correct to say, that evolution consists in more and
more adjusting the social state to human nature.
68
Cur Destiny.
The next datum of his is couched in some such involved, stilted
sentence as this: "all along furtherance of individual lives has
been the ultimate end; when the aggregate is no longer in
danger, the first object of pursuit, the welfare of units, no longer
needing to be postponed, becomes the immediate object of pursuit."
From many similar statements it is clear that Spencer teaches no-
thing less than this: that as evolution progresses, the bond be-
tween the individual and society is loosened. This is nothing but
an enormous piece of dogmatism; if historic facts contradict it, so
much evidently the worse for the facts.
Lastly, a datum of "cardinal importance" is, that "conduct
should be such as will produce a consciousness as much pleasurable
and as little painful as may be," and that "men of different races,
men of the same race, and even the same men at different periods
have different standards of happiness." This is so, because, accord-
ing to Spencer, pleasure and pain, or the surplus of pleasure over
pain "to somebody and somewhere" is the end of moral action,
the standard of morality, and hence the motive to it. This I deny.
say,
that the motive to morality is different from the end of it.
Next, I say that the end of morality must be objective, but pleasure
is subjective; that it must be an end to us as men, but pleasure is
least distinctively human and shared by the beasts.
But Spencer's ethics takes in the beasts. "The conduct with
which ethics deals is a part of conduct at large," and "there is a
supposable formula for the activities of each species (of animals),
which, could it be drawn out, would constitute a system of morality
(sic) for that species." It may be added, that to assimilate the
moral man still more to animals he makes the side remark: "The
equilibrium reached at death. is, of course, the final state
which the evolution of the highest man has in common with all
lower evolution." Is thus his Data of Ethics not rather " Data of
Selfishness," or "Data of Animal Well-being in Man”?
•
The Data of these chapters, on the other hand, are these:
Full-fledged moral ideas did not come down from heaven, and if
they had, they could not have been perceived, much less applied.
by man, but they are a growth, conditioned by man's social, and
especially, industrial relations, each stage developing morality up
Contradictions.
69
to a certain point, so that men at the end of Antiquity and of the
Middle Ages were morally as much adjusted as they could be to
their respective social requirements. There has been a constant
evolution of these relations, and now we are on the threshold of
their final development; hence our present uncomfortable feeling;
the social organism may at present be said to be in its teething
period. Think of the heart-burning there must be within the
bud, when the full-blown rose is forming! What anxieties, what
agitations, what asperities among the atoms!
The fundamental motive to morality is the inborn inclination
to obedience in man. He must at all times obey something; he
cannot obey what he knows to be a lie, nor what is lower than
himself; he has, further, an innate inclination to obey the Order
of the Cosmos, Universal Reason- and this becomes conscience in
his own breast. Pleasure never can tell us which is the higher,
which the lower function, but, at the most, whether the function is
well performed or not. From this it follows that morality concerns
man only and all men.
As we progress, we find that we are more and more closely
united to Society, and at last all will come to acknowledge that
our true self is our social self.
Finally, the end of morals is morality itself-righteousness, i.e.,
from one point of view: Self-realisation, the development of our
social self; from the other: intensest Unity with our kind, the
Organic Unity of men. And this, the summum bonum, does not
end with the death of the individual.
Now at last we are in a position to determine from these data
the future development of morality in its two grand divisions of
Duty and Love.
WorM
I
CHAPTER IV.
DUTY OR JUSTICE.
"Free-will does not consist in doing any other thing but what nature,
left to its own tendencies, would have accomplished; but it consists in
doing this in the name of Universal Order and voluntarily,"-Theo. Jouffroy.
23. Moral ideas have not yet grown feebler than electricity in
moulding the destinies of man. Would that I had the eloquence
to show them in all their attractiveness, importance, and power,
and thus move men's hearts and rouse their energies to realise
them in a glow of defiance of obstacles!
Herbert Spencer has done one good service. By the title of his
book, Data of Ethics, he has impressed upon people the right idea :
that in order to understand Ethics, we must first study its data;
in other words, that morality is founded upon facts.
We have seen in Chap. II. that morality is the offspring of the
Empire of Necessity—of benevolent Necessity-of Universal Order,
and means, when fully evolved, the conscious and voluntary co-
operation towards the brotherhood and fellowship of man. When
once men comprehend this, they will no longer commit the fearful
blunder of looking down on morality as a silly, sentimental, un-
important matter, but must see it as it is: the most important
thing in life, the main business for us all; the only thing, indeed,
worth living and dying for-the prize of life; and also see that
every other sort is a sham morality.
This is the remarkable and cheering fact, that so far it is
Natural Evolution alone that will have directed our destiny.
What a marvellous spectacle, that with all our struggles in the
dark, with even good and noble men proceeding on cross purposes,
we shall have come to our goal; that an innumerable multitude
of human beings, amidst discords, without concert and even con-
70
Mol
Duty or Justice.
71
sciousness, have converged and concurred in the same general
development, believing they were merely following their personal
impulses ! That morality is a product of evolution implies that
it is something the universe through untold ages has been labour-
ing to bring forth; and which, therefore, has a value proportionate
to the tremendous efforts it has cost. It has been worked out by
infinite pain, the sweat and blood of generations, yet is given to
us by free grace, in love, as a sacred trust.
That by itself makes morality a transcendent, tremendous
reality, something of priceless value.
Neces-
We have noticed that our definition includes Free-will.
sity or Order may be said to be the father of morality, and
Free-will its mother. Free-will is subordinate, complementary to,
limited by the Order in the world; the latter defines our aim in
life, the end for which we have all been put into the world; but
this end must be accomplished through us and by us. Free-will
thus-as was announced by the French philosopher, Jouffroy, sixty
years ago-consists in co-operating, consciously and voluntarily,
with the Order of the Cosmos.
It is precisely by our Free-will, governed by right reason, that
we are to develop morality in us and in the world to the utmost,
and especially remove the obstacles which our Established Order
throws in its path.
Mark now that morality itself is a fact.
A fact is something to which the whole universe must submit.
A law says, "You ought, and if you do not you must bear the
penalty." As has been said: "It may be questioned whether a
law of nature-the law of gravitation, for example-is properly
called a 'law' at all; it is simply a statement of a fact, regular,
constant, invariable, if you please, but only a fact." Gravitation
means, do this, and that other thing will invariably follow. This
makes it a fact; and precisely in the same way morality is a fact.
This has been denied by the same writer above quoted. In a
volume of lectures¹ it is said:
"We believe that the conditions of social welfare and prosperity, the
sources of peace and satisfaction for each individual soul, are fixed. We
Ethical Religion, by Wm. M. Salter.
72
Our Destiny
know the law that makes this marvel of order which we see in this out-
ward world. How simple and yet how far-reaching is the law of gravita-
tion! But the law that would turn the chaos of human life into a cosmos
we do not know. It differs from the law of gravitation very plainly in
this, that it does not act necessarily; if it did, we should have already an
order here comparable to that we see in the material world. But we have
to discover it, and after we shall discover it, we shall have to give it the
free consent of our wills."
Is there really the difference suggested? Why is it that the
"law" of gravitation acts "necessarily ?" Is it not, because in
our solar system the requisite conditions are all the time prescnt!
But take another force, that of expansion-does that act con-
stantly? No, it is at times latent, but it acts "necessarily " and
immediately, whenever the fit conditions arise; yet surely it is as
much a fact or "law" as gravitation. Precisely so it is with
morality. Mr. Salter should have said that gravitation is con-
stantly active, but that morality will not be a fully active force
before the conditions appear-then it will act equally "necessarily."
It is to this lack of faith in morality that modern Pessimism is
due.
There is really a striking parallel between our times and the
decline of the Roman Republic-arising from the fact that that
age was like ours, a transition period between one organic social
order and another. The Romans had ceased to believe anything;
all affairs were conducted solely with a view to self-indulgence.
There were the most startling contrasts of enormous wealth and
selfish luxury in the few, and abject poverty among the masses.
Lowest down were sixty million slaves, hardly considered as human
beings; above them were found the vast majority of free citizens,
brutal, ignorant, dependent on the rich, and who, at night, after a
day's attendance on their patrons, crept up to their wretched quarters
in the sixth and seventh stories of the huge lodging-houses in
Imperial Rome. Far above them were the wealthy classes, dc-
bauched, ostentatious, dragging out a weary monotonous life, the
most virtuous of whom could reach no greater height than glorify-
ing suicide, and whose other literature was most vicious and de-
graded.1
¹ Canon Farrar in his Early Days of Christianity.
Duty or Justice.
73
The principal difference between now and then lies almost ex-
clusively in the superiority of our despised wage-workers over
Rome's free citizens.
But is it not remarkable that as Pessimism reigned then, so it has
raised its head in our times; and that it is just the cultured and
fortunate classes-whose personal morality is unexceptional-that
accept it and thereby condemn their civilisation.
This rise and spread of Pessimism in our days is a fact that
must be explained, and its explanation is naturally identical with
the reason for its existence among the Romans. True, it seems
more startling in our days, on account of the jubilant chorus caused
by railroads, telegraphs, and universal suffrage; but the note of
desolation and despair has the same meaning, that, like the ancient
civilisation, our own is hollow at the core. "There is a despond-
ent feeling that Providence has dishonoured his acceptance and
become a bankrupt as regards his promise to pay."
This simply comes from a narrow view of the whole process.
Men do not see beyond their horizon; they fail to see that this,
like the Roman decline, is but a necessary transition period, and
suppose that our established order is the very summit of the evolu-
tion. Such seems also to be the opinion of Haeckel who, as we
have seen, concludes that the moral ordering of the world is a
"fable," finds nothing but "the selfish, pitiless, and immoral
character of the whole contest everywhere," and declares that
"the ceaseless, terrible struggle for existence gives the real im-
pulse to the blind course of the world."
As soon as one can be convinced of the tremendous change which
Socialism will accomplish, then all Pessimism will disappear like
pestilent vapour.
We must for that purpose have a classification of the duties and
virtues, that, on the one hand, does not run into infinite detail,
and, on the other, is not merely a simple affirmation of general
principles. Morality divides itself naturally into self-restraining
and self-expanding Morality; the former is Duty or Justice-for
what is my "duty" is "justice" to another, so these are correla-
tive terms—with conscience as the active power, expressed in
these three obligations: Be industrious, be loyal, be straight. The
74
Our Destiny.
latter is Love, with the affections as the active agents, divided
into Love between the sexes, between parent and child, sympathy
between "masters " and "servants," sympathy for our fellow-men,
and sacrifice.
It is worth while to observe that, in this view, "self" becomes
an integral part of morality, and should be cultivated rather than
suppressed. A true philosophy teaches us that we cannot get
away from our "self" any more than we can jump out of our own
shadow, and now we see that if we could we should not at all pro-
fit by it. Under no ideal refinement of our nature could we ever
habitually desire for others anything but what we would wish for
ourselves. Our moral notions would, in fact, be destroyed, not
improved, if we could possibly repress our personal instincts.
Let us recall our definition of conscience. In French that word
means both our conscience" and consciousness. That there is a
close connection between these two ideas all admit.
I take con-
science to be: the Order of the Cosmos, of the whole, conscious in
each personality, in each social life.
To this classification it will be objected that I have omitted
duties to God and to oneself. I answer the former, whatever
they may be, belong to religion; and as to the latter, as to honour,
temperance and purity, they, in themselves, are not duties or virtues,
are not moral at all, since they have no tendency whatsoever to
unite men organically. But they are raised into the moral sphere,
if they are cultivated as a means to make us more efficient moral
agents; they even, as we shall see in the next chapter, acquire an
eminent moral value, if joined to the affections.
Truthfulness shows in a remarkable manner the all-importance
of the social element. Not all truth is sacred, whatever the
scientific, the positivist mind may say. Speaking the truth is
held to be the ultimate basis of morality, yet only a certain kind
of truth we respect, and it is social considerations that determine
our choice. When a villain asks us the way to his victim, we
think it right to tell him a lie; we hide to our friends the true
conditions of health, if the truth would hasten their death; we do
not reveal secrets which should be preserved, even when lying
alone will preserve them, showing that we are aware that not all
Duty or Justice.
75
truths are sacred; that their sacredness depends not on them-
selves, but on their object, whether they contribute to social
welfare or not. Suppose a man with a purely intellectual love of
truth who acts like a calculating machine, and tells the truth on
all occasions: he may be the greatest living scoundrel. Leslie
Stephen considers the use of judicial oaths to be due to an im-
perfect respect for truth; I should say it proves our acknowledg-
ment of the social value of truth.
24. Unfortunately, purity, temperance, and honour, altogether
too often remain exclusively personal; in that case they become
simply part of our miserable conventional morality, our church
morality, and this is in truth the highest immorality: the exact
opposite of true morality. While the latter intends and works to
realise a perfect society and fellowship among men, the former
divides them into cliques on the false lines of pride and property;
true morality unites us with our fellowmen, church morality
actually separates us from each other.
Conventional morality is true Pharisaism. I have not the least
doubt, that if Jesus should now walk in the flesh among us, he
would denounce our self-righteous Christians as fiercely as ever he
did the Pharisees of old. He would, I apprehend, tell our
(( better
citizens,” men who have never known what real temptation means,
and who think themselves far superior to a poor devil who has
been sorely tempted every hour of his waking life: "You deem
yourself infinitely more respectable than the inmates of your
prisons, and would think yourself insulted to be compared to them.
I tell
you, that some of these have had their ideals to which they
have tried faithfully to live up, that with all their faults they have
loved the beautiful, the good, and the true; they have withstood
temptation once, they have manfully conquered it the second time,
but fell perhaps at the third assault. You, my dear sir, who have
never had a wish to be better than you are, and have always been
supremely selfish, are infinitely inferior to such a man. Yet, fool!
you fancy that God applauds such a decent piece of respectability
as you! Go, you whited sepulchre !-your so-called virtues are
reptile virtues-varnished vices!"
76
Our Destiny.
Ah! I can fancy some-a few at least of our rich people, at
all events here and there a young, generous, thoughtful son or
daughter of such, who, in these days of moral awakening, are
roused by their conscience, and haunted by the thought: "Can it
be that we rich people are robbers? Have we any right to the
position we occupy?" If they go to their pastors with their
doubts, they surely will get no satisfaction there, or they will have
their doubts lulled to sleep, for our $5000 ministers, whether
Baptists, Episcopalians, or Unitarians, are, with very, very few
exceptions, unfaithful ministers, whose only function seems to be
to drug the world's conscience. It cannot but be, however, in spite
of this drugging, that at their balls and midnight suppers some of
them must see in the look and attitude of the haggard faces in the
street a claim upon them, and to have the thought branded into
their brains: "We are rioting on stolen goods."
Heretofore such rich people have had their excuses. They
were blind to the actual facts, and no one opened their eyes.
But
now the fulness of the truth is dawning upon them and upon the
world. Now you come to see that if you leave a boy or girl in
squalor and misery, so imbedded in criminality that you might lay
your hands on each one and say that if not rescued by a miracle
he or she will inevitably become a thief and a murderer, you rich
people are answerable for their crimes! You are the real thieves
and murderers, and if you do not acknowledge it, it were better a
millstone were hanged around your neck and you cast into the
sea !
Well, it is wonderful, how quickly the world of late has pro-
gressed in the quickening of the moral sense. Fifty years ago the
working classes themselves and their best friends did not see any
wrong whatever in the wage-system. Now the Bishops of the Episcopal
Church issue a pastoral denouncing that system, with its principle
that labour is a merchandise, as unchristian and immoral. Yes,
look upon this vast toiling population, often tramping from place
to place, thrice blessed when it gets into a squalid corner of a
workshop or factory, and allowed to pursue an eternal monotonous
operation for eleven hours a day, so situated, that it cannot
employ itself, crouching at the feet of another class, from whom
t
Duty or Justice.
77
it gets only a supply of insults and mockery and a crown of thorns
for the brow of despised humanity. The worst of the present
system, as already said, but cannot be too often repeated, is by no
means that it makes some rich and leaves others poor, but that by
placing one class in the power of another class, to be used as
means to its ends, it destroys all truly human relations between
them.
That is conventional morality: materialism triumphant, an
overpowering lust of mammon, virtue reduced to the caput
mortuum of self-interest, a low theory of life, a lost ideal of
heroism.
There are "Christians" amongst us who have exemplified the
highest degree of purity, temperance, and honour, and at the same
time entirely disregarded the social self, held aloof from humanity,
and looked upon the world as a defilement. We have seen them
expel from their Communion members who had entered the Union
Army to fight against slavery, but they never expelled stock-
brokers or speculators, oh, no! If Jesus were here with his
scourge, I am sure he would flog every one of them out of the
temple. They have faithfully copied the example of Joseph, the
great Hebrew minister of finance, who, having secured a large
store of corn, permanently reduced the Egyptians to bondage by
fixing a 20% tax on the industrial classes.
If this is so with "moral" men, no wonder the ordinary worldling
hardly understands that society even can have different aims.
But soon these things will be burnt as a scroll in the fierce heat
of the Eternal !
Let it be distinctly known that the man who cultivates purity,
temperance, and honour in quakerish pride of individuality, that
he may stand aloof from common humanity and be considered
better than others, is a nauseous, loathsome Pharisee.
25. No, Providence has not become bankrupt, but Satan has,
apparently, been permitted temporarily to reign. Not at all the
old-fashioned devil nor the mocking Mephistopheles, however.
There are in Boston two busts by T. J. Gould: one representing
Jesus, the other Satan. On looking at the latter some must say
78
Our Destiny.
s;
to themselves: "Surely I meet frequently with such a face as this
its chief expression is precisely what marks the faces of so and so,
our most enterprising and successful business men.' That is to
say, the expression is, not malevolent, but supremely selfish, that
of a man going straight to his end without a thought of others,
perfectly indifferent to their feelings, and whether he hurts them
or not, with at most a sneer for their weakness. This is the spirit
that rules affairs at present and has ruled them for the last
century, which indisputably, during that period has, under
Providence, contributed materially to progress, and done a work
that had to be done and for which such a spirit was best fitted. It
is the spirit that animates practically all our successful business
men, and now has full control of even the Church, in all its
branches of which, however, the evangelical is the most immoral,
as it, with its Pharisaical zeal, makes morals consist in paltry and
shabby personal aspirations.
The most horrible work of this satanic spirit is, that it makes
society tempt us all wrongly. Nothing can be conceived more
devilish than this; it and Pharisaism are the two very worst phases
of modern morals. To be sure, none of us is, of course, compelled
to become a thief and a swindler, but that is a small favour.
Think of it, and let it sink deep into your heart: that society
which ought to throw her powerful motives into the scale of right,
actually does constantly and persistently tempt all her members into
evil ways.
What father is not horrified at knowing his pure,
innocent daughter tempted, whatever faith he has in her virtue!
And it is a fact. All our relations in life can furnish examples,
and the following pages will call attention to some of the most
revolting. The conception of life as a competitive race makes
property the sole thing worth a man's pursuit, and the most com-
mendable; by producing for profit, I am made to consider whether
each stroke will pay; whether I had not better scamp this and
hurry over that; I grudge every stroke of the tool. Commercial
men cannot afford to be strictly honest; by having their labour
miserably remunerated, women are tempted to prostitution. But
in the face of this terrible fact it is truly wonderful how many
good people there are in the world. This is something that ought
Duty or Justice.
79
to greatly encourage us and strengthen our faith in man's destiny.
Satan is defeated by the very fact that, under the existing cir-
cumstances, men are as good as they are.
The very worst of the social temptations is, that wealth has
become the great social power, and it is here that wealth is injurious.
It is not that the purple and fine linen of Dives cause Lazarus to
be in rags, for that is not true of the modern rich man-the
reverse indeed is rather the truth. "What makes him a dangerous
social growth is that, by controlling the heap of wealth of which
all others need and must have a share, he exercises a double
pressure on the needy who serve him either with hand or head:
by picking out the favoured ones, and by dictating his own terms.
It is thus through the distribution of his money that he gets his
dangerous power-the monopoly of what all want makes his power
so fatal. He parts with his cheque, and he gets all nice things:
adulation, professional skill, paragraphs in newspapers, the disposal
of places. He spends, and has the world at his feet in the
spending; he can hardly help saving, and his savings increase like
a rolling mass of snow, without effort.”¹
This results in an indiscriminate respect for wealth. No one
would bear an extra burden of business to have a cellar of choice
wines for one's own drinking, or would be lying awake of nights
devising means of getting richer, to provide one's wife with a
carriage-it is the increased social distinction, the éclat of the wines
and carriages that has the strong motive power. This deference
can always be had by accumulating property, and this can be
accomplished by one of very mediocre attainments, if he possess
cheek and cunning.
""
་
This power of “lording it over others is surely an evil and the
desire for it a low desire, filling the one with vanity and an over-
bearing spirit, the other with servility, envy, and a smothered
hatred, and dividing the nation against itself. It is not in human
nature to be just and humane when robbed of life's fundamental
conditions. The rich man's sympathies are naturally seared; he
comes to think that other people exist solely for his benefit and
that they are of an inferior order, fit only for labour. It is one of
I Prof. Graham's Social Problems.
80
Our Destiny.
the ugly sides of human nature that we treat our needy brothers
with contumely; it needs the most exalted nature under the
highest civilisation to think of acting otherwise.
How much worse is it then when riches have been acquired-as
in our days they to a greater or less extent are in nine cases out of
ten-by speculation, that is to say, by pure gambling. That is the
greatest proof of the dominion of Satan, that the churches are
everywhere in his service, that all they are now witnesses to, is
"the principles of property," no matter how acquired. It is
notorious that ministers, as often as they can spare a few dollars,
put them into margins and stocks. Henry Ward Beecher declared,
before a legislative committee, that cornering food-products—a
crime in the Middle Ages-is a legitimate business. And Washing-
ton Gladden, a man with some very noble impulses, must un-
doubtedly have some speculators in his congregation, since he can
write "Speculation, when it hoards the necessaries of life, may
often be a heartless and injurious business; it may, on the other
hand, have beneficent results, equalising the pressure of demand
and supply. Society can have no quarrel with them." Well, I
apprehend, a moral Collective Conscience will by and by have some
quarrel with scoundrels who gamble in the necessaries of life by
manipulating demand and supply.
Meanwhile no provision whatever is made for those writers and
thinkers who are doing the very highest work which man on earth
can do for his fellows. Even these, the large majority of them,
the money-bag uses for his ends, pays for his purposes, hiring
them as formerly soldiers of fortune were hired, all the time
despising them, since they have not the sense to make money.
And on the small minority, the very highest minds, the prophets
in Israel, the most terrible probation is put merely in order to
live, to vegetate rather, and do their work, yet patient under
insults and mockeries and the crown of thorns that is put upon
them, "for they know not what they do." They are in many
cases even refused the poor privilege of earning their living by
manual labour because they dare to attack the system. Of course
society is full to the brim of hypocrisies and insincerities in the
spiritual sphere as of evils and injustice in the social. But had
Duty or Justice.
8t
there been provision for the modest wages of these workers in
payment for their proper work, the world would have been far
beyond our present stage in thought, letters, and conceptions of
life, and the kingdom of heaven might have been here.
Instead of that kingdom, where the strongest, healthiest, most.
perfectly organised, one of finest physique, largest brain, most
developed intelligence, and best morals, would be the leaders, this
satanic competition protects, flatters, and fosters those in every
way unworthy. Why! to use a hypothesis, effectually employed
by St. Simon seventy years ago: Suppose a hundred of the most
"prominent " individuals in each department of industry and the
professions—aye, and in some departments even thousands—
removed in one night from our country, does not everybody know
that this, so far from being a loss, would be a positive gain to our
country's interests?
Let this thought sink deeply into our minds: that the estab-
lished order tempts us all to despise labour, to encourage disloyalty,
dishonesty, and impurities of every sort.
26. We pass now to the great moral obligations, and shall in-
quire, first, how the established order affects them, and next, how
Socialism will influence them. Our wage-earners, undoubtedly,
will think it quite superfluous to address to them the precept :
"Be industrious!" as they will say that they are quite as indus-
trious as anybody ought to be, toiling, as they do, eleven hours a
day for a mere living. To be "industrious," however, involves.
more than being active: it includes devoting all our thoughts to
our work, making that work as artistic as it admits of, and par-
ticularly being careful that nothing is wasted. There is good
authority for the statement that the question of success or failure
of many a large establishment depends solely on this matter of
waste. That our wage-earners are often deficient in these second-
ary matters is true beyond any question; but it is just as true
that they have at present no motive to be anything else. Con-
sider simply how productive work is now depreciated, and how the
non-productive industries—the mere incidents of production—are
endowed with a far higher social rank than the productive ones.
F
82
Our Destiny.
It would really be comical, if it were not really tragical. Look
and see how a mere trader or speculator, who requires no skill, no
apprenticeship, and but a very low order of intellect, not alone
absorbs wealth far more rapidly, but enjoys a far superior esteem
than the thoroughly trained mechanical producer. It is enough
to make devils laugh to see the poor mechanic look up to the
trader, the banker, and contractor as almost superior beings, and
yet they are fellows who only handle his product.
This is completely to reverse the proper order by honouring the
least worthy, and deteriorating and degrading the truly meritori-
ous. Why, it is monstrous that vendors of goods, those who
merely carry goods from one place to another, are able to earn
twice as much in half the time as the producers, and, besides this,
to make immense fortunes at the expense of the consumers. And
to think that this is not alone tolerated but acquiesced in without
a suspicion of those who suffer most that anything is wrong,
because these shrewd distributors of wealth have used every avail-
able form of deception, misrepresentation, and strategy to create
the belief that they-they who often are nothing but parasites—
are the most important of all the social elements. So potent has
been their influence, that any protest by the well-wishers of the
wage-earners has only to be by them labelled "Socialism," and
their victims immediately assent.
It cannot be difficult to see that this has had a most mischiev-
ous tendency to depreciate productive industry itself. It has
prevented the intellectual and moral elevation of producers
directly deteriorating the quality, and diminishing the quantity
of wealth produced, and, moreover, has drawn the best minds
away from productive labour to waste their time in trade and
speculation, perfectly barren of inspiring sentiments. Indeed, if
we go down to the bottom of the matter, we shall find that, be-
cause industry always has been and is the foundation of society, all
the empires of the past have failed from the slight regard paid to
it. Athens alone among the Greek States rose at all superior to
the pride which contemned it, and she had her reward in the
glory she gained for all time. But on account of the prejudice
shown by the Hebrew race, it was dispersed, nor could all the skill
Duty or Justice.
83
of Roman administration avert the decay wrought by its disdain
both of agricultural and artisan labour.
Consider further the motives which the worker has for being in the
true sense industrious, and the motives he has for being otherwise;
and, if you are fair, you will admit that the latter far overbalance
the former. Remember only that our working men have on an
average but 7 dols. a week, that a man seldom has constant em-
ployment, that even sober and industrious wage-earners in our
most favoured states cannot make both ends meet without the
wages of their children: can you wonder, is it anything but human
nature that our jails never want occupants? When you know
that girls get only three dollars a week, and must pay for board,
room, washing, and clothing, and-why not?-a bit of finery,
I ask you, my Pharisaic sir, is it anything but human nature
if she submits to the temptation of a young fellow of your
class?
I have not a particle of doubt that our present trade-unions will
be the skeletons of the future Social Order. That is to say, all
useful citizens of the future socialist commonwealth will form
themselves into a number of corporate bodies-let us simply for
convenience' sake call them "Trade-Unions." We shall thus have
all social activities of whatsoever kind performed by such unions.
of butchers, bakers, tailors, and likewise of teachers, judges and
physicians, extending from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Every
active man will join some union, so that "scabs " will be unknown.
Each of these unions will be on a perfect equality with every other
union, and each perform its function in perfect liberty and deter-
mine for itself all the details of the work as to how many hours a
day its members will work, whether it shall be day or night work
and the ratios in which to distribute the remuneration. The only
control to which they, in the nature of things, must submit-or
rather supervision-is that of the central administration which, as
the general manager, will from the statistics of the previous year
fix the number, say, of coats to be made the current year and dis-
tribute the amount among the various tailor unions; this central
administration, further, as a matter of necessity, in conjunction with
the representatives of the unions, determines the remuneration to
84
Our Destiny.
be paid for the work and the consequent price of the products,
since this is a public question.
With wages surely double those paid at present, and the hours
of labour at least reduced to six hours-to which extent, without
the least doubt, the socialist republic immediately will, and safely
can, improve the condition of the workers; with work suitable,
and therefore pleasant, and subject only to rules which every mem-
ber has had a hand in framing (in the rare cases where the ma-
jority has been overbearing and unjust there will undoubtedly be
opportunity for redress from the collectivity as arbitrator or judge);
with uninterrupted labour, for with no over-production, there will
be no crisis, as there will be no strikes or lock-outs-for to strike
means to starve-will the workmen of the future not be like a new
being? The shoemaker, the baker, or the weaver who now sees
no horizon beyond the wall of the little cell in which he lives, and
in which the tedium and monotony of his occupation might well
lead him to ask, "Is life worth living?" will under Socialism.
breathe quite a different atmosphere, and, from the thoughts and
feelings that accompany his work, indefinitely increase the energy,
ingenuity, and painstaking bestowed upon it. That is simply the
natural difference between occupation, looked upon subjectively
as an elementary need, essential to human life, and objectively as
the discharge of a needed social function.
The picture will be still far brighter if we let our imagination
riot among the far-reaching changes which will result secondarily
from such a state of affairs--among which is one, once alluded to,
which will surely be started the moment Socialism triumphs, and
which will vastly stimulate sympathy and emulation and through
them industry—and that is the return of the population from our
cities back into the country. No one can now perceive a limit to
the increase of cities like London, New York, and Boston, yet there
must be a limit, for it is an expansion highly detrimental to social
interests. Under the established order there can be no halt, be-
cause evolution needs the large cities in order to effect the coming
change, and bring the nation to self-consciousness.
But with the advent of the large corporate industrial bodies,
each pursuing a different industry or branch of it, each of which
Duty or Justice.
85
will naturally make a chosen nook or corner of our country the
seat of it, we shall have the Greek "cities" of old resurrected, but
on a far higher plane. These same bodies will of course construct
and administer the municipal organisations, and make them the
most perfect social organisms. We shall thus have small towns
everywhere, each comprising all the vast benefits of our present
metropolitan cities, but without their horrible evils; each with
every appurtenance of educational and æsthetical apparatus. What
a wonderful moral influence will issue from them! All will know
themselves as indispensable, integral, and equivalent parts of the
whole whose conduct has a collective bearing. This world will thus
no longer be the empire of the devil, but a true Civitas Dei-City
of God.
The established order makes us despise labour and respect
"business." Socialism will strongly incite us all to industry.
27. "Be loyal," is really, in plain words, the same as "be
obedient," but our commonplaces about "liberty" have had the
effect of raising in ordinary minds a strong presumption against
obeying any body-though by a natural rebound the further con-
sequence has been to induce people to obey the first one who
claims this allegiance with sufficient self-confidence. It is curious
that our evolution-moralists do not mention obedience at all as
one of the virtues; yet, in sober truth, it is and must remain the
very basis of Morality.
Moreover, to obey a real superior is a great blessing, essential
to achieving anything great. As has been said, "Command and
obedience stand at the very entrance to life. The tacit assump-
tion that it is a degradation to give one's will to that of another
is the root of all evil." To regard subordination as a humiliation
is surely a mark, not of spirit, but of a base disposition, subversive
of everything worth having in life.
In any society that wishes to start at a certain point command
and obedience necessarily ensue. Whenever the aim is not
personal but common to all, the best man is readily found. In
scientific, literary, and philosophic societies whose aim is the truth,
we know the best men are soon known. When all pursue the
86
Our Destiny.
same inquiries, and are animated by the same aims, those whose
knowledge is most extensive are at once recognised, appointed to
posts of honour, and loyally revered. When, on the other hand,
the object is self interest, there is no hope of finding the man, or
of his being reverenced when found.
Whether obedience is rightful or wrongful depends entirely
upon who it is that commands. We saw in the previous chapter
that the two important principles of trades-unions are: that direc-
tion of affairs belongs to the capable, and that all subordinates
should intelligently co-operate. No one pretends that our wage-
earners do that; they are virtually still in a quasi-servile state
and in no sense a source of public opinion. They have no effective
choice of those to whom they must submit; at the utmost they
can, to a limited extent, choose "masters." No wonder they hate
the very word obedience, and that loyalty has almost died out
amongst them, for they know subordination only in its harshest
form; remember that such a skilled and intelligent body of opera-
tors as telegraphers were compelled a few years ago to sign a
pledge not to enter the Knights of Labour organisation.
It is very curious that Spencer and all evolution-moralists can-
not see beyond this transition period and "contracts." They
evidently cannot get over the idea that these two categories are to
be crystallised for all eternity. "As civilisation advances status
passes into contract"—and then it stops as if in a cul-de-sac.
No, be sure "contract" is, like the times in which we are living,
a transitory arrangement, a connecting link, so to say, between the
status of the Middle Ages, status by birth, and that of the future,
status by function. Every contract confers authority upon one of
the parties. The power of a French minister of the Interior over
an immense number of subordinates is formidable and produces
inequality in its harshest and least sympathetic form; to say that
it supersedes obedience is a poor kind of irony. The power of
particular persons over their neighbours has never in any age of
the world been so well defined and so easily and safely exerted
as at present. Moreover, it ought to be noted, that contracts are
in their very nature immoral. Whenever two make a contract,
it is implied, if not expected, that it will prove onerous to one of
Duty or Justice.
87
the parties; that one will "get the better" of the other of the
parties; the meaning of the contract then is, that the party that
is ruined, or, at least, not fairly remunerated for his expense or
labour, must nevertheless stick to it. Well, there can be no doubt
that we shall return to status; that is to say, as we formerly had
status fixed by birth, we shall have status determined by
capacity.
No well-informed and frank man can pretend that our employers
are the most capable. There is probably not a single manufactur-
ing establishment, mercantile or banking house, where the chief is
not inferior in intellect and mental breadth to several of his
subordinates. It is inevitable, as we saw, under our present
system which immensely narrows the horizon of the successful
"self-made” man. Thus all obedience is now positively immoral.
For the case is not mended even by the chief being the ablest of
all, since he now is moved by self-interest and not by social
interest. Loyalty to a selfish individuality is immoral; loyalty to
society is moral precisely because the latter is moved by an ideal.
And if we take so able a wretch as Napoleon, whose genius mini-
stered only to selfish vanity and created in him a sentiment of
"aloofness" to the social organism-to be loyal to such an in-
dividual is criminal. Such genius is satanic, and ought to be
swept from humanity's workshops very much as a carpenter sweeps
out into oblivion the shavings that encumber his work.
There is then at present no foundation for, no motive whatever
to loyalty, but this Socialism will entirely reverse. A change, in-
deed, will be effected by the mere fact that those who now are the
wage-workers will not become the ruling class-but will have
their influence greatly increased. Now there is fortunately in
that class an ingrained reverence for mental superiority, in many
cases even for superiority that is but half-genuine. That is a
characteristic which our Carnegies and Weedens and our half-
educated, self-made men cannot understand, and hence they rave
about "Asiatic despotism " as often as they speak of labour organi-
sations. It is a reverence they themselves are generally strangers
to: they have a horror of trusting freely a qualified man to do a
definite work, a feeling rarely found among our artisans, who, on
88
Our Destiny.
the contrary, show a great readiness to accept personal leaders.
That is the way the working men of both Anglo-Saxon countries
have gone about their affairs, the way they have made their
organisations powerful and themselves respected. That is how
they put in practice their two principles of rule of capacity and
responsibility—in other words realised democracy.
Evolution seems to me clearly to point to this as the political
model for the socialist republic, with loyalty and obedience as the
consequence.
Since all useful citizens become public functionaries, each will
really in his place perform his share of the government, for what
is the "government" of a nation, but performing the work of a
nation? But the distinctive feature of " democracy," which we
now emphasise, will be that all the administrators will be elected
from below. I claim this is the only sure way of getting in a
manner, satisfactory to all, ability at the head of affairs. Re-
member that it is sine qua non that the initial voters shall enjoy
perfect independence and security. Think of such arguments as
these Are such men not, in the first place, all things considered,
the most competent to elect their immediate foremen? Do they
not know the qualifications of their comrades, who are the candi-
dates, and at the same time the duties of him who is to oversee
them? And are they not, also, they who are most interested in
having over them both the ablest and the most just man? By
having the operatives elect their foremen, the foremen their super-
intendent, the superintendents their superiors, and so on up to the
chief of departments, we surely secure this one thing, that each
officer has the good-will of those under him. And, on the other
hand, if we entrust the dismissal of every officer to his immediate
superior who is responsible for the performance of the duties by
that officer, and therefore must have the power of dismissing or
rejecting him if unfit, we insure the efficiency of the administrator,
and the good-will of superiors.¹ Can there be a doubt that by
such a scheme ability will necessarily gravitate towards the highest
posts? At any rate, it must be admitted that such a plan is the
only one that never yet has been tried. It conforms to the nature
¹As to details see my Co-Operative Commonwealth.
Duty or Justice.
89
of true ability—a different thing entirely from the "ability" of
our self-made men. True merit, we have seen, is invariably
modest, needs to be pushed forward and have its opportunities
created, and to lean upon the judgment of others, while it is out
of its element in struggling against others and against obstacles.
Ah, if you able men in these United States could only get a
glimpse of the working of a co-operative commonwealth with all
its consequences, you would, I am sure, merely from honourable
ambition, embrace Socialism to a man, and give it a tremendous
impetus. Why, plenty of men will in that social order become
great by the mere grandeur of the work which will be given them
to do! The future has a field for great and heroic leaders of men,
such as the past cannot show, a field all the grander and loftier
both morally and intellectually because it will consist in the free
leadership of intelligent wills, because it will be the embodiment
of fully developed units.
We shall have no more scrambles for the insignia of power by
manipulating primaries of caucuses, that incapacity may fill its
own pockets or air its own vanity. The future chief will not be
a human tool to be dictated to, but a man of the people's choice,
who leads; he will be continually initiating, devising, suggesting.
He will never force, never be forced; he will sometimes create
opinion on which alone he rests for strength by honestly forcing
the conviction that he is right. Consent will then give him a far
higher power than any material force now does.
It has been said that if the Black Prince were living he would
change his motto, “Ich dien” (I serve), to "Je paie" (I pay); the
motto will yet once more come to honour.
Here are two social systems, the future democracy, inspired by
working-men, and the present republic, modelled by middlemen.
Working-men are distinguished by breadth of view, power of
combination, social spirit, and loyalty to leaders. Middlemen, big
and small, are absorbed in petty details, harassed by ceaseless
competition, and narrowly practical. That is what often makes
our strikes so bitter, that employers cannot conceive that any one
seriously prefers combined strength to independent helpless-
ness.
90
Our Destiny.
The established order incites to disloyalty; Socialism will tempt
to manly obedience.
28. Be straight, "integer." A man of integrity is the very
essence of duty, and here it is we fail most completely. Of course
some regard for truth is implied in the simplest social state, and
without some measure of honesty we could not get along at all.
The special necessity for confidence in the mutual relations of
human beings develops to some extent the sense of honour, and
the other special necessity, that anything which is done or made.
should really be what it purports to be, develops to some extent.
integrity in work, or honesty. Only the third branch of truth:
reality in knowledge, brought about by the necessity of under-
standing the real world with which we are in incessant relation,
has been fully attained, because it does not come into collision
with our interests.
Since all our social relations are one sole web of conspiracy to
tempt us, it is no wonder that life is a mass of dishonesties.
Business life tempts us to be untruthful; at all events it is on a
footing of enmity with openness, requiring, as it does, secrecy, and
in certain cases deception. Everywhere we meet with temptation
to lying, which comes next to, and very near to, compulsion.
Scarcely a transaction is ever consummated without some form of
deception being practised. The ability to "drive a bargain" is
nothing else but a certain species of cunning in making facts
appear different from what they are, whereby customers are
beguiled into paying more than its value for an article. Taking
society as it actually is, everyone expects everyone else to practise
a certain amount of deception, and one failing to do so would be
adjudged scarcely possessed of the full complement of "wits."
The suppressio veri is fully employed, the impression prevailing
that no wrong is done, unless a positive falsehood is resorted to,
though surely it is the effect, not the form, that is material.
Even Herbert Spencer, the apostle of individualism, informs us
that as the law of the animal creation is 'eat or be eaten,' so of
the trading community it may be said its motto is 'cheat or be
cheated.'" Men in different occupations, men naturally conscien-
(C
Duty or Justice.
91
tious, who manifestly chafe under the degradation they submit to,
have one and all expressed the sad belief that it is impossible to
carry on trade with strict rectitude. The scrupulously honest
must go to the wall. "And nobody seems ashamed of these
things; they are not only tolerated but actually defended."
Spencer sums up the indictment in these words: "Illicit practices
of every form and shade, from venial deception up to all but direct
theft, may be brought up to the higher grades of our commercial
world."
"Liable to prompt dismissal as the assistants in our stores are
for non-success in selling; gaining higher positions as they do in
proportion to the quantities of goods they dispose of profitably;
applauded, certainly not reproved, for any dishonest tricks, these
young people often display a scarcely credible demoralisation and
speak almost continuous falsehoods. Whatever is needed to effect
a sale must be said." "Any fool can speak the truth." It is said
that the universal practice is to make goods up in lengths shorter
than they profess to be. Silk is "weighted" with soap or sugar.
Manufacturers get designs by making workmen steal them-that
is a very common offence. Insensibly, almost irresistibly, men
are thrust into trade-immorality. We will say, some utterly un-
conscientious trader is the first to introduce some new form of
fraud. The more upright merchants are continually tempted to
adopt this questionable device which those around them are
practising; the greater the number that yields, the more unequal
the battle. The pressure of competition becomes more and more
severe-finally they are compelled to follow the unscrupulous
leader. Is it not startling-is it not enough to condemn this
present to know that generous, upright men, of fine moral nature,
are compelled to imitate the greatest knaves in the trade, at the risk
of bankruptcy?
It is told of a draper in England who carried his conscience into
his shop, that he refused to commit the current frauds of his trade,
whereby his business became so unremunerative that twice he be-
came a bankrupt, so that he actually by his bankruptcies inflicted
more evils upon others than he would have inflicted upon his cus-
tomers by committing the usual trade-dishonesties.
92
Our Destiny.
Spencer asks: "What are 'accommodation bills' but practically
forgeries?" And what a frightful commentary could be made
on the legal, commercial rule, caveat emptor! "You must assume
that he who sells you a thing is a scoundrel."
And yet there is no good reason to assume that the trading
classes are intrinsically worse than others. We all continually fall
into such temptations as are open to us.
Few classes, if any, are
free from immoralities that are as great as the above, relatively to
temptation.
Take politics. Everyone admits that they are carried on by
systematic corruption. But one phenomenon really surpasses all
the rest. What can be more brazen and shameful-is the trade
of the harlot more demoralising?-than to see a society like
Tammany Hall, formed for the express purpose of grasping public
offices for its members-an office-broking concern-openly showing
itself off to the public, and presenting itself as a type of "demo-
cracy?"
This lack of integrity naturally affects our men of talent and
genius, and makes them degenerate into mere instruments of
narrow personal interests; hence our scientists are satisfied with
superficial conceptions; our artists indulge in unprincipled crea-
tions to achieve a rapid and ephemeral popularity; our inventors
care nothing for important inventions, and give their time to
nothing but lucrative pursuits-melancholy results indeed, de-
prived of all moral value, and which have a still worse influence on
men of second-rate abilities. Selfishness perverts and paralyses
the most eminent powers.
Whenever a private enterprise is now broached, none asks
whether the work is wanted, or will be useful to the community,
or a means of healthy life to the enterprising individual, or
whether it is honest, can be carried on without being defiled, or
even whether he likes it, no, but does it pay? And, observe, it is
our comfortable classes that ask this "professional" question. If
it does not promise so and so much per cent. on capital, it is
dropped. "Yet clearly," as has been said, "it would be a better
paying thing with but one per cent., if it would make one happy,
with helpers around one contented, children growing up under
Duty or Justice.
93
healthy conditions, and producing genuine and useful articles, than
with ten per cent. with jangling and wrangling, over-worked and
sad faces around us, and dirty, deceptive stuff produced.¹
To conclude the indictment: our whole mercantile and financial
class is nothing but a criminal class in regard to the bulk of their
incomes and fortunes. Our "best people " reek with dishonesties.
The hordes of stock and share-mongers (including ministers of the
gospel) are the criminal classes par excellence in our modern
society. Every man and woman among us is continually tempted
by our social arrangements to be dishonest. Should not one with
a healthy mind do all he can to overthrow such a system?
Now let Socialism reverse the conditions of society. Make it,
in the first place, man's interest to be honest. When the work of
anybody is no longer a tribute to physical necessity, but a glad
performance of social office, when a few hours of agreeable effort
daily will secure all necessaries, decencies, and comforts, why
should any rational man want to steal, or cheat, or rob? Why
should anybody want to make a living by crime when he can far
more easily make it by honest effort?
Next, let wealth cease to be a social power-as it will when
everyone has an assured income, for it is precisely such a power
because others need a part of it. No one will care to be wealthy,
when his wealth can only be eaten and drunk and enjoyed by
himself and his friends, when it cannot tempt others to be his
servants.
And, lastly, make all work a social function—this is the most
important of all and all-comprehensive. When a butcher ist
assured of a decent living-not as a quid pro quo, but as a means
enabling him to perform his function-when his maintenance in
old age and the future of his children are guaranteed, when he
knows that in the innumerable circles where he figures as a con-
sumer his interests are taken care of, then be sure he will soon
learn in his work to give society the first consideration, then he
will devote himself entirely to furnish his customers with good meat
at fair prices. It is nothing but human nature. Then we shall
'See Ed. Carpenter's England's Ideal.
94
Our Destiny.
have the motives at work which ruled "when all England awoke
every morning and went to its work with a prayer."
29. All things human have an ideal, a soul, in them. The
soul of our established order is that brute-god, Mammon, the
modern Satan, and he has made wealth our ideal. He must be de-
throned, and a spirit-god put in his place: the New Ideal be realised.
And it will be done, for the "ought" in us is prophetic of a perfect
society and a perfect morality.
The distinction between the New Ideal and Conventional Ethics
is as radical as between the Copernican and the Ptolemaic systems.
Conventional Morality takes the individual man as its centre, and
by so doing all active men push and snatch and compete to get the
most from each other, "cozen their neighbours" and keep them apart.
This sort of morality never yet worked out a beautiful, blessed
and happy life, and it never failed more signally than in our days.
The new ideal recognises a new centre: society, for each man's
thoughts and activities; it does not ignore the individual by any
means; it will precisely realise the highest kind and best in quality
of individual welfare; moreover, it only explains "that dim sense
of a compelling ought, a true race-instinct-that always bound
man to do what he did not choose and what he could not see would
benefit him at all.”
Then we shall act, not from duty, but from spontaneity.
Mr. Salter says in his Ethical Religion: "The wide earth might
be a scene of justice to-morrow, and every city of our land trans-
formed into a City of the Light, if men and women would wake
with to-morrow's sun to will the good which now lies like a half-
formed vision in their minds."
(C
I believe this is a great mistake. I think no willing" can do
what unripe conditions forbid. The co-existence of the perfect
man and an imperfect society is impossible. There must be con-
gruity between the conduct of each member of society and others.
"If all recognise only the law of the strongest, one whose nature
does not allow him to inflict pain goes to the wall, and truthfulness
brings ruin among a treacherous people," as Spencer truly says.
But by-and-bye the lower attributes of our nature will one by
Duty or Justice.
95
one be degraded in estimation and the emphasis will fall on higher
qualities, and so our admiration for, and emulation of, the
moneyed man will disappear. Man's hell was once physical inferi-
ority; soon it will be stupidity, moral obliquity, and a selfish
animal existence. There will be a gradual creation or discovery
of common interests, common pleasures and sources of enjoyment,
resolving a seeming conflict into real unanimity of interests, and
effecting the magic transformation of exclusively self-regarding
into social impulses.
What men and women should do on waking to-morrow, is resolve
to help along the birth of new conditions, and then go to work.
They can be assured of success. The obstacles to be overcome
are but superficial: the inertia, the thoughtlessness of men and
the promptings of the present satanic social system. But the
Order of the Cosmos, the powerful undercurrent is on their side,
and the instinct of "ought to do," now proved identical with “will
be," should convert even our pessimists into optimists.
Meanwhile it is well to ponder these sound and noble words of
Jouffroy:
The "
man who has least accomplished his destiny, the greatest
criminal, the most immoral man, has yet fulfilled it to some extent,
has exercised to a certain degree his human personality; and on leav-
ing the world, however bad he may have lived, he is quite another
being than on entering it; he is now, even with the crimes committed, a
being like unto God. He has deliberated, chosen, has deceived him-
self, but he has exercised his noble faculties: he was a thing, he is a
person. Life is useless to nobody. It is with an immense indulgence
that we ought to judge our fellows as God himself judges us."
In closing, let me observe that duty, however important, is not
the vital part of morality. Love is the essence. Duty is the
fibre of the tree, not the pith; the foundation, not the house.
They who consider duty everything are like a man so intent upon
sinking the foundation of his house to the greatest possible depth
that he at last finds his ostentatious labour swallowed up of quick
sands.
;
:
CHAPTER V.
LOVE.
"God has divided Man into men, that they might help each other."
-Seneca.
30. This is the place where I should especially wish for talents
of persuasion, for now we have entered into the region of high
morality, and also here the Established Order opposes our best
efforts and is unceasingly active in leading us astray. This fact
must not be slurred over; at the same time it should be borne in
mind that the obstacles are merely superficial, due to man's inertia,
thoughtlessness, and ignorance, while the noiseless undercurrent of
the Universal Order, Universal Reason, is carrying us irresistibly
onward. The agent which the Universal Reason here employs as
the social bond is a far mightier one than that considered in the
previous chapter. There it was conscience which restrains “self”;
here it is the affections which expand "self." Conscience does
not point to heights of aspiration, but takes cognisance only of
what falls below a certain line; the affections stimulate.
Affection that wonderful guest within the human bosom, the
outcome of physical passion-that, surely, is the happiest feat of
Evolution! Its first advent, like the first appearance of every plea-
surable fact of consciousness, is involved in mystery.
It came,
we know not whence or why. "It appeared," as has been said, "on
the theatre of man's consciousness; he found it pleasant, and
was thus encouraged to develope it further." It indeed is a most
remarkable and noteworthy fact, which we later shall have to dwell
upon, that our loftiest aspirations have the meanest beginnings,
and have started from the lowest motives.
Buckle has insisted that there can be no evolution in morality,
since moral truths are always the same. "Do good to others, love
96
Love.
97
thy neighbour as thyself; forgive thy enemies; subdue thy passions;
honour thy parents"—these and the like, he says, are all the es-
sential moral precepts, and not an iota has been added to them
since time immemorial. This, at most, is true only of the intel-
lectual side of morality; but, as we have seen, it is our feelings,
our passions, that drive the social train for weal or woe; our pas-
sions it is that are the horses, so to speak-and often very unruly
horses-while the intellect, at most, directs like the coachman.
Now, we may admit, that there has been no improvement in our
practice of duty or justice; that there has, perhaps, actually been
a decline as the bitter fruit of the prevailing individualism; at the
same time we can point to the fact that the undercurrent has led
us up on hitherto unknown heights of sympathy. Again, to en-
lighten the intellect, to improve what I have called the "atmo-
sphere" of Morality, changes the quality of Morality itself. To dis-
cover what is our true destiny, to get the conviction, that a bene-
volent power has outlined the road for us, that we can progress
only by becoming its willing co-operators, and that the "ought to
do" and "ought to be" in us mean that the ideal sometime "will
be," must necessarily change a weak, vague sentiment into an
active conscious force. Is not that evolution?
And will not this be the greatest evolution of all, when Socialism
will give us convincing reasons for distinguishing between the two
forms of Personal Ethics—a distinction as wide apart as heaven is
from hell? The one, purity, temperance, and honour, without
sacrifice, cultivated simply to become better than others, to hold
aloof from common humanity, will be clearly seen to be worthless
and worse:
a ministration of death, exclusively; but the same
personal morality, if in the service of the affections, to be most
sacred, and a prerequisite to all true morality, for it is our personal
affections that give aim and direction to our social sentiments.
Such self-love is the fountain from which the wider forms of
human affections flow and on which philanthropy itself is ulti-
mately based. Self is "the chalice that holds the sacramental
wine; thus we must take care that this chalice be not soiled or
leaky, that the wine be not defiled or wasted," and, therefore,
purity, temperance and honour are indispensable to the social self.
G
98
Our Destiny.
When we are bidden to "love our neighbours as ourselves," we have
before us a sublime precept which embodies the deepest truth. We
must in the first place cherish our own life, for otherwise we could
not "live for others;" we must make ourselves pure, since my
own life must be precious to me before I can attach much precious-
ness to the life of others; I must make myself valuable, for
if myself is paltry, so is every other self, so are all our selves put
together. "If the talk of each man is senseless babble, the united
babbling of a million men may out-thunder one, but will be no
more sensible." Self-engrossment, in other words, narrows "self,"
wars against love and sympathy, and is immoral. Self-respect,
character, precisely because it has a tendency to expand "self," is
the very foundation for morality, without which, as we shall see
later on, even self-sacrifice is simply moral suicide.
Here individualism, the established order, shows itself in its
most satanic form, as the maelstrom that swallows up purity,
temperance, and honour. I charge it with being the foe of honour,
the foe of temperance, and the foe of purity. The Church knows
this very well, and therefore places the "world" (as she calls it)
on a line with the devil.
As to honour. Evidently, if our social order absolutely tempts
away from honesty, it must be equally inimical to its refinement:
honour. Why, it is the monstrous fact that a refined man, if he
be poor, cannot possibly be perfectly honourable, since, in order to
satisfy his mere physical needs, he must stoop to gain the favour
of some other man, and to advance that man's private interests.
Of course, what struggle this involves they never know to whom
the regular eating of costly food comes just as easy and natural
as breathing. And how incomparably worse is the corresponding
position of a woman! How difficult it is for the poor girl to keep
her "honour" the wealthy lady can never comprehend. Leeky
says,1 "statistics of prostitution show that the great proportion of
those who have fallen into it have been impelled by the most
extreme poverty, in many instances verging upon starvation." I
am confident that it is fully as bad in our country. Should not
the scandalous fact that honour is placed in one scale and starva-
¹In European Morals.
Love.
99
tion in the other, nerve us with sufficient energy to change such
a social order?
As to temperance. It is a great pity that those persevering and
noble men, the Prohibitionists, will not open their eyes to the
palpable fact that intemperance in liquors is much more an effect
than a cause; that it is our competition, and especially our in-
security that lure a man on to drinking, and then to excessive
drinking. I must say I feel myself strongly drawn towards them
on account of their perseverance, their unselfishness, and especially
the social spirit that animates them. I mean by this that it is
the elevation of the whole society rather than individual improve-
ment which they, with untiring zeal, seek to accomplish, and that
makes them, it seems to me, a most desirable sort of allies.
While, then, it would be suicidal, I grant, for Socialists to join the
Prohibition party, I hold, on the other hand, that they should
make very great efforts to win the sympathy and co-operation of
Prohibitionists and other so-called temperance men, even be willing
for that purpose to make personal sacrifices, "to submit to re-
strictions lest offence be given." I, for my part, who enjoy as
much as anyone a glass of beer or punch of an evening, am per-
fectly ready and willing to do without it for the rest of my life if
these men would second my efforts.
As to sexual purity, I should say that this
as unclean as Rome in its decline ever was.
social order is about
We have a glaring
The hero and
illustration of it in the drama of Renan—the representative of
modern culture-entitled, L'Abbesse de Jouarre.
heroine, having known each other as children, meet in one of the
prisons of the first French revolution, both convinced that they
will be guillotined together the following morning. He persuades
her, the nun, to submit herself then and there to his embraces.
He dies as they expected; she escapes, and in due time gives birth
to a child. The following extract from the preface shows the ex-
traordinary view which the drama is intended to illustrate: "The
hour of death is the most sincere of all; one is in the presence of
the Infinite. If anything in that hour should assume the character
of absolute sincerity it is love. I often imagine that if mankind
should acquire the certainty that the world were about to end
or M
100
Our Destiny.
in two or three days, love would break forth on all sides with a sort
of frenzy, for that which restrains love is the absolutely necessary
conditions which the moral conservation of human society has
imposed. If one should see oneself in the face of a sudden and
certain death, nature alone would speak; the most powerful of
its instincts would resume its rights; a cry would escape from
every breast when it would be known that one might approach,
with entire legitimacy, the tree surrounded with so many ana-
themas. The security of conscience, founded upon the assurance
that love would not have any morrow, would produce sentiments,
condensing infinity into a few hours-sensations to which one
would abandon oneself without fear of exhausting the source of
life. The world would drain to the dregs, and without afterthought,
a powerful aphrodisiac which would make it die of delight (!). The
last breath would be a kiss of sympathy, sent to the universe,
perhaps to something beyond (sic.). One would die with a senti-
ment of the highest adoration-in the act the most perfect (!).”
He then repeats the old libel on the Christian martyrs: "The
last night spent together in prison gave rise to scenes of which the
rigorists disapproved; these funereal embraces were the conse-
quences of a tragic situation and of the happiness experienced by
men and women united to die together for the same cause.
Lastly, after the embrace, the nun exclaims, "Thou hast made
me more Christian than I was before" (!).
We may infer from Renan's position that the above is a truth-
ful picture of the sexual ideal of the ruling classes of France:
that "love" in their mouths means lust.
But my readers will probably add, "that is a very sad state
of French society; but no Anglo-Saxon, surely, would in the face
of death have such thoughts? It is of God, the future life, and
the souls of his dear ones he would think. Even our depraved
characters certain death would instantly sober. What Renan says
will not apply to Anglo-Saxon human nature, whatever it may do
to the French."
Ah! I fully agree that the above extract does not describe either
Anglo-Saxon nor French human nature with the majority; but
I do believe that it paints the sexual impurity of our ruling
Maou
Love.
for
classes as well as the French, and of the ruling classes every-
where, under our individualistic order of things-only the French
are frank, and the others are hypocrites. Unfortunately, there are
altogether too many men among us of our comfortable classes who
in their hearts say with the hero of Théophile Gautier, "I see
nothing shocking in a young girl selling herself." Our prostitution
that cries to heaven proves it. And is it not horribly significant
that a moral teacher like Sidgwick writes in his Method of Ethics
-a book for students-in regard to a plea for legalising it and
setting apart these unfortunate women from society, these infamous
words: "This view has, perhaps, a superficial plausibility, for con-
tinence certainly involves a considerable loss of pleasure (sic!)"
Cannot Prohibitionists see that such a cancer, penetrating the
whole social system, is a far greater danger than even such a
disgusting ulcer as intemperance? And should not all moral men
bless the advent of Socialism if it can tear it out by the roots?
31. Look at the mournful procession of women of the town,
thus created by our wicked social order, both by pushing the
woman toward the pit by her small pay under the wage-system,
and by having her tempted by the incontinent vagabonds from
our middle classes, which this social order keeps unmarried.
In our large manufacturing cities and villages great numbers of
operatives of both sexes—more than half of them young women—
are gathered together. Here they are thrown in each others'
company rather rudely in their work; the boarding houses where
most of them spend their nights and Sundays afford them none of
the restraints of home; their evenings are wont to find them in
the streets and cheap places of amusement. The wages of these
operatives, especially of the females, are ludicrously small. They
must pay out of it for board and room, washing and clothing.
What a pinching life this must be! The moral fruits of this
herding together and exposure to strong temptation are a very
poor outfit for a happy married life. Most of the present
deterioration of family life is due to these industrial conditions,
and to the necessary flitting of the operatives from place to place.
The relation of the sexes is certainly the deepest root of human
102
Our Destiny.
well-being; it is therefore no wonder that women call a chaste
man "moral,” though of course it is an almost ridiculously narrow
and selfish view of things. It is by the avenue of sexual love that
man comes forth from his mere personality and learns to live in
another, while obeying his most powerful instincts.
If a man
cannot love, it is looked upon as a moral misfortune, if not as a
moral fault; for a man absence of a beloved form is the finest
thing in life missed he grows selfish, heartless, materialised-
this is not a good state for him nor a natural one for society.
Instinctively we think of Rome in the age of Augustus. On the
other hand, when he does love successfully, it is held that his
whole nature has burst out into blossom. That woman's nature
-perhaps with some few exceptions-is to love is admitted on
all hands.
The chastity of a nation, from any point you look at it, inti-
mately depends upon the fact, that the men marry when young.
Nothing is more natural, in our present social order, than to look
upon marriage without sufficient means of subsistence with horror;
or when one's standing in society, or the prospects of children are
threatened. Hence a constantly increasing disinclination of men
to marry, and the necessary consequence is our frightful prostitu-
tion that places us in a more degraded state than that of the
cities of the plain. Appetites and passions never exert a controlling
and therefore a degrading influence, until they have been rendered
fierce by some foolish asceticism or accidental starvation.
But as
has been said, "reduce the appetites to a famished condition,
imprison them as you do a tiger, and of course you infuse into them
a tiger's force and ferocity." Normally the natural appetites and
passions are a solace and a refreshment to our mental faculties
rather than a burden; and normally sexual passions are a source
of divine unity and of heavenly innocence and tenderness. The
first healthy influence Socialism will have on sexual love is, that
it will enable every loving couple to marry young.
Next, Socialism, by conferring upon woman the power of earning
her own living at pleasure by suitable work, will enable her to
refuse to marry for a home or for maintenance. There is a loud
complaint of the frequency of divorce, but this is simply the effect
Love.
103
of something else. Happily married people do not seek divorce.
The trouble is, that the preceding marriage ought never to have
been entered into. Unfortunately, our economic system, mark!
turns marriage into a commercial institution. Young women form
a matrimonial market regulated by demand and supply, and enter
into matrimony to gain a support. What our law allows to be
marriage is often a very nasty thing. It is not I, but Henry
James, sen., who says, "the law of every so-called Christian
country permits one to sell his daughter-if but the clergy gild
the transaction-to any unclean wretch whose pecuniary reputa-
tion is good. What an annual sacrifice is, in consequence, offered
up by Christendom to the merciless moloch of our civilisation!
What a sacrifice of myriads of innocent young ones! What sort
of purity follows? Let our popular newspapers answer, with hints
to clandestine commerce, with enigmatic notifications of adulterous
meetings and advertisements of abortionists." Our conventional
legal marriage, instead of being a means for the highest possible
humanisation of the parties, becomes a hopeless degradation.
Socialism, lastly, will greatly elevate the marriage institution
itself.
Roman marriage differed from the Greek; Catholic marriage,
again, differed radically from the former; these modifications have
not come to an end, and all preceding modifications will pro-
gressively develope the future.
Marriage is a great end in itself, but is still more important as
the grand avenue that leads to the organic unity of all men. The
former is the highest possible humanisation of the parties; but
much more ought we to look upon the domestic life as the minia-
ture of and school for our social life; the filial relation as the
source of reverence for ancestry and sympathy with the historic
past; the parental as throwing a like enthusiasm into the future;
the fraternal as the practising ground for all reciprocal social
sentiments.
Marriage must be elevated from its present degraded state,
where it is popularly believed that only the legal sanctions keep
it in honour, and that it is destitute of internal bonds. Yet its
bonds are the strongest possible: chaste passion and the most

104
Our Destiny.
profound friendship. To give these free play we must leave the
institution more in woman's keeping and less in man's, make her
most answerable for its honour who is most interested in its stability.
This, again, is accomplished by Socialism, by investing the wife
with the potentiality of economic independence of her husband, to
be realised every time she sees fit.
First, then, just as it is in the animal world, the female
sex should control the male in all matters pertaining to sex,
declining and successfully rejecting the advances of the male,
when not reciprocated. Unfortunately, remarks Lester F. Ward,
woman has lost her sceptre and surrendered herself to his
control, instead of, as she should, ruling him by reason of his
passion and the favour which she alone can confer." Love
abhors nothing more than the license which even our best
conventional conjugality permits. Yet it is true that satis-
fied affection means aversion; affection in proportion to its
tenderness seeks a perpetual gratification, that is, desires to be
unsatisfied. Its very life consists in seeking and never accom-
plishing.
When woman has resumed her sceptre, then, what is very
important, the pastimes, recreations, and pleasures will be shared
by both; the present separate spheres of recreation tend to
render desire for association with each other prurient.
Secondly, marriage ought to be in its essence an interior friend-
ship, a profound bosom fellowship between man and woman. No
other association can be so intimate as this which causes a com-
plete fusion of two natures in one. It ought to be, but, alas!
how rarely it is! It is precisely the absence of this friendship
that makes marriage now a failure, in the many cases where
everything else conspires to make it a happy relation. The
husband really holds his young wife dear, but his love is at
bottom nothing but admiration for her various charms, and no
sooner does he find her person legally made over to him than
this admiration dies out. He should associate her in his affairs,
his ideas, his aspirations; make her co-operate, in her sphere, with
him in his; their natures are precisely constituted for that purpose:
he is a master in specialties, she has aptness for general ideas.
Love.
105
To will, to think, to enjoy, to suffer together-that would be true
marriage! But, unfortunately, as yet she cannot be his friend.
She has not been educated and trained for that. It is the
socialist commonwealth that will train her properly.
32. Reflect once on this, that love of their own children is
something our wage-workers must look upon as a luxury in which
they cannot indulge. They are toiling from morning till night,
and are then so tired that they must seek rest, so the only time
they can hear their children's prattle or romp with them is
Sunday. But there is far worse to be told. The horrible fact is,
that these children of theirs, as soon as they can find their way in the
streets, must become bread-winners. These miserable parents, as
we saw, cannot make both ends meet without the labour of their
children, and consequently, in Massachusetts, where a few weeks'
schooling is required by law, the parents are compelled-mark
that, ye rich, with hearts in your bosoms!-to evade the law by
false swearing in regard to their children's age. Again, as a con-
sequence, small fellows are sent into the world as newsboys and
bootblacks at an age when the sons of the rich are still in the
nursery.
Again, schooling of nearly all children stops when their faculty
of thinking commences to be active. They are positively robbed
of the years during which character is formed.
Socialism will radically revolutionise all this: it will relieve all
children from being bread-winners; it will place them all from
their tender years till they reach adult age in the charge and under
the eye of educators, and see that they are properly fed, clothed,
and lodged during this whole period. That will mark the advent
of the social régime and of the conscious evolution of society. As
already observed, in spite of the marked improvement in all
respects that will immediately take place, too much must not be
expected of the generation that effects the change: the full fruits
will be gathered by that one which will have enjoyed a socialist
training. And, again, society will not become self-conscious before
the material conditions of abundance, freedom, and leisure will
have been secured.
106
Our Destiny.
The changed method and subjects of education will be of no
less importance. "Mercantilism" insensibly pervades our schools,
our school-books, the tradition and methods of teaching, so that
our training largely ministers to our respect for trade. Manual
training will, in addition to the important effects already noted,
be an excellent means for securing discipline. Just at the age
when boys are apt to be most restless and insubordinate, a little
manual work affords vent to their surplus energies, and proves a
most valuable aid in maintaining discipline.
Since, fortunately, already a considerable interest has been
awakened in manual instruction (though, of course, it is far from
being looked upon in the spirit with which Socialism will invest it),
it should be of interest to learn how a pioneer school in Paris of
that kind looks, connected with the elementary classes. Here is
a description:
The wood-shop is the largest-for school purposes wood-working
is the most conducive to the elementary training of the hand.
There are twelve carpenters' benches in two rows in the middle of
the room, each for two boys, working at the same time; and along
the wall, near the windows, four turning lathes are placed, each
worked by three boys; each boy is employed fifteen minutes at
turning, while the others look on. The tools employed are the
different kind of planes, saws, chisels, etc. The pupils make boxes
and small chairs, and are taught to make the different joints, dove-
tailing, some turning out really creditable work. At the lathe
they turn a plain stick into as many as seventy-six different orna-
mental pieces. The workshop for iron contains twelve vices, and
is further provided with a boring machine, an anvil, and a forge.
For forging and hammering lead is used, as it demands less
muscular force than iron. It has already been noted, but cannot
be repeated too often, that the experience is in all the Paris manual-
working schools (of which a few years ago there were no less than
285), that the boys are dissatisfied that they cannot spend more
time in them, and are rejoiced at being permitted to spend their
free time over their work.
We come now to one of the most deplorable defects in our
American civilisation, and here Socialism will confer one of its
Love.
107
greatest blessings. The disobedience and rudeness of American
children to parents and to adults is patent and flagrant; it is the
most common experience of men and women in American cities to
be insulted by half-grown boys, especially when they are in groups,
where, thus, their love of approbation turns them into ruffians.
Socialism will instil obedience into the minds of all our children.
It is, as Prof. Fiske has pointed out, to infancy, and especially to
its being lengthened to extend over an increasing number of years,
that man owes his physical progress, family, society, and moral
ideas. If there is anything that all men agree upon in theory, it
is that this period ought to be passed in submission to others,
because during it the most durable, and, beyond all comparison,
most important impressions are made on the plastic mind. It is
acknowledged here, at least, that restraint is a blessing, a requisite
to develop the maximum of power. If children were made the
equals of adults, the result would be infinitely worse than barbar-
ism; it would be an unimaginable degree of cruelty to the young.
It was Franklin who observed that the Chinese, who have a
knack of turning everything upside down, have here, at all
events, hit on the right relation by making the honours granted to
a social benefactor ascend to his ancestry instead of to his posterity.
One of the greatest blessings of the new social order will be,
that children will then find in their teachers helpful friends to
assist and guide them through the terribly dangerous period of
puberty, when the passions and imagination run riot. The sys-
tematic ignorance now maintained on the most sacred things is
most disastrous to our girls especially.
But Socialism will do more than relieve children from being
bread-winners and discipline them. There is no doubt that it was,
until lately, the universal American idea, as it was, up to 1870,
the universal British idea, that parents ought to have full control
over their children. Probably few Americans ever reflected that
this was a relic of the ancient claim of parents to abandon and kill
their children if they saw fit. Undoubtedly, the old conviction
was a correct one, that it was safer to invest command over chil-
dren in even the worst parents than to leave such control entirely
unprovided for.
108
Our Destiny.
The State has, in the course of evolution, more and more con-
tested that claim by forbidding the killing and abandonment of
children, and most decidedly by establishing the age of majority
when parental authority entirely ceases. Now we are approaching
the time when society will take upon itself the entire school edu-
cation of children, and it is interesting to note how almost year
by year the American mind progresses in this respect. You almost
can see the growth.
Not to speak of the cases when parents neglect their responsi-
bilities, and when it is fully admitted, that it is a moral crime
against the child for the State not to interfere and provide instruc-
tive and mental training for it, it is really a contest between family
selfishness and the spirit of modern democracy protesting against
it. Family exclusiveness, often a mere veil for personal selfish-
ness, a sort of aggregate selfishness, is now practically the chief
obstacle to the full evolution of our human social nature, and is
destined to be broken down. The family in our country, to be
sure, does not consciously antagonise the social spirit in humanity
but it is still a very rancorous and deep-seated prejudice, which
profoundly colours our practical ethics. Ah, how often are not
"nice" children taught by their parents to shun ragged children,
making the latter feel themselves outcasts, as one of the "proprie-
ties" that later in life develop into tragedies. This division into
two "camps" is a miserably anti-social one, which fortunately
often is being broken down by the child, who feels the family
bond irksome, and finds its most precious enjoyments and friend-
ships outside the home precincts.
Under the socialist régime, it will be acknowledged that the
education of children is of far more concern and importance to
society than to parents. By the parent the child will be con-
sidered a trust, held in the service of humanity, and its rearing
the establishment of an essentially organic relation, which thereby
will be ennobled far beyond the scope of the most tender personal
passion; and filial affection, when the future station of the child
will be determined by its capacity, and not by the accident of
being born in a certain class, will become an almost ideal sentiment.
No wonder that noble men, like Lester F. Ward and the author
Love.
109
of God in His World, think, that if but for a generation the hearts
of fathers would be turned towards our children, the nation would
be regenerated; but before the chapter closes we shall be con-
vinced, I hope, that more would be required: that Socialism will
first have to be acknowledged in principle throughout our
industrial system.
33. Our domestic service is one of the most vicious and immoral
of relations under the present social order. If a modern servant
misconducts himself he is turned out on the spot and another
hired as easily as you would call a cab. To refuse him a character
may be equivalent to sentencing him to months of suffering; yet
it is continually inflicted, without appeal, reflection, or the smallest
disturbance of the smooth surface of ordinary life.
One of our more respectable Boston newspapers lately called
attention to the fact, that thousands of girls in every large city
work on ready-made clothing for the wretchedly low average
wages of 3 dols. a week; that ten hours a day on foot-power sewing
machines is so trying as to speedily undermine the physical con-
stitution, and that there are yet many more applicants than can
possibly be employed. That, on the other hand, the demand for
women for domestic service is far greater than the supply, and
goes on moralising: "of course household service involves a certain
sense of personal degradation, besides placing unpleasing checks
on freedom of action, but it seems to us that the sewing girl pays
very dearly for her privileges; the distinction is largely a senti-
mental one."
Indeed it is, but we ought to feel very glad and hopeful at the
fact that sentiment has such a power over American women, and
applaud them for it-that shows them to be of royal kin, and
places them high above their rich sisters who shamelessly ape
foreign class pretensions, even down to decorating their imported
"servants" and "footmen" with imported liveries, corrupting us
from our original democratic simplicity. This disinclination by
women to serve, and be liable to be called to account for every
hour of their life, is in obedience to the growing access of the
social sentiment: that man is destined for the broadest conceivable
IIO
Our Destiny.
unity with his kind. This puerile social régime, with its division.
into free and servile, constantly exerts a debasing influence upon
our hearts and minds and keeps us strangers to each other.
Servants," into which our older word "help" has sunk, are the
citadel of this régime and blight every effort and aspiration towards
race-harmony.
""
There is one respect, though, in which we here still have an
immense advantage over Europe, and it is not likely that we shall
lose it in the main, now that the socialist spirit has commenced to
take such a hold on our people. We, the people of these United
States, do at bottom constitute, and have, ever since our Declara-
tion of Independence, constituted a brotherhood, and the sentiment
has become inbred into the marrow of our bones in spite of all
corruption and swindling, which after all float only on the surface.
But the European cities, especially, are really divided into two
classes of men, set apart by a deep chasm, to wit: gentlemen,
properly clothed, who are expected on all occasions to give tips,
and the rest of the population who, for the smallest service
rendered, expect tips. This abominable system of tipping is a
great stumbling-block to the growth of a true socialistic sentiment.
The greatest obstacle I see in Great Britain to the growth of
Socialism is the snobbishness that obtains there; that reverence is
there inculcated for rank and title. There are, however, various
facts tending to prove that it is the middle classes, not the working
classes, that are guilty of this snobbishness. It is fortunate that,
in our country, a stupid millionaire may look down, but that we,
in general, do not look up! It, however, looks bad to see a
prominent editor speak of a sense of personal degradation as
mere sentiment." He who, however honourable, does not blush
on looking at a lackey or footman, is a servile mind.
(
Under Socialism we undoubtedly shall not be without "helpers"
in our private houses-those in the public establishments will, of
course, be just as much public functionaries as the guests who
have their wants attended to. But the relations of these private
attendants to their principals will be very different from what it is
now-it will be a sympathetic, not a pecuniary one. These
attendants will attach themselves to our persons because attracted
Love.
III
by our personal qualities, and on the condition of being incorpor-
ated into our families as members thereof-something like the
pages of medieval households; they will hardly accept such posi-
tions on other terms. When all enjoy the same high and thorough
education, we can have disinterested, respected service-then all
will admit that the service is not performed because they cannot
do better things.
34. All the preceding steps lead up to what must be looked
upon as the centre of this essay-Sympathy: the essence of love,
as love is the kernel of morality. Sympathy is the alpha and
omega of morality; without sympathy there is absolutely no
morality, and by itself sympathy may almost be said to constitute
morality. That is so much so that even conjugal love and
parental love, however precious in themselves, may be considered
essentially as the most potent means for the evolution of sym-
pathy.
"
This does not imply any gushing sentimentality for men indis-
criminately. With Sir James Stephen I never forget that there
are a great many unlovely and many wicked men in the world,
and that it is a part of virile morality to meet them with the
reverse of affection. I even can sympathise with his contempt for
the sentimentalist :-"Do not daub me with your love, sir! By
sympathy I mean that to which indifference is the antithesis.
We are each other's keepers, must feel ourselves belonging to a
moral universe. Every instance of sympathy is an intuition of
race-consciousness: a proof that we are indissolubly linked to-
gether. That does not prevent there being a conflict to the
death between the good man and the scoundrel-rather the
reverse. I sometimes fervently wish I were a spirit strong
enough to take the stock gambler or millionaire whose selfishness
is hidden under the flowing drapery of piety and suspend him
as high as the Eiffel Tower to scare him, if possible, into brother-
hood!
Sympathy is truly the alpha and omega of morality-its com-
mencement and its end. In the first place, it is the original moral
force, the mutual attraction which men experienced in the very
112
Our Destiny.
beginning. On the day when man combined—or rather was driven
by his inward force to combine with his fellows into a society, he
turned his back on Nature, and laid the foundation of a new
kingdom, that of sympathy; he broke the ban of Nature which
lays down as its law self-seeking, the struggle for existence, though
our "advanced" philosophers are blind to it. As a force it grew
more and more, sometimes from the lowest and most selfish
motives; thus it is a fact that the practice of killing infants lasted
longer than the doing away with the aged, simply because infancy
was past and old age was awaiting all. Now we have developed it so
far that we generally cannot get along without it; that even they
who outrage it in its most vital part find they cannot do without
it-witness the men who betray a trust in order to secure a for-
tune, do they not, when they get away securely, and reach, say
Canada, spend a great portion to secure new prestige, applause,
and other companionship of human beings precisely similar to
those they have ruined? And whenever we here and there find a
man, a selfish philosopher, who entirely cuts himself off from
human sympathy for the purpose of living a merely "cultured "
life, cannot we always detect in him that he has thereby become
something less than a man, that he has missed the full fruition of
life?
But sympathy is quite a complex phenomenon. There is no
feeling so intimately connected with intellect as it is. It will be
remembered that morality was compared to a plant in a hothouse
whose growth depends on the condition of the glass through which
comes the sunshine. Well, Intellect is to sympathy what the glass
is to the plant. Sympathy cannot arise until vivid mental repre-
sentations can be made of the state of suffering in others, based
upon the experience by each individual of like sufferings in him-
self. This is the psychological analysis of the golden rule:
"Do
to others what ye wish they should do unto you," of our great
moral teachers.
This will prove a very helpful suggestion. It will make us
understand that where we now find, or found in olden times,
defect of sympathy, it is and was simply an intellectual defect; it
was nothing else than insensibility; wherever we read of instances
Love.
113
of revolting cruelty, it was simply intellectual torpor. Our sensi-
bility is quickened by the same power that implies intellectual
progress. As the reasoning faculties become quicker and wider,
and the power of observing relations between human beings
increases, there is an increase in feeling of humanity, if in nothing
else. However licentious, or selfish, then, we may have become,
we are fortunately yet more reluctant to inflict pain. The sym-
pathetic man has advanced, having acquired new sensibilities; he
is not the same man acting from different motives, but he is a
different being with a different set of faculties; and now he cannot
develop in the future as a reasonable agent without it.
We have a most instructive and hopeful example of it in our
Own race. Even but a short century ago mercy by the populace
of England to humble offenders of their own class was unknown:
a shower of brickbats or rotten eggs on the wretches in the pillory
was a very common act; hooting the miserable man, tied to a cart's
tail, they used to implore the hangman to drive fast to "make
him howl." What a remarkable change has now come over the
same class, simply on account of a little better treatment of them
and a little more instruction! For now it is a common observa-
tion that a crowd of the lowest people applaud the chastisement
of a ruffian who has maltreated a child. One more suggestive
example—if not an instance of sympathy, at least of a sense of
solidarity: A short time ago when a vast procession was going to
pass along the Thames embankment in London, they wanted to
try an experiment, and so they attached a tag to each of the
young noble trees along that thoroughfare, inscribed, "These trees
are public property;" and though a crowd was present, as hardly
ever before, not one of these trees was in the least injured!
To learn what influence Socialism will have on sympathy we
must distinguish between three sorts of sympathy: with pain,
with pleasure, and with the thought and purposes of others. I
wish to emphasise the fact, that this is a most important division.
The first of these, sympathy with pain, is so far the principal one;
that is the kind first known, and the one with which we hitherto
have been most familiar. <<
Rejoice with them that do rejoice,
and weep with them that weep." On first view one would suppose
H
114
Our Destiny.
it easier to fulfil the former of these commandments than the
latter. Yet this is a mistake.
It is in our days much easier for
us to weep than rejoice with others. When we witness pain we
ourselves feel involuntarily pain and have an impulse to alleviate
the pain of the sufferer, just as surely as we do when we experience
a blow. Indeed, the word "compassion" has now-a-days come to
mean sympathy with suffering, and the word "sympathy" itself
is rapidly following in the same direction. But we do not like to
weep, and there is altogether too much suffering in the world—this
is sufficient to check the growth of that sort of sympathy.
It is almost self-evident that sympathy with pleasure has a
much more promising future. It is pleasant, ordinarily, to feel
that sympathy, and simultaneously we heighten the enjoyment
of the person sympathised with; but, unfortunately, too frequently
we are prevented from thus rejoicing with others by those other
facts of envy, jealousy, and other forms of ill-will. Is it necessary
to subscribe to the terrible doctrine of Bain, that "malevolence
is intrinsically one of our intensest pleasures?" Is a cat "male-
volent" which plays with a mouse? And so we can conceive that
men are malevolent who simply are so undeveloped that they
cannot realise the feelings of their victims. Anger, resentment,
hatred, envy, instinctive dislike of every kind, are, of course, facts,
but there is this fundamental distinction, that the fact, Sympathy,
is instinctive, while the other fact, Ill- Will, is always occasioned.
The truth is the very opposite of what Mallock affirms, that
"Virtue constantly runs counter to our natural impulses."
And how occasioned? Ah, here it is that the Established Order
is most at fault, where it most seems animated by the very spirit
of Satan: all the motives furnished by present society systemati-
cally discourage sympathy and create ill-will, which nearly all can
be explained by, and traced to, the contravention of social economic
laws. How often is it not the case that loving natures become
poisoned by their life-experience? Proud natures like, for instance,
Dean Swift, become converted into universal gall and at last come
to feel hatred for their species. Dislike, and not uncommonly
contempt for human nature, is developed in our contact with our
fellows by the scorching probation of life, and by the terrible battle
Love.
115
for existence in which the contemptible and ignorant survive and
succeed. Truly, as there is a holy anger and righteous indigna-
tion, so, I affirm, there is a holy envy and righteous jealousy in the
breast of the able, the talented, the industrious on seeing the
prosperity of our vulgar fortune-hunters.
And bearing in mind the powerful and persistent temptations.
of the world, and above all else, that the wicked anti-social
doctrine of the struggle for existence is inculcated by our moral
teachers, is it not astounding that men have grown so sympathetic?
To me the fact that the majority, under the circumstances, are so
good, and the bad not worse than they are, would be a standing
miracle, but for the Order in the Cosmos.
Now, is it not easy to see that under Socialism, on the contrary,
sympathy with pleasure will vastly increase? Even Spencer, with
his puerile notion of society as a crowd of independent monads,
sees how sympathy will increase "as the moulding and remoulding
of man and society into mutual fitness progresses," and this por-
tion is decidedly the most worthy of study of his whole Data of
Ethics.
He calls attention to the deeper and wider sympathy that will
arise from the agencies which excite it becoming more efficient;
that is to say, the emotional language of facial changes and tones
of voice will become more copious and the perception of these signs
more delicate, and the imagination strengthened, thus identifying
the feelings of the sympathiser and the person sympathised with.
Next, as pains decrease and pleasures increase, sympathy will
come more and more to mean gratification by participation in
others' consciousness of enjoyment, and such is the blessed order-
ing of things that one's enjoyment is not lessened, but on the con-
trary is strengthened by the simultaneous enjoyment of others.
"Each will have in other persons supplementary eyes and ears,
warding off evils they cannot perceive for themselves." "Even-
tually sympathetic pleasures will be spontaneously pursued to the
fullest extent."
Under Socialism, when ability and skill will naturally gravitate
towards all positions of influence, and everybody be aware of the
fact and applaud, we most likely shall have to coin some such
116
Our Destiny.
word as "congaudence," to express our sympathy with others' joy,
corresponding to "compassion." In fact, I am confident that the
masses then will look upon private luxury with far different feel-
ings than now, with approval and applause, for it will be the worthy
who will enjoy it, especially the retired heroes and servants of
humanity.
Again, when, under Socialism, the chasm now dividing the classes
is filled, then we shall have everywhere the sympathy, greater
than that with pain, greater than that with pleasure: sympathy
with the thoughts and purposes of others—friendship. Friendship
is the bouquet of morality—the distilled flavour of morality; the
important link that will make sexual love evolve love for fellow-
men. The future moralised society will be constituted of groups of
friends, each group formed out of men and women from various
callings and departments. We know very little of true friendship
now, and it is again the Established Order that is at fault, which
is the cause of the fact that we have only cliques. Friendship,
being sympathy with thoughts and purposes, of course, demands
community of sentiments, but it is equally a law that true friend-
ships are formed out of diversities of character-such diversities
as are found in people of various callings. It is this diversity that
creates admiration. We should thus expect model friendships be-
tween literary men and working-men; but they are at present sepa-
rated by a yawning chasm. We have therefore now comrade-
ships where the mutual influence is by no means always salutary,
while true friendships, with their mutual confidences, always have
the moral advantage of conferring personal dignity on the parties.
Our hearts are sealed books to all but friends. I like to consider
as an ideal friendship the relation of Jesus and John, the latter re-
clining on his master's bosom, sharing his aspirations and being the
only one who follows him to the cross.
Ah, it is true friendships that are needed at this hour, when good
men are separated in two camps-Socialists who distrust religion in
one camp, and in the other religious minds repelled by Socialism
which they misunderstand.
At last, however, we have to consider sympathy in its most im-
portant form, in its greatest development. It is not alone the
Love
117
original moral force, but it will become the very end of morality.
Sympathy as the organic unity of men-this is morality as its own
end. Socialism will carry morality to its greatest pitch by bring-
ing into the consciousness of the citizens of the co-operative com-
monwealth the doctrine of their organic unity, and by extending
the doctrine gradually but surely over every department of human
life, as an organic power-with all the momentous consequences
it involves. We can imagine how, immediately with the advent of
Socialism, each citizen will feel the common life pulsating in his in-
dividual veins, and become consciously aware of himself as a mem-
ber of this glorious social commonwealth, with one impulse thrilling
through every fibre of the people. Then will be resurrected the
intense feeling of corporate responsibility which pervaded all the
life of ancient society, and the individual no longer depreciated
but ennobled beyond all previous conception. Then in a glow of
enthusiasm a generation of sustained and rightly guided effort may
be inaugurated and will convert this world into a paradise of
brothers, drawing the bands of society as closely together as those
of a family. Yes, the organic unity of all men is a solemn truth,
so much so, indeed, that the inhuman wretch who in cold blood
hacked his brother to pieces and severed his head for the sake of
gain is your brother, do I say? is a part of your inmost being,
and you will never have peace to all eternity till he is elevated to
your own plane.
However, the thoughts about Organic Unity will have to be
completed in Chap. VI.
It was a glorious vision of Jesus to discern the organic unity of
man. For unless there is a real identity in man, the "Inasmuch
as ye did it to the least of these ye did it unto me" becomes an
absurdity. No one has been heard of who, owing a debt to one
man, thought he could pay it to another man who merely was like
the first, no matter how like.
35. The conclusion of the preceding section, that the organic
unity of man is the end of morality, is, I think, the most important
outcome of ethical speculations; yet this is only one aspect of the
moral end, the objective; the other, the subjective aspect, is
118
Our Destiny.
equally important, and this is self-sacrifice, always looked upon as
the crown of morals. Yet Herbert Spencer overlooks this entirely,
for what he calls "self-sacrifice" is nothing but the common social
amenities of life. Real self-sacrifice is risking, and, if need be,
deliberately sacrificing all that we hold dear in this life, our liberty
and personal existence, for a great object. This is humanity in
its perfection, to all healthy minds jewelled specimens, strewn like
diamonds throughout time and space.
But there is an objection that comes here very natural, which
Sir James Stephen has put in these words: "I do not believe that
any man ever did, or ever will, as long as men are men, intention-
ally perform an act of absolute self-sacrifice, i.e., hurt himself
without any reason for doing so."
This is an objection well taken. We must make self-sacrifice
reasonable, and we can make it reasonable. The datum of the
"social" and the "personal self" will help us out and show us
that self-sacrifice is at the same time self-realisation, that is to
say, it is sacrifice of the private and realisation of the social
"self." The two are absolutely identical—a fact of immense
practical importance. Just as much as we insisted that personal
morality without sacrifice is worthless, is pharisaism, so it should
never be forgotten that self-sacrifice, without self-realisation, that
is without personal morality, is moral suicide. We have some
very striking examples of this in the world. This is precisely the
quality lacking in the Nihilists. They have shown themselves.
heroic, brave, self-sacrificing and devoted to their cause; but
because they clearly considered their own selves of no value,
despised existence, all sound hearts instinctively feel that their
heroism is lacking in moral value.
And history presents us another great instance. I have else-
where shown, in my "Ça Ira, or Danton in the French Revolution,”
from manuscripts collected in France during the last 25 years,
that Danton, far from being the ruffian he has been depicted, was
the very best embodiment of the progressive spirit of the revolu-
tion, and the only man capable of rendering Napoleon impossible
and unnecessary. It is his misfortune that he frequently has
been misconstrued, as when he exclaimed: "May my name bę
Love.
119
blasted, if but France be free!" This, if "name" stands for mere
reputation, was a grand exclamation, but if it means character, as
his critics have interpreted it, it would, precisely for the reason
above stated, be a highly immoral saying. No man has a right,
for even the noblest of objects, to sacrifice one's character, one's
true self.
Here the Established Order, individualism, shows itself in its
meanest shape. It cannot do away with the fact that numbers of
men and women are capable of acts of unalloyed self-sacrifice in
which there is not a vestige of afterthought tending to self-
advantage. We have had in our age the rough miner bidding his
mate seize the one chance of escape up the shaft, since the latter
is a husband and father; the surgeon sucking diphtheria poison
from a dying child's throat, and dying himself; and perhaps the
most notable of all, the gambler, the true child of the age, sacrific-
ing his life at the fire of the Southern Hotel in St. Louis to save
the servant girls. Evolution proclaims the certainty that such
cases are becoming less and less exceptional. This capacity for
sacrifice regardless of self has been evolving in the long travail of
the world, and has prospects of vastly greater increase, as its
supreme beauty and price are being perceived and valued. But
our individualism does all that it can do to depreciate it: it
inculcates that the martyr is nothing but a fool.
Socialism, with its doctrine of the organic unity of man, will
surely put a supreme value on self-sacrifice. Look at Humboldt
and those who have conducted researches about the North pole.
Their motives were not want nor avarice, nor even ambition; their
ruling motives can have been little less than their love of know-
ledge and the ennobling pleasures which attend the purest exercise
of the intellectual faculties. They furnished instances of self-
sacrifices which undoubtedly will be vastly increased by Socialism.
But something is yet wanting. Why is this "organic unity of
man" an object of such supreme importance? It is easy enough
to see that I ought to realise my social self, because the social
organism, humanity, is a system of selves, of whose essence myself
is an integral part. But why is humanity so supremely valuable?
Undoubtedly the whole becomes lovely and sacred because of
120
Our Destiny.
its better parts, because in the general mass of dull and heavy
earth there are grains of gold. We love mankind because great
and good men have in very truth loved it, and lived and laboured
and died for it; we love it in the persons of these men. They
and that noble band, select company who now do their duty and
more, and speak not of it and almost know not of it-they
make humanity lovely in our eyes. Underneath many unhand-
some exteriors there lie unsuspected such capacities for disinter-
ested action, jubilant self-abandonment, cordial devotion, chaste
and generous love, magnanimous friendship and childlike innocence,
as surely we have no idea of as yet. But we come back to the
point: that my "self" and others' selves are sacred because of
humanity. It is humanity alone that makes the sacrifice of these
good men valuable. We know what Comte and his disciples and
George Eliot say to us about humanity. They consider the
human race as the one august and precious thing in the universe,
yet tell us in the same breath that humanity is a being which
sometime will entirely disappear from the universe and leave not a
trace behind it.
Is this issue, then, such a very important one? Is there not
altogether too much truth in Mallock's bitter saying that such
Humanity "is bestial in its infancy, savage in its youth, impure
in its manhood, and as a worthy crown will simper through dotage
to a hopeless and unremembered grave." We have come to the
end of morality, and some persons think that morality is complete
in itself. But this last consideration, to me, necessarily makes
Morality issue in Religion.
36. I am confident that the conclusion we have now reached as
to morality—and to which I believe Socialism will in time lead
everybody—is a very helpful one, and especially is the true con-
clusion; this becomes so very evident when compared with the
sadly impotent conclusions, not only of Spencer, but of Sidgwick,
Leslie Stephen, and John Stuart Mill.
Is it not a most helpless result to come to for Sidgwick to have
to acknowledge, in the concluding portion of his Methods of
Ethics: "I am unable to construct any systematic answer,
Love.
121
deserving of serious consideration, to the question: what is the
Ultimate Good?" and to state in another place, that his treatise
"proceeds on the assumption that there are several ultimate ends
of action which all claim to be rational ends." And these two
lines at the close of Leslie Stephen's Science of Ethics are an
equally sad commentary on his speculations: "It is a hopeless search
—that for some reason binding every man simply as reasonable.”
Still more suggestive than anything else it seems to me, it is
that this Established Order gave rise to Utilitarianism and that it
was a man of the stamp of John S. Mill who championed it. And
what shall we think of such reasoning as this: "Each person
desires his own happiness or pleasure, thus the general happiness
or pleasure must be desirable to the aggregate?" "Every hog
desires his own fill, ergo the general fill of the pig-sty must be
desirable to all the hogs." Is this not precisely his reasoning?
and, what! the reasoning of the first teacher of logic!
If anything is assured, it is that we must not aim at pleasure-
that must not be slurred over. Take the normally decent and
serious man, his notion of perfect happiness is not something
straggling, as pleasures in themselves are, but is a unity and a
system where particulars subserve a whole. Happiness will not
come to you as an incident-and it never is anything but inci-
dental-unless you make yourself a whole, and as you cannot be
that in yourself, you must become conscious of yourself as a mem-
ber of a whole, that is identifying your will, your real self, with
the ideal—and as a rule what you give is returned with interest,
as the general heightening of individual life.
Socialism will bring to all or nearly all, happiness, and to the
few who cannot be happy, the still greater boon, blessedness.
Happiness is the state of subjective consciousness which occurs
spontaneously when all the powers of the individual are in equil-
ibrium, when thought and sympathies have all an adequate object,
when one's imagination is supplied with a horizon, and one's self
esteem with a proper social function. Happiness is created like
the odour of flowers or the harmony of music, is a delight in life
when all faculties are developed to their greatest, and all affec-
tions satisfied to their utmost capacity.
122
Our Destiny.
In all this the good man properly longs to acquire all good
things of this life, chief of which is love; the need of a human
soul to our thoughts is so profound, that to thousands its satisfac-
tion suffices for happiness. But maybe you will be called upon
by incurable disease, by the best welfare of society, to forego it,
and all of them. Ethics must require that we should, if asked,
forego all pleasure, and then we should do it with our whole heart
and willingly-except one. "There is one choicest treasure, which
through all self-surrender will remain forever with us, the one that
precisely lures to self-sacrifice, which through all denials of self we
may to the utmost indulge self "—and that is self-realisation which
confers blessedness.
((
There is, I maintain, a reason "binding every man simply as
reasonable"; there is one ultimate good," not "several ultimate
ends." This, however, has two sides, an objective and a
subjective: the first the organic unity of men, the other self-
realisation. This, as function, is the principal part, and happiness
or pleasure is an entirely secondary affair: good only to tell
whether function is well or ill performed. This reversal of function
and measure is due to the old blunder, considered in Chapter III.,
of mistaking appearance for reality. We have considered morality
as primarily concerned with individuals, and only secondarily with
the race; while the reverse is the reality.
Look at these two pictures. Consider first the thwarted life of
a bright, educated, talented man now, even in our blessed country.
It is proper to take him as a type, for though very much in the
minority, the prosperity of all depends to a great degree on his
position. If he is in his right place, and everybody aware of the
fact, all is harmony. He commences poor, for the multitude that
contain the talents are poor. What sacrifices his parents, who see
in their children's advancement compensation for their own miseries,
make to get him through the grammar school, high school, college,
or university! What dreams the young men dream of the great
things they will achieve in the next twenty years! Every year
how many thousands of such talented youth issue from our various
educational institutions fully equipped to make their mark! Now,
is it not a fact, that a practical, well-informed man must con-
Love.
123
template this army with absolute dismay, knowing, as he does,
that the supply far exceeds the demand? What terrible dis-
appointment awaits these youths! They had much better have
remained menials and clod hoppers, for their culture will be their
curse. What, then is there not work enough in our country
waiting to be done? Yes, indeed, but here we meet with the fact,
which, as things are, makes the most complete system of education
abortive. Though our wealth has multiplied many-fold since the
time of the Edwards and the Henries, yet it is the fact, that able
minds have now not nearly the chance of being helped to the high
positions which they then had. The great mischief is, that the
public authority which hitherto has trained them deserts them,
has no use for them; that the administration of affairs is in the
hands of private masters with the accompanying social mal-adjust-
ment.
That is just the pitiful fact, that these youths have no choice,
but have to go for advancement, for employment, for their mere
living to private individuals, and appeal to their private interest,
to their favour; for we have seen in a former chapter, that it is
precisely the mark of the highest genius and greatest talents that
they cannot create their own opportunities, nor sound their own
trumpets. This, at the start, expels some of the greatest geniuses
and talents-indeed, they frequently are too shy to appeal to
individuals. But let us suppose that they do, and that they
obtain employment. In that case they must obey these private
individuals and at all times be strictly loyal to their private
interests-that is a pre-requisite, inexorably demanded of them;
but that, I have claimed, is immoral, and if the employer be, as so
often is the case, an inferior person, it is doubly immoral. I am,
of course, fully aware that this immorality does not enter clearly
into the consciousness of these young men, but nevertheless they
chafe under their position, it dampens all their ardour, they remain
subordinates, and when forty, these men who at twenty had such
grand dreams, must be very happy if their mere living is secured
to them, in return for daily drudgery. And the others, less
fortunate, those superior minds who rebel against their fate? Ah,
they are on the slippery, steep incline that leads to the social
124
Our Destiny.
inferno-they either are in the abyss, or perilously suspended
above it, scorned by the "prominent" and looked down upon by
their comrades. For to be a rebel, to refuse obedience and loyalty
to private interests is the greatest possible offence in the eyes of
those who hold the reins; hence the "blacklisting" of the brainiest
manual workers. Is it any wonder, with talents and ability thus
positively crushed down, that we seem a nation given over to the
cult of base-ball and prize-fighting? With the prizes of life handed
over to coarse, cheeky, vulgar, and superficial men, our Fulkersons
and Dreyfooses, and genius neglected, can we wonder that we
appear to foreigners "a commonplace and essentially slight
people ?"1
:
Then imagine a typical life under Socialism. Infant: It
will always be welcome, for each there is "a cover laid at nature's
table;" it will never bring anything but sunshine to the home,
and never additional cares to the parents; its mother will be in-
structed in its care and training, yet it will pass its early years
joyously in the public kindergartens. Youth he and she will
pass that most important period of life, in which character is
formed, and during which the most decisive crisis occurs, under
the constant eye and care of the teacher till adult age, delighted
in having their faculties of body and soul, brain and hand developed,
being trained in obedience and guided safely through the storms
of puberty, all on the same level. Adult: flushed with life and
useful exertion, he passes his second crisis, that of choosing from
among the innumerable possibilities and opportunities that pro-
fession and station which is awaiting for him, and for which his
capacity, awakened and developed by his mental and manual train-
ing, has predestined him. Friend: enjoying, now the chasm be-
tween the different social activities is filled up, the subtle charms
of sympathy with minds supplementary to his own, wherever they
are found, and mutually influencing and emulating with each
other. Lover: adding to the profoundest friendship the glowing
but chaste forces of passion, purified from every sort of material
considerations, and forming the indestructible bond of marriage,
now left mainly in woman's keeping. Citizen: the round man in
1Sir James Fitzjames Stephen,
Love.
125
the round hole, ability having the leadership, not as a matter of
chance, or of personal favour, but as a matter of right, with loyal
seconders, participating in the government by his function; sure
of his place and his due maintenance as long as he performs his
duty. Ayed: a burden no longer to anybody, but enjoying his
well-earned pension; living over his life again in his sympathy
with the young, realising what has always been the ideal: that
of being each in his circle the sage, the truly wise, the judge, the
adviser, and looking confidently forward to another existence, not,
however, a mere prolongation or second volume of this.
The other day we had a curious commentary on the Established
Order in the retiring moderator of the Presbyterian assembly
praising God that his co-religionists controlled so much of "the
Lord's money"-to wit, many hundreds of millions of dollars. The
knell of such miserable "order" is sounding, the change will come,
society will ere long relieve every one of her members from re-
sponsibility to material interests which have hitherto degraded
human life to the ground, by providing for his physical subsistence
and leaving him free to accomplish the true end of his being. It
will come.
CHAPTER VI.
GOD IN HUMANITY.
"Philosophic Morality may start without God; it cannot finish without
Him."-Elme M. Caro.
"There is a statement of Religion possible which makes all scepticism
absurd."-Emerson.
37. Morality remains imperfect, till humanity becomes precious.
Saintly inen and women, let me repeat, however lovely in them-
selves, do not make humanity precious; it is humanity that gives
value to their lives and labours, even to the life and death of a
Father Damien.
How helpless humanity is by itself! We shudder at the desolate
condition of a handful of people in an open boat in mid-ocean;
we hardly realise that our actual condition on this globe of ours,
whirling through space, suspended between two infinities, is just
as lonesome; that we are by ourselves just as insignificant as a
crowd of ants in a huge ant-hill. We may have ever so many
saints among us-how can they help themselves or us? Then
think of the time, sure to come, when humanity in the flesh will
disappear leaving not a trace behind it! If all ends in smoke,
what is the value of Morality, Love, Sympathy, Sacrifice? We
are entitled to ask that question, for Utilitarianism is right in
this, that utility is an inherent element of Morality, as it is of
Value.
This leads us to the problem: will the coming socialist society
be religious or atheistic? To be frank, the main purpose of this
essay has been, from the first, to solve this problem, as far as
possible. I honestly believe I have something worth saying on
this point, simply because I have for years lived in imagination
under a socialist régime.
126
God in Humanity.
127
Emerson says:
"There is a statement of religion possible which
makes all scepticism absurd." I am confident that American
Socialism can make such a statement, this will be its intellectual
achievement. Again, I contend that Socialism can show morality
necessarily evolving a belief in God and Immortality as a tree
bears blossoms and fruit, that I call its moral achievement. Thus
the preceding chapters become preparatory steps to what follows.
And, in order to be perfectly frank, I will here admit that my
hope of this essay's attracting some attention lies just in the fact
that I have, as I believe, some novel ideas on these tremendous
subjects of God and Immortality. I am fully aware that in spite
of our prevailing scepticism my fellowmen have an insatiable
curiosity in regard to any publication that so much as pretends to
have anything to say on these matters. Witness the fact, that a
most foolish book, entitled, The To-morrow of Death, translated
from the French, enjoyed half-a-dozen editions in a few months
after its appearance in London. I maintain, then, that Socialism
will give us such a view of God as will satisfy the most developed
intellect. I say that it is possible to predict what men will think
on these subjects a century hence in a society where a socialist
régime will have prevailed, say, fifty years. I further deem myself
able to prove in the following pages that they will be all
but unanimous in affirmation of the questions about which such a
scepticism now reigns.
Before I go to the heart of the matter, let me advance a few
general considerations. Many Socialists now assume that when
this world ceases to be a "vale of tears," particularly when it
becomes a very paradise, men will not care a particle for another
world. I believe there never was a greater error.
I believe, first, that the leisure, the ease, that will prevail will
precisely dispose men to transcendental thoughts; that when they
get out of this world all that heart can wish, they will want to
storm heaven by force. It will be with the earth as with the
magnificent estate of which Dr. Johnston said: "Ay, sir, these are
the things that make Death bitter!"—and he knew human
¹ Cardinal Mazarin expressed the same thought lying on his deathbed,
128
Our Destiny.
nature pretty well. To quote the Frenchmen of the First
Revolution who pretty generally embraced atheism is not to the
point, for the state of a people, all the time labouring under a
tremendous excitement, and, so to say, breathing an atmosphere of
fire that made their very brains boil in their heads, will surely not
apply to a socialist community.
But of all general considerations the most important probably
is, that the period in which we are living, which began with the
Reformation, and now with railroad-speed is drawing to a close,
is a transition period, and as such is, like the parallel time of the
decline of Rome, naturally first sceptical, then irreligious. On the
other hand, Organic Ages, like Antiquity, the Middle Ages-to
which will soon be added the coming Socialist Age-are just as
naturally, from the unity and corporate responsibility that obtain
there, intensely religious.
The Middle Age shows this connection most lucidly. Its feudal
society, thoroughly harmonised by a logical and effective system of
ideas, constituted a splendid unity and organism whose parts were
vividly conscious of their functions, while all efforts and ambitions
converged in one direction. As a consequence, the "heavens were
imagined in close and tangible contact with the daily life of man ;
all were compelled to obtain the great prize of life by the same
formula." Then we had a compact, coherent society, the functions
of widely differentiated parts concurring to a common end, and
with certain fundamental destinies in common; each in his due
proportion participated in the divine blessing upon earth, while
each looked forward to an identical glory.
It is a similar system that will obtain in the future, but raised
on a far higher plane, with delusions gone, and a true brotherhood
established.
38. We know that now numbers of intelligent and well-informed
men downright deny the existence of God, and what, indeed, is far
worse, that scepticism on that point is more rampant and wide-
spread among the masses than it ever was in Rome eighteen cen-
when surrounded by innumerable objects of art and luxury he exclaimed,
Oh, how hard it is to leave these things!"
God in Humanity.
129
turies ago. What I have not a particle of doubt of in my own
mind is, that Socialism will radically reverse this state of things:
it will in the minds of the vast majority make all doubt on that
point impertinent.
By the advent and the following radical transformation of
Socialism, mankind will, in very truth, be granted nothing less.
than a real revelation from God which none can dispute—a revela-
tion through human history. What now most naturally creates
scepticism will then just as irresistibly create belief. To deny God's
existence will seem to mankind very much the same thing as deny-
ing their own existence as men. That is to say, the history of
man will appear like a whole divine drama unrolling before the
very eyes of humanity. That which makes this remarkable dif-
ference between then and now is simply the different points of
view. It so happens that now-as in every transition period—we
are in the midst, in the thick of the plot, the most vital of the
plots so far, and the vast majority of men do not see any issue out
of it. Worse than that, our Spencers and other popular moral
teachers affirm that it will remain an unsolved plot forever, that
the present social state is final, and that all further progress must
consist in accommodating ourselves as best we may to this state.
Where such shortsightedness obtains, history can be nothing
else than a record of force and fraud. But with Socialism we
have a solution of the plot, and all previous epochs and events are
seen to be preparations for it—history assumes the character of a
drama.
And a divine drama. Mankind used to ask for miracles in proof
of the truth of the Gospels. What they really wanted was evi-
dence of the intelligence behind phenomena, and they looked for
such evidence in infractions of the natural order. Socialism will
at once open men's eyes to the fact that the history of man has
been a standing, continuous miracle; but it is the order in that
history which will prove to them the existence of God as
convincingly as any fact ever was proved from circumstantial
evidence.
The first link of that chain of evidence is already supplied by
modern science-to wit, the law of evolution. It was a most
I
130
Our Destiny.
fortunate circumstance that men found that no scientific observa-
tion of phenomena was possible unless directed and interpreted at
least hypothetically by some theory, and that the more complex
the phenomena the greater the necessity, and that they thus dis-
covered the law of evolution. But they fail as yet to see its vast
significance. The same men who use it to interpret the pheno-
mena of the past are, so to speak, caught in the thicket of the plot
in the midst of which we find ourselves, and refuse to use it to find
the path out of it; and so they preach the arrant nonsense that
evolution dethrones God. With the advent of a socialistic régime
all will see, as a matter of course, that evolution, instead of over-
turning a belief in God, overturns really a barbarous and crude
conception of the way God works. Evolution, then, will pre-
cisely make the presence of God the only possible working
hypothesis.
What religious people hitherto had exclusively to trust to and
build on was the universal human instinct; that chance did not
stumble on every living thing, particularly that unique thing, human
consciousness and its wonderful contents, science, art, morality, and
the "thoughts that wander through eternity." They postulated
purpose, in order to avoid the notion, shocking to that instinct, of
a "fortuitous concourse of atoms." But Socialism, as said, vouch-
safes us a complete, true revelation of the Supreme Will: it suddenly
reveals to us a brilliantly illuminated segment of itself.
Imagine yourself living at the advent of that Golden Age and
look back the long stretch as far as tradition and scientific vision
will take you societies of men evolved from social beasts of the
field, themselves for a long time not much less cruel and beastly
than their progenitors, and blindly and laboriously groping in the
dark. But it is evident to you, from the bird's-eye view you now
have, that a superior power is preparing a path for them, leading
their tottering steps, overruling their vagaries, and preventing
them from straying seriously away and going to destruction.
Their freedom is fortunately limited: they are as much in lead-
ing strings as children ever were. At the very start the infancy
of their children is somehow lengthened, and this, you see, creates
home and its affections. Love suddenly appears on the theatre of
God in Humanity.
131
human consciousness; man finds it pleasant, and is thus encouraged
to develop it more.
You can see how man was led from stage to stage, step by step.
Nation after nation arose, ascended a stage, then declined, but not
till it had handed the torch of human progress to another nation
just ascending. Men fought battles at Marathon, Hastings, Magde-
burg, and Lützen, at Gettysburg and Sedan, and all these battles
had a meaning, and were fought to accomplish the solidarity, the
fellowship of humanity. Men enslaved their fellow-men, but
slavery will be seen to have been the necessary initial stage of
civilisation, and preparatory to a higher, to serfdom; this, again,
to wage-dom, and this to social co-operation. Men tortured,
burned, and scourged each other-survivals from their animal past
—but none of these torturings, burnings, and crucifixions were
suffered in vain. One selfish genius after another arose-an
Alexander, a Cæsar, a Napoleon—who thought to make humanity
a stepping-stone to their own exaltation; they were suffered to
play their private game, believing that they were following simply
their private impulses, but as soon as they ceased to contribute to
a larger life for mankind, they were struck down. At length the
lowest, most numerous class of society awoke to self-consciousness,
and this inaugurated the last act of the drama. With Socialism,
purpose can, like a red thread, be traced all through history; God's
presence will be a demonstrated fact: REASON TRIUMPHS.
This will be a glorious achievement of Socialism in the religious
sphere. It seems to me self-evident that every rational man,
capable of fully imagining himself in a socialist régime, and per-
suaded of its near advent, must thereby become vividly conscious
and convinced of God's presence.
When Socialism will have made belief in God vivid and strong
in the masses, we shall witness our dogmatic churches, desirous of
preserving continuous life, re-shape their dogmas in accordance
with the new revelation, and that perhaps will infuse new life into
them; but religious "professors" will no longer teach that
Adam's fall is responsible for whatever evils may still afflict us.
39. We now come to another intellectual achievement of Social-
132
Our Destiny.
ism in the religious sphere-much more important than may
appear on first view: it is the new view it will give us of morality.
We have hitherto persistently considered it as a fact, a force; now
it becomes a law. Not a "law" like that of gravitation, which,
we remember, is rather a force, but a rule of action which we can
disobey, but to the penalty of which we then must submit.
To-day we talk sufficiently about morality as "the moral law,"
but the very greatest mischief is, precisely, that our intellect does
not recognise its quality as law. Hear Sidgwick: “I do not find
in my moral consciousness any intuition, claiming to be clear and
certain, that the performance of duty will be adequately rewarded
and its violation punished." We constantly see this so-called
moral law violated with impunity; we are altogether blind to the
penalty. The most astonishing thing is that Mill, aye! that John
Stuart Mill is blind to it. On page 41 of his Utilitarianism we
read: "The ultimate sanction of all morality is a subjective feel-
ing in our minds. This sanction has no binding efficacy on those
who do not possess the feelings it appeals to." This, surely, is a
serious matter; I should say that a theory like the above, which
maintains in effect, that a man may get rid of his sense of moral
obligation if he can, and that if he does the obligation is gone, is
as grossly immoral a theory as ever was published. And Mill
evidently accepted this theory, though he prefers not to say so;
he only adds, “But this is a danger not confined to Utilitarian
morality." Morison, also, in his Service of Man, evidently does not
believe in the moral law (which as such must apply to all), for he
divides mankind into two classes: "Those who manifestly have a
congenital bias to vicious and malignant crime, who have no good
instincts on which a moral teacher can work," and "those with a
prompt unreflecting bias toward good." The first class he pro-
poses ruthlessly to weed out for ever, and to retain only the last
one in his new society.
These various sentiments are evidently diametrically opposed to
the philosophy of morality set forth in these pages, and what is
more, they constitute too sandy a foundation for any sort of real
morality. They cannot be the truth. The first reason why men
how really do not believe in any moral law is, of course, that they
God in Humanity.
133
do not really believe in God's presence. When we become con-
vinced, as a socialist régime will convince us, that there is a
PURPOSE in the world, then morality becomes a law. Morality is
evidently deep in this purpose, since it is the indispensable con-
dition for social welfare. It is only when there is a purpose that
science discovers the reign of law, whether in physical, physio-
logical, or social phenomena; or wherever she discovers powerful
tendencies that yet will become law, then the delayed purpose of
the Universal Being is still manifested while awaiting fulfilment.
Under Socialism the supreme intelligence will is seen sitting in
the chair of that authority with which Chapter II. opened, but
which was acknowledged there as only a blind force, though the
adjective "benevolent" was applied-a little too previously, I
grant-to it. He will be acknowledged as the Ultimate Reason
and as such our only final guarantee that the universe will not
restore itself into chaos before our eyes, so to speak. "He has so
arranged the world as to let us know that morality is the law he
has prescribed for you and me. The law is inflexible but noble,
and should excite the sincere wish to make it our urgent business
to act up to it and carry it out." That makes him the law-giver,
and the Universal Order that we first of all met with. This is
the rational and manly way to look at it, and the worthiest con-
ception of it.
Secondly, morality is a law, because we have to some extent
Free-will, ¿.e., power of refusing to obey it. We feel that free-will
is a pre-requisite to morality; that without it there would be no
morality. But how shall we reconcile these two things, that
morality is both a law and a fact? We have already answered
this question by saying that the proper use of free-will consists
in voluntarily and consciously conforming to the Supreme Will, to
the Order of the Cosmos. Those who are not satisfied with such
a free-will, who want it to be a rambling, vagrant liberty, should
bear in mind that God Himself is evidently equally limited.
Modern atheism has undeniably this justification, that He whom
popular religions worship is clearly a false "god"; a lordly,
capricious, omnipotent, and, in particular, a lawless despot. Our
reason compels us to assume, on the other hand, that once having
134
Our Destiny.
established the Order of the World, God is as much bound by it as
we are. And here the penalty comes in. This order of the world
is not jeopardised by our disobedience: it is bound to be enforced.
No, it is we who lose by it; it is we who fail by disobeying; we
become failures, become-to use a very expressive word-
"demoralised." This is the most suggestive difference between
the civil and the moral law, that the former is concerned for its
enforcement, the latter for the motive, with which it is obeyed-
since it is sure of being enforced in the end.
But the respect where this becomes of by far the most practical
concern to us is, that it is by the establishment of this moral law,
and only thus, that we become God's co-workers. The happiest
way, it seems to me, of defining an ideal human law, is by saying
that it is a rule of action, for the common good, made by the clear
and far-seeing for the short-sighted. Both classes of men, so far as
they are rational, want to do the right thing, but all do not know
what is right. Apply this to the moral law. God has prescribed
it for us: we co-operate, by acting God's thought. We have seen
that virtually our whole evolution so far has been, and indeed up
to the realisation of Socialism, will be, natural evolution, i.e., a
development in which God's purpose is virtually the sole directing
force. We have been, and are still, part and parcel of an onward
growth, against which it would be useless to rebel-aye, to which
it is our great privilege to conform. But in this evolution men
are far from being superfluous or mere tools. We cannot, as
Spencer seems to want to have it, fold our hands and await events.
God cannot do without us: He needs our co-operation, and those
who obey the summons are amply rewarded for their labours and
sacrifices; they are paid by the day, by the hour, we may almost
say by the piece.
And here I come to a point, which I pray my readers to note
well, and which, it seems to me, will alone justify this section,
and also justify my calling our conception of the moral "law" an
intellectual achievement. The unknown author of God in His
World says: "They that believe wait upon Him; they behold
His works and though they know not the way thereof, though it hath
for them wonderful surprises, they co-operate therewith. * * *
God in Humanity.
135
The world is awaiting a new Pentecost. But what embodiment in
human economics this new spiritual revival will take we know
not. They are the friends of God, building with Him they know
not clearly what-they have never known." This, in other words,
is the same view which Robert Browning holds when he writes:
"The individual knows nothing of the Divine scheme."
This, I contend, is a fatal blunder-a most mischievous, practical
mistake. How is it possible to be co-workers with one whose plans
we know not? The whole drift of this essay is precisely that we
can, and are bound to know, God's schemes for our immediate
future, and this, again, in the highest sense, is what makes his
thoughts and morality a law for us. It should always be borne
in mind, that we possess individuality, and that mankind has
been divided up into individualities, precisely, because it has a
work to do in this earth-life, because we are intended to be
co-operators with God.
40. But also remember that it is our Equality-what is common
in us all—that "entitles us to the Divine regard." The typical
life with which Chapter V. closed was, at bottom, a society, where
each individuality had got into its proper niche; but when the
socialist commonwealth is fully evolved, it is Equality that will
establish the Kingdom of Heaven on earth. At present there are
without doubt noble men whose very nobility of heart makes them
atheists; their atheism is the cry of an outraged conscience: they
have abandoned God because of the evils which he permits and
the prevailing pharisaism of the churches. Ah! it is man himself
who is responsible for by far the greater part of the evils under
which he suffers, and it is man that will establish the Kingdom of
Heaven.
In all ages, whenever religion was really powerful and ennobling,
it was not at all limited to caring for the private soul, but it was
identified with efforts to realise heaven on earth; identified with
some great sweep of social action in which individual lives were,
so to say, caught up to meet ideal passions from above. Again,
the "kingdom of heaven" which Jesus meant, was, without a
particle of doubt, first and last a society on earth, with other
136
Our Destiny.
social conditions, where the prevailing cruel social injustice should
be redressed. As centuries roll on, the name of Jesus will be more
and more venerated precisely on account of his social teachings,
and his Dives and Lazarus acknowledged as fitting types of man's
long degradation. It is here that Socialism will complement
Christianity. As Jesus has divided the old world from the new by
proclaiming the Kingdom of Heaven, the brotherhood of man, so
Socialism is destined to realise it.
Our current pharisaism necessarily turns the hearts of the
masses and all noble men away from God. It deals with private
interests exclusively, and turns the Universal God into a mere
respecter of persons, subject to all the caprices of a petty earthly
despot. Henry James, sen., truly says, "Our churches teach
that the true aim of religion is to attest a difference between men,
that certain persons are purer and better in God's estimation than
others, and thereby inflame all that is basest and most selfish in
our nature by nursing an insane dread of personal damna-
tion."
Frankly, does not the case, as a matter of fact, stand thus:
that our self-righteous "moral man has an assured conviction of
God's particular esteem for him, John Smith; that God knows his
features, recognises him when he prays and in effect says to him-
self, "This John Smith is a person whose interests I will certainly
look after, while that miserable Tom Jones shall certainly go to
hell?" And-these again are the words of Henry James, sen.:
"While John Smith and his comfortable and influential friends
are trying to cajole God, they are filling their felonious pockets
with dollars coined out of the sweat and blood of their helpless,
starved brethren. They are the enemies of the Kingdom of God
because they in their overpowering lust of mammon are content
to live in such glaring iniquitous relations with their fellow-men
as virtually condemn the vast majority to degrading want and
ignorance, and lift a small class into idle abundance." For this is
precisely the fact, that the cause of our social evils lies in the
prevalent inhumanity of one to another as organised in our boasted
political and social institutions. How can we have the Kingdom
of Heaven as long as every man must assume that every other
God in Humanity.
137
man he meets on the street, in hall or church, is selfishly intent
on selfish interests ?
But if the Pharisees, however pious they may be, oppose the com-
ing of the Kingdom of God, what shall we say of those sedulous cul-
tivators of intellect, who spend their forces in self-culture, and look
with contempt, or, at most, with pity on the struggling world?
In one of his books, Renan, that excellent representative of this
class, actually writes: "If we could reform the world, we ought
to take good care not to do it, because―(observe!) this world is
really too curious a thing to contemplate for the thinker!" If,
then, this class only would "contemplate" the world exactly!
but they have hardly an idea how their fellow-men live. Witness
O. B. Frothingham who, a few months back, could write: "I do
not see that there is much inevitable indigence in the world!"
It is the same Renan, furthermore, who fathers this odious senti-
ment: " Society is a vast organism, where entire classes should
live by the glory and enjoyment of others, like the peasant of the
Ancient Régime who worked for the noble and loved him for it,
who enjoyed (sic!) the high life which his sweat enabled the
others to lead (!)." It is those people who by their scientific
almsgiving ("organised charity") rob charity of what poor re-
semblance it has to Love.
What a difference I find in this respect between Victor Hugo
and our own Emerson! What a splendid lesson Hugo has given
us just in this respect to ponder over-and for which alone I do
not grudge him all the adulation of which he was the object-in
that Christ-like figure of the good Bishop who turns a Jean Valjean
into a Maire Madeleine! Compare on the other hand Emerson
in his Conduct of Life, where we read: “Those for whom it is an
honour to labour," and "those who only suggest the reflection of
their small value.” "The worst effect of charity is that the lives
you are asked to preserve are not worth preserving !!! Masses!
the calamity is the masses; I do not wish any masses at all, but
honest men only; lovely, sweet, accomplished women only. Nature
makes eighty poor melons for one that is good." "The guano races
of mankind, carted over to manure the fertile fields of America-
and rot (!).”
138
Our Destiny.
What an idea to compare men with melons! Is it not true, as
once said, that those timid fugitives from the duties and work of
the world, who have retired to nurse their cold intellects, are
desperately selfish and have wilfully turned their backs upon the
goal which Providence has set for man? It is such sympathetic
souls as Hugo, who do not sneer at the "masses," but try to bring
them up to their own level and make them all vigorous and sane
and good and wise and holy in the measure of their well-balanced
capacities, that are the true co-workers with God. They know
that among the "masses" there are as great geniuses—aye, and
much greater than our Emerson himself—and it is only oppor-
tunity that they need.
Yes, in spite of Hugo's many follies and idiosyncracies I am
ready to kneel down to him for his Les Misérables. It is such
noble minds as his who will at last turn men's hearts, and make
them resolve that society shall no longer break God's social and
economic laws-for, never forget this: unselfishness is now prac-
tically impossible for the individual, since society is, at present,
an organised warfare against the Kingdom of God. How small a
residuum of evils then we should have to trace to unavoidable
accidents! And perhaps but little of that residuum could fitly
be called "evil." Many ills are due to ancestral errors, but the
recuperative powers of nature are astonishing; we need only go
steadily on in order to cancel ere long the consequences of being
apathetic for generations.
Self-restraining morality or Duty will entirely cease to exist
as such in our future perfect society, for when the interests of
my fellow-men become identical with my own--as they will under
Socialism-I shall plainly be a stupid person if I do not do my
duty in every respect. Yet this branch of morality-which thus
is merely incidental to human destiny-is what fills our
"moral"
citizen with peacock-like pride; simply not to rob their fellow-men of
a farthing entitles them, in their opinion, to squeeze the last farthing
due them, say for rent, out of a poor widow. It is self-expanding
morality, love and sympathy, that will make man "in action like
an angel, in comprehension like God." It will be a love develop-
ing the most passionate social relation, whether with relatives,
God in Humanity.
139
friends, neighbours, and fellow-countrymen, till at last our exist-
ence is widened to the dimensions of universal humanity. It will
be a love that will see in the most depraved a brother and sister
with, at least, a spark of the divine in his or her nature.
I know well enough, that many good people will loudly protest
against this idea, that Justice will in time be effaced by Love. To
strengthen my position then, I wish to quote the following from
God in His World: "Justice is not a divine attribute. Even in
human affairs justice has no significance, save in connection with
the conventional adjustments of a perverted life. Injustice must
be manifest before there could be a conception of justice, which
is an outward, mechanical righteousness, equity of division. The
very notion of justice arises only from injustice."
41. Nothing has-nothing could have so much and so well
commended Christianity to mankind as the touching conception
by Jesus of God as Our Father. There can be no doubt that life
under a socialist régime will vividly justify to our minds that name
to the Intelligence behind evolution which then will clearly be
perceived to have acted the role of a tender father to us, leading
us like little children by the hand, while we all the time were per-
fectly unconscious both of the road we were going and the goal
we were to reach. But how is it possible now for the majority of
men, living as they do in order to work, and themselves blind as
they are, led by blind leaders, to see in God a Father? Must it
not rather seem to them to add mockery to injury, in naked truth
to place a crown of thorns upon their brows, when our religious
teachers try to justify the present arrangements by the will of
this "Almighty Father?" A few years ago a book, The Ground-
work of Economics, by C. S. Devas, was published, that almost
reaches the lowest depth of such insulting sophistry. This is the
summing up:
"I have given the Christian justification of inequality among
men in regard to wealth, enjoyment, and remuneration of labour,
nor do I believe that any other justification can be found, any
other conclusive answer to the socialist objections against accumu-
lations of wealth in a few hands. Mercantile profits and rents and
140
Our Destiny.
interest can be justified, indeed, on the grounds of the union of
the rich and poor and the mutual position assigned them by Provid-
ence. He from whom the right comes may attach conditions to
its enjoyment. Let the labourer then cease from murmuring.
He can claim from his fellow-men to have as much of the produce
of his labour as will give him opportunity for a decent existence;
he has no right to more, nor yet any right to refuse to produce
more than this quantity. The surplus may be spent in ways he
dislikes; he may receive from those whom this contribution of
his enables to live a cultivated life only scorn and neglect. But
all this is not his concern. It is not for him to discuss the mysteri-
ous dispositions and permissions of Divine Providence; if those
who hold power misuse his contributions to the life of that society,
it is not for him to punish. There is One who sees and in His own
time will bring all to account."
Is it not evident that Socialism will quite otherwise conceive
God's Fatherhood, by showing that "in His own time" He has
brought all to account? For clearly, if the present arrangements
are His will, then the coming changes, and the advent of Socialism,
particularly, will, in a special sense, be His "will.”
Then no man will be so blasphemous as to write as Devas
further does: "There can be no doubt of the superiority of the
rich to the rude and toiling multitude. In Christian societies these
inequalities of property are a cause of union, binding together the
various members of the commonwealth, and are occasions for abun-
dant compensations, of charity, generous contributions to religion,
public buildings, patronage over work-people and serving the
State without pay.”
God has proved Himself and will still more prove Himself a
"father" in a way that precisely befits man's destiny: by giving him
will to overcome his circumstances, and by intensifying his will,
his manliness; and history has shaped itself from the beginning
according to this programme. "God has incessantly been eliciting
man's inherent pith and substance by provoking him to throw off
all outward dependance." Henry James, sen., says:
"Hence men
have come to dislike mere toil as servile. Mechanics, without a
doubt, embody as large a measure of human worth and furnish as
God in Humanity.
141
good an illustration of solid manliness, true human sweetness, as
those of any class, but the temporary social inferiority of the me-
chanics is perhaps a good thing, as furnishing the necessity of stimu-
lating them to feel disgust at the actual servitude to which they
are subject. A perfect society will never allow any of her members
to remain content with mercenary labour; and therefore they are
goaded with incessant slights and sarcasms until they compel
society to lift them above the accursed necessity of earning their
bread by the sweat of their brows."
A Chinese philosopher of the thirteenth century said: "The
essence is always without desire, wherefore He may be called Little.
All beings owe subjection to Him, and He does not consider Himself
as their Lord, wherefore He may be called Great.”
This doctrine of the self-abnegation of God is a noble thought-
this, that God's whole existence of Beatitude is a "Giving-forth," a
bestowal of good, absolute Love, in which Selfishness has no place
whatever; and this is a conception which, I am sure, Socialism will
very much strengthen.
42. When Darwinism pretends to be not merely a probable
scientific hypothesis, but a full philosophical interpretation of the
universe, and of the whole course of organic evolution, as well as
mental, moral, and social evolution in man, we have a right to dis-
pute these all-embracing pretentions. That mankind from its
natural side has decended from a social animal, that is both credible
and a great philosophic achievement; but surely we have still
another kinship, a divine descent, which, as I apprehend, Socialism.
will make good.
Let us try to explain Jesus. Explain him? Yes, I should say,
that if any phenomenon in the world needs explanation, it is Jesus
and his wonderful supremacy over the centuries-more and more
wonderful the more rationalistic men become. What a marvel,
that he who, dying on the cross, seemed the deadest of failures,
rose to the most splendid empire, so splendid that it may be deemed
worth many crucifixions; that he, a man, became the incarnate
God; that he, a Jewish carpenter, became the adored of kings of
power and intellect! It can, of course, be explained, for it surely
142
Our Destiny.
was not a matter of chance, but of internal necessity. There must
be a reason why mankind unanimously, intensely, and persistently
believed that God took on human form and suffered in human
ways-aye, there must so much the more be a reason, the more
singular it now appears. I think the reason for this is also the
reason for that other phenomenon, to be noticed in the following
section, why he became the mediator between God and man. It
is, that mankind had a vague idea of, an instinct for, the truth, to
wit: that there is the closest affinity between God and man, that
God, whatever else He is, is essentially human, and that the per-
sonality of God is identical with the personality of humanity.
Frances Power Cobbe notices the strange fact, that the name of
Jesus has entirely put God into the background, and usurped His
authority. That came about most naturally. Man felt that, as
the essence of humanity constitutes his own real self, his own per-
sonality, so there the personality of God must be present, and
not being able to grasp that idea, he took Jesus for the symbol of
all Humanity. In other words, God is the Supreme Reality that
evokes, draws out, the social self within us; He is the Soul in
Humanity—the "Collective Conscience" of Chapter II. -giving it
unity, as our "self" gives unity to the ever-changing, never-abid-
ing particles of the visible body. We are each of us an integral
part of the body of the living God. Pantheism is God in nature;
the deeper truth, I suggest, is God in Humanity.
No man in our generation has had a truer insight into the rela-
tions that ought to exist among men, or a nobler intuition of God's
true relation to man than Henry James, sen. He has painted
these relations in the most glowing colours, contrasted the actual
and ideal relations almost to perfection, first in one work, and then,
dissatisfied with his effort, has tried the same again in another and
yet another work,¹ and after all accomplished very little of the
good that he intended, and has secured but a very small number
of readers, simply because he only preached, because he only tried
to work on men's hearts-his works, in other words, were only
castles in the air, without any support. Yet he saw, saw well
enough, that it was our economic system which contained the crank,
* Substance and Shadow.
God in Humanity.
143
so to speak, that is to turn the whole social machinery; but how
it could be done, still less how it would be done, he did not tell.
Yet it is just here the emphasis is to be laid. James gives an ex-
cellent illustration of what progress or evolution truly means: the
persistent effort of the paternal divine element to elevate man out of
the mud and mire of his origin and assert its own essential primacy.
He happily compares the process to the forming of a statue.
Nature gives us body as the marble gives the statue visible incor-
poration; but the sculptor forms it by endowing the marble with
his own genius, thus animating it, giving it soul. This is done by
a gradual process of skilful but firm elimination and rejection;
and Man's history is likewise a ceaseless elimination or rejection of
every trait of his animal origin, approaching more and more the
ideal image of the Infinite. With Darwinists, to contemplate only
our natural descent is to make men like unto a statue which is
conspicuous chiefly for its material, where the substance out of
which it is fashioned challenges more attention than the plastic
power of the sculptor over the substance. "Is it not a perfect
statue just when the form imposed by the sculptor completely
ravishes, swallows up and subjugates the material of the marble ? "
He constantly insists that the essence, almost the whole nature
of God is Love. That He is of a love so infinite, so void of self-
love, that “even in bestowing His own eternal blessedness upon us,
He immerses Himself in His creatures' own atmosphere, diminishes
Himself with unflattering constancy to His creatures' own level, con-
descends with loving perseverance to every weakness." If God is
indeed the power behind evolution-if there be any power behind
-then surely He has with lovingkindness lowered Himself to the
most hideous abysses of our human nature, since we have seen the
most divine love and sympathy developed from the coarsest and
most brutish germs. This should be remembered by those who
think I have wrongfully made of love of approbation such a mighty
motive in a previous chapter. I fully believe Socialism will force
this upon our comprehension, and that this again will call forth
love in us if anything will, and "make us see so keenly all the
horror and hideousness of our overpowering cupidity and ferocity.
of manners as to avert ourselves from it and eventually disown
144
Our Destiny.
every method and institution of our associated life which nourishes
and perpetuates it."
What a difference between Comte's and George Eliot's "Hu-
manity," and the same humanity heartily believed to be animated
throughout by God's spirit. It is the difference between a corpse
and a living being. And what a difference between the God of
theologians—one they got hold of per saltum, by a leap outside
the concrete world-and the God that Socialism will reveal: a
working Divinity "grimy with the dust and sweat of our most
carnel appetites and passions, and bent on the patient, toilsome,
thorough cleansing of our self from its odious, natural defilement !"
43. Here we have arrived at the culmination of this essay.
All that precedes has been so many steps leading up to the answer
of the question: Why is Humanity so supremely precious? Jesus
has been looked upon, not only as the incarnate God, but as the
mediator between the individual and God. Socialism, as said, will
also give us the explanation of this. Mankind felt the need of a
mediator, and with a vague sense of the truth they made Jesus,
the man of sorrows, a symbol of humanity. The truth was and is,
that Humanity is our mediator. Humanity is the medium through
which we enter into communion with God-this is the keystone of
any coherent system of morality and the crown of all preceding
speculations. "Men hitherto foolishly supposed, and the more
moral they were the more they supposed, that God's redemptive
operation was confined to the isolated individual bosom. When-
ever they fancied themselves in any degree superior to their fellow-
men around them, there was no end of cackling and self-com-
placency, or if inferior, no end of chagrin; they appropriated the
great life of God to their own puny selves and converted it to
every perverse, infernal form of self-seeking," as Henry James, sen.,
says. All they cared for was their own personal salvation at His
hand; and they supposed they did what was pleasant in His sight,
when they worried Him with their private griefs and appeals.
Socialism will surely reverse this and teach us, that God has no
vital relation to us individually except through humanity, and that
only by working for humanity can we know Him. God will be in-
God in Humanity.
145
timately known-not in nature, not even in the individual bosom,
but-in man, first through history; later, still better through in-
stitutions, and our organic unity. We shall learn, what is the
simple truth, that He takes no interest whatever in our passing
evils, however hideous, as they affect us individually, any more
than He does in our tooth-aches. Then we shall find out that His
creative presence is in humanity, that He looks upon no portion of
His creatures as hopelessly lost, but that the grand aim of His
majestic providence on earth is to mould us gradually out of our
most degraded conditions into the dignity of social beings. We
shall enter into communion with Him when the evils, incident to
our rudimentary methods of intercourse, become so palpable by
their contradictions with our better self as to make us heartily
ashamed of ourselves, and sick of our political and social guides.
Then we shall come to see, that no man does evil untempted with-
out having all other men to help him by standing aloof from him
and leaving him in abject penury, physical and moral; then the
noble, energetic minds among us, quickened by the ever-growing
tyranny of the atrocious forms of misery, vice, and crime, will per
ceive that only by bearing their brethren along with them and lift
ing them up, can they reach God.
As Henry James eloquently says: "What does the paltry evil-
doing of even our criminals amount to against our organised in-
clemency of man to man? When myriads of His creatures are
starving, for the base food of the body, while the gambling-house
and brothel are recognised necessities of our social fabric, and the
interests of one class are organised in ruthless hostility to those
of all other classes."
Comte's Humanity is a Great Being, unworthy of our homage,
since it is without any aspirations that are not selfish. Humanity
under Socialism, with the highest possible function, that of unit-
ing us with God, is worth living and dying for. In conclusion, I
point once more to that gambler and swindler who willingly sacri-
ficed his life in rescuing poor servant girls, and in that moment
truly realised his nobler self: united his real self with God.
K
CHAPTER VII.
THE HEREAFTER.
"All the efforts of ten thousand Ethical Societies will count as nothing
in the furtherance of ethical regeneration, compared with the work of the
man who shall again convince the world that every human soul is im-
mortal; and that such a task is not beyond the reach of man I am
thoroughly convinced."-Th. Davidson, The Ethical Record, Jan., '90.
44. Prof. Huxley somewhere says: "If the proof of im-
mortality is forthcoming, it is my conviction that no drowning
sailor ever clutched a hencoop more tenaciously than mankind
will hold by such a proof-whatever it may be." I think this ex-
presses human nature eminently well, and that they who pretend
to be satisfied with this earthly life alone are, to say the least,
not good representatives of mankind at large. I think it may be
truthfully said, that the interest of nearly all sober and serious
men in any new thought is proportional to its possible relation to
human final destiny; that, human nature being what it is, im-
mortality is practically the important thing to men, without
which-frankly speaking-even God's existence would be of much
less concern to most men.
Since it is precisely sober and serious men to whom I
appeal, it will be a final and decisive argument in favour of
Socialism to show that it has the closest and most direct relation
to human destiny. Its first great religious achievement: that it
inevitably brings to all healthy minds a conviction of God's
presence and moral government has in itself a strong bearing on
human destiny, and if this essay ended there, with proving, in
other words, the preciousness of Humanity, it ought to commend
a socialist régime to thoughtful minds. But in this final chapter
we are to proceed a good deal further, and show almost con-
clusively, as it seems to me, that Socialism will very much influence
146
The Hereafter.
147
our belief in Immortality. This is the second great religious
achievement of American Socialism: that it will, not so much
give us new proof of immortality, as strongly incline our minds to
heartily accept the kind of personal, immortal life which will
satisfy the most developed intellect-that is to say: Immortality,
bereft of illusions.
Man will in the future, as in the past, consider the question on
broad grounds of moral probability. That he by nature is inclined
to believe himself immortal, there is no doubt. "Not alone that
there is something overwhelming in the thought that all our rich
stores of spiritual acquisition may at any moment perish with us,
but it contradicts our reason. The reasonableness of the
universe can maintain its ground only by insisting on immortality;
to deny the everlasting persistence of the moral element in man
is to rob the whole process of evolution of its meaning. This
reasoning will be marvellously strengthened by the socialist con-
ception of God, Humanity, and their relations as outlined in the
previous chapter.
Meanwhile, science is already now, contrary to the common
notion, doing much to answer the question in the same way. By
proving the conservation of energy she really has made another
conscious existence-more than one, in fact-possible, aye! likely;
she has certainly proved that we shall never escape out of the
circle of existence and into annihilation.
.
It is indeed the best answer to sceptics, and something that
their attention, curiously enough, is seldom directed to: that all
difficulties that may be raised to a future life are applicable to the
present existence. It is not another life that is unreasonable: it
is this life that is inexplicable. It is not unreasonable to believe
that what daily happens, what happens every morning on awaken-
ing from deep sleep-the awakening into conscious life-may
happen after death, and then be simply as inexplicable as now.
But it is unreasonable to say that "Nature, after her long, deep,
unconscious sleep, should have a bright dream, called conscious-
ness, to be succeeded by a heavy, eternal slumber of death again;"
or as John Fiske puts it, "that the life of the soul ends with the
1 Creed of Science.
148
Our Destiny.
life of the body, is, perhaps, the most colossal instance of baseless
assumption known in the history of philosophy."
I, then, maintain that Socialism will wonderfully strengthen the
conviction that this life is but one act in a divine drama, simply
because the supreme value of Humanity which it inculcates will
make the contrary idea so exceedingly unreasonable. Still, its prin-
cipal influence will concern our notions about the nature of the
future life. It is on this point mainly that the following pages
will simply offer some suggestions. Or, to once more state it more
particularly: Socialism will remove the obstacles in the way of a
hearty acceptance of a rational belief in a future life.
45. Before entering upon this subject, I wish in this section to
make a digression, which, however foreign to Socialism it seems, may
yet turn out to be pertinent. I have already made known my firm
conviction that American Socialism will inaugurate a very great
religious awakening. One reason I have mentioned is, that the
delights of this life will make all men indisposed to believe in
annihilation of consciousness; but there is another of far greater
force-that the working masses will then, for the first time,
become an active religious factor. They are now, practically, all
sceptics, or rather indifferent, and no wonder, for they necessarily
become rather weary of life, and have no leisure at all for so much
as thinking over religious matters. But when Socialism gives
them leisure and zest for life, it will be vastly different. They are
naturally religious at bottom, and religious studies and specula-
tions are naturally congenial to them. They will, I am sure, com-
mence these studies with ardour, and, in their enthusiasm, carry
their fellow-citizens along with them. Now, it so happens that
certain investigations have started lately that will powerfully ap
peal, and be peculiarly suitable to the minds of working men.
It is quite remarkable that when scepticism was greatest, a
movement in the contrary direction was inaugurated, taking the
shapes of great interest in Buddhism, and the investigation of
Psychic Societies into the hidden forces of the soul. Dismissing
Buddhism by remarking that it, by its new ideas of Karma and
Pre-existence, may do much to widen men's horizon—it was of the
The Hereafter.
149
latter doctrine that Hume said that "It is the only kind of im-
mortality that Philosophy can hearken to "-I should say that the
investigation of the Psychic or Dialectical Society of London, as
reported by Sergeant-at-Law Edward W. Cox in his remarkable
volumes entitled What Am I? are decidedly those that promise to
have the most practical value for the future.
This society has started from the proposition that although
little can be learned from the motions of the human mechanism in
its normal condition when the machine is working smoothly, a
great deal may obviously be learned from it when observed in its
abnormal conditions, when parts of the machinery are thrown out
of gear. They concluded that forces whose presence is imper-
ceptible when working well will be exhibited when working irregu-
larly, and thus that we may learn their uses by their failure, their
power by their friction, and from their imperfect or misshappen
products what are their proper functions. And they started in to
study the Soul and its manifestations under these abnormal con-
ditions. Electricians do not perceive by sense the thing called
magnetism or electricity. They cannot see, feel, nor hear these
immaterial forces, but are, nevertheless, assured of their existence.
It is by observing the operations upon matter of the forces that they
reasonably infer their existence, and have learned, and are learn-
ing, much of their qualities and powers.
In the normal state of the mechanism the soul and the brain
work together so harmoniously that it is difficult, if not impossible,
to show their mutual relation. Still they commenced there—with
familiar Sleep and Dreams. The control of the will over the brain
is then suspended. The partial exercise of the brain produces
dreams-the mind invents a drama thronged with impossibilities,
paints scenery, marshals the actors, and places in their mouths
appropriate dialogues.
This work of creative genius is executed nightly, not by the
intelligent only, but by the most stupid; illiterate persons who,
when awake, are poor in ideas and speech, perform the seeming
wonder-miracle almost-of constructing continuous stories.
Such a shrewd lawyer as Cox concludes that this alone tends to
show what the soul can do when not clogged by corporeal condi-
150
Our Destiny.
tions, but released from the obligations of adapting itself to the
capacities of the body.
Somnambulism they found is another undisputed abnormal con-
dition, which is both natural and can be produced artificially, and
which, to the mind of Cox, tends to prove that the soul can exist
distinct from the body. In that condition both Consciousness and
Will are suspended, and the Soul ceases to communicate through
the body with the external world. The Soul-or the Patient-
acts independently; it perceives directly, without the aid of the
senses, objects which in the normal condition of the organism are
perceptible only through the senses; sees without sight, hears
without ears, feels without the sense of touch.
Trance, again, is a condition where the intelligent "Something"
-the Soul-is still further dislocated in its connection with the
body. The soul acts its dream, but has no memory of it in its
waking state; it has in trance a perfect conscious life of its own
and even a separate memory. The will is often awake and can
control the body, but receives no intelligence through the body.
This condition of Trance has raised in Cox's mind a strong proba-
bility of immortality by proving that even in this life Soul and
Body can be partially severed and preserve distinct existences.
But the most instructive and suggestive of all the investigations
of this Dialectical Society have related to what they call Psychism.
If Spiritualism¹ has not done any other good, it has at least led
to most remarkable discoveries in regard to the soul, for
"Psychism" is really the scientific name for it. Psychic Force is
soul-force; that it exists is just as sure as that the force exists by
means of which the magnet moves the steel without contact,
though we are ignorant of the imperceptible "something" that
passes from the magnet to the steel. This "force" the Soul in
the normal state uses evenly upon the entire organism through
the nerves, but when a disturbance occurs, it produces phenomena
that startle us by their strangeness and inconsistency with its
customary course. This, surely, is a most suggestive scientific
discovery, that such a condition as "Psychism" does in fact exist,
I What a pity that the believers in ghosts have been permitted to
appropriate to themselves this splendid word!
The Hereafter.
151
in which the Soul can direct its force immediately on the material
world, without as normally using the agency of the brain and
body. It seems to me that O. B. Frothingham's opinion in an
article in the Atlantic Monthly for August, 1890, is perfectly
sound: that the results of the investigations, so far, "furnish a
firm foundation for personal continuity and a basis for faith to
build upon."
I simply suggest that these and similar investigations may
powerfully affect the common mind when decent material con-
ditions once exist.
46. I insist that Socialism will have a decisive influence on men's
views of a future life. Let me again and again emphasise "men's
views." I do not of course pretend for a moment that Socialism
will enable us to get so much as a peep beyond the gates of
death, but next to positive knowledge on this subject come moral
convictions, and perhaps the latter is for all practical purposes,
both for happiness in this world, and still more to give colour to
life and motive to action, by far the most important. Now I have
not the least doubt that Socialism will, especially in connection
with the new ideas I have mentioned, make men pretty unanimous
as to the fact of a future life, but even on that I lay no stress.
What I deem by far most important is that I am confident that
men under a socialist régime will fancy themselves a far different
kind of future life from what they do now-both those who now
believe and those who disbelieve in it. By dwelling myself in
imagination very much on the conditions under Socialism, I
believe I have perceived what men in future will embrace and
what they will discard; I believe that the state of the future life,
which they thus will instinctively prefer, will be what their reason
will sanction, and experiences I myself have passed through have
tested for me the practical value of these ideas. I think the fact
of this future belief can be proved pretty logically, and I com-
mence as a preliminary by showing that Memory is a very distinct
thing from Self-consciousness.
In this respect we ought to look at facts of absolutely scientific
certainty which are of vast import. I refer to the numerous
152
Our Destiny.
medical cases on record where various diseases have had the effect
of blotting out every vestige of memory up to the date of the disease.
This loss of memory is called "amnesia," and I take the
following facts from the well-known French psychologist, M. Th
Ribot.
Temporary amnesia usually makes its appearance suddenly, and
ends in the same way. It may vary from a few minutes to several
years. An educated man, thirty-one years of age, found himself
one day at his desk in a confused condition; he remembered having
ordered his dinner, but everything else was a blank. He returned
to his dining-place and was told, in answer to his questions, that
he had both eaten his dinner and paid for it. A young woman
who was married to a man she loved passionately was seized during
confinement with prolonged syncope, at the end of which she lost
all recollection of events occurring since her marriage, inclusive of
the ceremony itself, but she remembered clearly the rest of her
life up to that point. She had, up to the publication of the fact,
never recovered her recollection of this period, but believed her
parents when they told her that she was a wife and mother of a
son, but never became convinced. There are many cases where
memory is altogether lost-total amnesia. The writers in describ-
ing these cases, compare the patient to an infant and call his
mind a tabula rasa.
Here is another suggestive case: A young American woman
who had a copious stock of ideas fell one day into a profound sleep,
and on waking was discovered to have lost every trace of acquired
knowledge. It was found necessary to teach her everything over
again. With considerable proficiency she soon became once more
acquainted with persons and objects, like a child for the first time
introduced into the world. Then another fit of somnolency came
over her, and on being aroused from that, it was found that she
was restored to the state in which she was before the first
paroxysm, but now wholly ignorant of every event and occurrence
that afterward had happened to hcr. In the one state she
possessed fine powers of penmanship, while in the other she wrote
a poor, awkward hand, having not had time to become an expert.
These states alternated for four years. Ribot calls this mis-
The Hereafter.
153
takenly, as I should say, a "double consciousness;" evidently it
should rather be called a "double memory."
Simple drunkenness is sometimes marked by loss of one memory
and the return of another particular memory, of which there is an
instance, well-known to the medical profession, of an Irish porter
who, having lost a package while drunk, got drunk again and then
remembered where he had left it.
I think these cases tend to show the point that I wish to
establish, that memory is no part of our inmost being; that it is,
contrary to the received opinion, an accretion on our "self."
These different patients had precisely not, as Ribot say, a "double
consciousness ; " on the contrary, they remained the same old
"selves" they were before, the same "I's," egos, retained their
identity, in other words. The change was, simply, a new, another
memory.
It is really the same thing we experience ourselves, everyone of
us, in the course of our lives, though not in this startling manner.
The memory of our past life, first of our childhood, and then of
our youth, and so on progressively, is forever vanishing, so that the
greater part of our life is, with us all, a great blank. The old
memory is constantly disappearing and a new one constantly
forming.
Yet, we know that throughout this change of Memory we are
the same "I," we retain our identity from childhood to old age.
Suppose, instead of a progressive change of memory, a sponge were
applied to the memory and its contents entirely wiped out-that
is what is, as a matter of fact, done in the above recorded cases.
What is the effect? That we forget all we have learned, our whole
previous experience is a blank; we forget our acquaintances, but
that, by no means, involves the destruction of our identity. We
remain the same ego, and are conscious of ourselves, as such; our
"self" remains, with all its faculties. Indeed, most of us ex-
perience this condition once in every twenty-four hours. Make
the experience for yourself. On waking in the morning, you most
likely will for some moments, of longer and shorter duration, not
be able to recollect where you are or whether your position is one of
happiness or misery, but you know perfectly well you are yourself.
154
Our Destiny.
Now what has this to do with-not, please observe, with a future
life, but with-our ideas about a future life?
47. There are two ways in which I firmly believe American
Socialism will radically modify our views about the Hereafter :
one, which presents no difficulty, and is to my mind certain and
of far-reaching, practical importance, will be treated of in the
forty-ninth section; but the other I approach frankly, with trepi-
dation though I am, fortunately, fortified by the support of recog-
nised philosophers. It will be discussed in this section in its
negative aspect, and in the following from its positive side.
When we now think of another life, whether believers or un-
believers, we always think of it as a continuation, or second volume,
so to say, of this. We suppose that we pass over into that other
life precisely as we leave this. If we pass away as a beggar, we
enter the other life with the memory of a beggar; if as an emperor,
with the memory of an emperor. Mallock has expressed this by
saying that our hope of immortality consists in expecting to finish
the picture we have commenced in this. Now, I say, that con-
trariwise Socialism will dispose us to believe that we shall enter
upon the other life with our personality alone.
It will here be requisite to explain the distinction I make
between individuality and personality, and to recall that I, in
Chapter III., stated that we here would need the datum of our
"private" and "social self." The distinction, I know, will be
one unusual in English and opposed to the etymology of one of the
words, but that will hardly be an objection, if I make a proper
definition, the more so as I have the authority of French philo-
sophers in favour of my usage of the word.
Personality" is derived from persona; this Latin word meant
"mask "1
or the "character" personated by the actor (as for
instance when Cicero says: "Ego sustineo tres personas"—I am
sustaining three characters). I shall use Individuality in this
sense and Personality in precisely the opposite sense. By
individuality, then, I mean all the qualities that distinguish me
from other men, corresponding to my personal, private "self"—
1From per-sonare, sound through, ¿.e. the voice.
The Hereafter.
155
we may call it Self-ness, this it is which enables me to perform my
special functions and be useful in my sphere. Personality, on the
other hand, is my innermost being, my "social self," what I have
in common with other men-this we may call Self-hood, and this
it is which entitles me to the divine regard. This is also the dis-
tinction which Paul Janet makes in his work La Morale:¹
"Individuality is composed of all the exterior circumstances that
distinguish one man from another. The individual has such a
body, such a face, is of such an age, lives in a given country at a
given period; he has had such and such functions, and has per-
formed such and such actions. But Personality strikes its roots
into Individuality, yet constantly tends to disengage them. I am
a person, not as I am capable of sensation, but in so far as I think,
love and will."
At present we cannot so much as conceive of a future life with-
out carrying our peculiarities, our differences over into it. That is,
then, the point upon which this whole argument turns: that those
who now believe in immortality imagine it to correspond to this
life in all particulars, with all its pretensions, as your own features
answer to the face in your mirror, and what is still more important,
the multitudes who do not believe in it do so precisely for the
reason that they have the same ideas of immortality, and such
future life seems irrational to them, preposterous, in fact; their
common-sense forbids them to believe it.
In the last half of their conclusion they are undoubtedly right;
such a future life is irrational, and then there is the further
difficulty that memory seems to be reared on the bodily basis, and
that therefore it seems that it will be dissolved with the dissolu-
tion of the body. But no one but the choicest spirits can so much
as conceive of immortality without memory. Here it is Socialism
will transform men's understanding: it will make them not merely
see, but heartily admit, that what is vouched for, preserved by,
memory is husks, not worth immortality. It seems to me inevit-
able that Socialism will, in the course of a not very long period,
have that effect; that the consequence from it will be deep and
1 Translated into English under the supervision of Noah Porter of Yale
College.
156
Our Destiny.
far-reaching; that it will be a religious achievement only second
in importance to the conviction of God's presence, but both equally
sure of being foretold.
The late Hon. George F. Talbot wrote an essay on Immortality,
published in The New Ideal, January, 1890. The following ex-
tracts give the leading idea in it :
"I am told, and men generally believe, that, after death,
the essence of every man-all of him that is not material
and earthly-lives on with the same faculties of mind and the
same traits of character he had possessed as a mortal. I do not
believe this. I do not deny that my animal mstinct shrinks from
the loss of personal identity with genuine apprehension. I some-
times surmise that God, who knows better than I what is best,
will disregard that brute cry of the animal instinct, and work out
his better purpose. Why should the alternative of personal im-
mortality be blank nothingness and death? I believe in the im-
mortality of the soul rather than in the immortality of souls. The
permanent is the infinite, and whatever is finite, whatever exists
in the condition of individuality, is necessarily transient."
Re-
The last sentence is very true: "Whatever exists in the con-
dition of individuality is necessarily transient ;" that is precisely
what I have just affirmed. But Talbot thought that this neces-
sarily destroyed identity, simply because he did not make any
distinction between "individuality" and "personality."
member that Memory is not at all necessary to our identity; all,
then, that is necessary to reconcile us to a future life without it
and even heartily prefer it, is precisely what Socialism will give
us: Disdain and unconcern for what memory preserves, to wit:
our self-ness, in contradistinction to our self-hood-the mass of
our experiences, personal peculiarities, which now are so dear to
us, but which might have been very different, indeed, and yet
our "I" have remained the same.
They will further come to acknowledge that a future life where
we remembered our earthly experiences and sufferings, remembered
that we had been beggars and princes here would be simply in-
tolerable. It would be carrying Pharisaism to extremes that
would be harrowing to the worst of Pharisees;—as Mme. de Stael
The Hereafter.
157
is said to have asked a German Prince: "Would you want to be
born a prince in the next life?" What terrible old bores and
fogies we all should be, especially those of us who have been
heroes and geniuses here! How would Browning get along with
Fitzgerald in whose face he was ready to spit? Is an earthly
king there to regret his life here, or have his old courtiers and
subjects about him? Mahomet would then be the most conceited
fellow imaginable! No wonder that such an inane idea disgusts
thoughtful people, and makes them reject belief in immortality.
And our great religious founders never contemplated a future
life as merely a sort of second volume of our earthly history.
Christianity itself-does it not teach that with this weight of clay
our painful and weary earthly consciousness shall drop off, that
we shall forget our past and sad experiences? It seems to me,
further, that the modern tendency to Buddhism is significant as
predisposing us to this change of views.
48. In its positive form, then, the theory is that a socialist
régime will dispose men to look on immortality as immortality of
the highest in u; this will make another intimate connection be-
tween morality and religion, and let us see how imperfect the
former is without the latter. Let us recall that Morality is self-
realisation: realisation of the true, the real self, which we saw in
the fourth chapter was the social self-self as a member of society,
of Humanity, in contradistinction to the private self. Now, the
mischief of the present Social Order is, that this private self is,
even with "moral" men, virtually the exclusive self, because we
are made, COMPELLED, by the prevailing system to look out for our
private interests first of all, but Socialism will so repress this
private self that men will refuse any longer to identify themselves
with it; they will so live in the lives of others, will find humanity
so involved in their own very essence that their social self will be
all in all to them; they will acknowledge this alone, this divine
part of them, as their real personality, and concerned only about
that. Immortality will to them mean continuity of their social
self exclusively; they simply will not care for any other immortality
-thus religion becomes truly the fruit of morals.
158
Our Destiny.
Now mark, that this social self is what is affirmed by Self-Con-
sciousness, while Memory avouches our private self. Socialism
will, of course, not dogmatise at all about the matter; it will say
nothing about whether a memory of our earthly experience will or
will not follow us into the future life. But since, undoubtedly,
the persistence of memory creates insuperable difficulties to a be-
lief in immortality, a socialist régime will vastly strengthen the
belief by inclining men, not simply to dispense with memory, but
to heartily embrace the theory of its absence.
Let us consider how this belief may be conceived, formulated
practically. Mankind will then believe that humanity, past, pre-
sent and future, is one vast organic whole, of which not a single
constituent element, a single "social self," ego, could disappear
without bringing the cosmos into confusion; they will believe that
somewhere (why not, as a matter of speculation, on another planet,
as Plato supposed?) the advance guard of humanity, having pre-
pared the way for us here on earth, are at work once more and
pursuing its and our destiny; that death is a sponge, wiping out
memory but not our identity, and that after it we shall find our-
selves awakening into conscious being by another birth, as indeed
we are now awakening every morning, with humanity all around
us there as here, but all on a higher plane than in this earth life
which witnessed our issue from animality, and nearer to God; they
will believe that they shall not there personally recognise their
beloved ones on earth, but this will be to them, unlike what it is
to men now, a matter of comparative indifference, since they will
know that these friends and dear ones are there around them
somewhere; they will finally believe that they there will be per-
fectly self-conscious, possess their complete self-hood, with all their
attainments acquired here (the Karma of Buddhists) but purified.
It must be repeated that memory is not necessary to the unique
feeling of Self-consciousness. It is equally indescribable, equally
beyond analysis or explanation why in this life I know I am
myself—in the morning before memory returns.
Now, considering this suggestion in the earnest, unprejudiced
religious spirit proper to it—while it may in our time look strange
as it certainly is novel-I cannot get over the conviction that,
The Hereafter.
159
granting my premises, granting that a socialist régime is surely
what is coming, if it really will have the consequences, set forth
in detail in the previous pages, if it really will develop morality as
supposed, I am not logical and correct in my argument, that it
will develop such a belief in God and Immortality. To me the
argument appears without a flaw, and, as it seems, ought to persuade
all religious minds to further Socialism with all the strength
and influence they possess.
I am perfectly well aware that I have in this and the preceding
section been treading on delicate ground, but fortunately I found
out some time ago that I was mistaken in the notion I for years
had that the thoughts here set forth were original with myself.
Fortunately they are not. No man of intellect, however practical
his nature, can help indulging in dreams on that subject, and
acknowledged philosophers have come to definite conclusions.
identical with my own. Of these I shall here refer only to the
Frenchman from whom I have already quoted-Paul Janet and
his La Morale.
We remember how he stated the distinction between individu-
ality and personality; but he goes further: "Does this individual
want to be immortal? But how will you recognise Cæsar without
his body, his aspect and his vices? No, what is immortal is not
such fragile or illusory accidentals, which one in his vanity might
wish to carry over. Personality is the consciousness of the imper-
sonal (his italics). I am a person, not as I am capable of sensation,
of physical pleasure and pain, but in so far as I think, love and
will. This consciousness which every man has of the divine within
him, is immortal, it is personality; and Eternal Life is the con-
summation (not annihilation) of personality. .
Even in this
life experience tells us that the life of personality does not involve
loss of consciousness. The savant forgets himself in the great
truth he has discovered; he knows no longer when or where he
exists, but he has consciousness of this. The artist loses himself
in the masterpieces he has created, but he enjoys all this. The
lover loses himself in the beloved, but he is conscious of his
absorption."
Ah, it is difficult to describe the gratification, the joy that over-
160
Our Destiny.
came me in this discovery that another mind concurred with my
own in the same definite thought!
Professor Graham presents the same thought, not however as a
definite conclusion, but simply as an hypothesis worthy of atten
tion. He speaks in his Creed of Science to objectors, as follows:
"But it would not be really you, Common Sense exclaims, without
memory to make the link of connection between your supposed
'self' and your present 'self.' No matter, we say, that other self
will be just as good as me, if the same feeling of self-consciousness
gathers around it then and there, as here and now. . . Memory
is necessary to connect my present with my past consciousness,
but is not necessary, in order to have the peculiar feeling of self-
consciousness, unshared by any other being, which is the essence
of the part of 'self.""
Is there, then, any originality in my presentation of this idea?
I should say that there is. Others treat it as a possible, at most,
a probable solution, but all must admit that it is entirely unsuitable
and obnoxious to minds living under an individualistic order of
things. But I treat it as a solution that will naturally, almost
inevitably, evolve out of the social order and the moral specula-
tions incident to a socialist régime, as a solution that will be
congenial, perhaps alone congenial to minds disciplined by, say,
fifty years of Socialism. It seems to me that such a belief will
fitly crown the most spiritual form of Christianity.
Comte's Humanity, a vision in a sea of nothingness, and each
individual existence bounded by the cradle and grave—what an
emptiness of life? How chilling? What bubbles we then are,
continually bursting! How bright, in comparison, the conception
of our personality, meandering like an underground river through
the hidden world of God's creation, and enabling us, at each
stage, to partake of Humanity's victories.
True, here we touch the primal source of the desire for
immortality, as well as the real sting of death: the eternal fare-
well. I am well aware of it. This is the eternal cry of the
human heart. Love and affection are the most divine things
evolved, and hence another stage for love is demanded. True,
but I insist, that here there is a confusion of two distinct ideas,
The Hereafter.
161
which I know will remain confused as long as Individualism lasts,
except to those who already possess socialist hearts. But I also
know-and by a conviction gained by a great personal bereave-
ment-that when Socialism has once changed all human hearts,
as it will, men will distinguish between capacity for love, which
will go on increasing, and this craving for meeting with the
persons of the beloved ones, which they will come to acknowledge
to be a passing weakness of the flesh, as even in this life the love
for lost ones in the course of time is forgotten; and then we must
not forget that, under Socialism, Universal Love will be vastly
intensified, to a great extent amalgamating with private affections,
whose principal office indeed it is to lead up to it.
49. Now, however, we enter from twilight into bright, clear
light. One Destiny awaits us all. That we are unitedly entering
upon our unknown destinies will surely be admitted by all having
socialist hearts. As it is the glory of Christianity to have estab
lished the brotherhood of man by our descent from one pair, so it
will be the glory of Socialism-its second great achievement on
the problem of the Hereafter-to have clinched the organic unity
of men by insuring us a common destiny. It is rather curious to
note, that our so-called "Determinists" deny Free-will in order to
get rid of religion altogether; Free-will advocates insist on it, in
order to send the majority of men to hell; posterity, on the other
hand, will admit both Necessity and Free-will with the result of
insuring all men the same future.
+
It is often said that it would be impossible to found a new
religion, because it would be futile to imagine a higher morality
than our churches teach. It is seen by all that the loftiest
Morality will necessarily be victorious. Well, none will surely
deny, that a common redemption is the very highest and noblest
morality.
Protestantism was, of course, a needful religious movement, but
surely it has proved no unmixed good. During the Middle Ages
each in due proportion participated in the divine blessing upon
earth and looked forward to an identical glory, while everyone
could, by using the same formula, ready at hand, obtain the great
L
162
Our Destiny.
prize. But the Calvinism of Baxter and Edwards committed, un-
wittingly of course, an awful crime both against God and man, by
dividing mankind from all eternity into two hostile camps, each
going their separate ways. What a terrible selfish, anti-social
doctrine, the mother of our Individualism and Pharisaism, and of
the sneaking private designs on God's bounty, in the shape of
personal salvation for oneself, no matter what becomes of the
race or even of wife or husband!
It really strikes me as another sign of divine Providence that
Protestanism has been divided into innumerable sects, for conceive,
if you can, the depth into which Pharisaism would have sunk if
one sect had had sole monopoly of religion in Protestant countries
as Catholicism has had in its domain. It is one of the signs of
the times that the doctrine of hell is being silently dropped by
all;
that we more and more do our duty, not from religious fears,
but from what is due to men as our fellow-men. This, at all
events, is one good result of our scepticism. The doctrine of hell,
when in vigour, was the greatest obstacle to brotherhood and
fellowship among men. What a miserable idea of the future life
it was which the poor and lowly had in former times! that it was
a state where the conditions here were reversed: there they would
be on top and the rich beneath! We see now, that the thought of
even one man in hell would fill heaven with misery and be enough
to destroy all rational ideas of immortality.
Here, I know, we meet with the stumbling-block, that many,
perhaps the majority of men, actually grudge scoundrels and
criminals—such a fellow, for instance, as the Boston brother-
murderer-the privilege, even after an immensity of sufferings, to
share their own destiny. Selfishness, indeed, seems so ingrained
in our countrymen, that they actually have no word, positively
expressing "not to grudge " a word, corresponding to the German
zu gönnen.” That is very significant, it seems to me. It is in
this respect that we ought to feel humbly grateful to Victor Hugo
for presenting us a brave, humane object-lesson in his galley-slave
Valjean. This man is surely as dangerous a criminal as ever was.
What healthy, moral man would not like to strangle him after he
has robbed the poor Savoyard boy? But when we met him
८९
The Hereafter.
163
again as Maire Madeleine, what sympathetic man is not ready to
bless Hugo for showing us what nobility may be hidden inside a
hideously repulsive shell ?
Ah, I am sure Hugo had a far deeper insight into the divine
character than the orthodox Christians who denied him fellow-
ship. He knew that God is Love, Love of the intensest and most
comprehensive kind; in that respect he is much superior to
Browning, who did not doubt God's omnipotence, but did doubt
His love. Why, Love must be God's very nature, and an absolute
need that makes Him descend to our ugliest weaknesses, and which
will make Him not rest till the lowest man is raised to the level
of the good. It is to this loftiest conception of God we must come
in time; and Socialism will enable us to attain to it.
But talk now to one of our pious men of what he conceives to
be the highest themes, and you will learn to your astonishment
that in his opinion God takes no interest in universal questions,
in those economical, political, and social questions which interest.
all good and wise men in proportion to their goodness and wisdom,
but only in some trifling private question about the "salvation"
of this, that, or the other individual soul. Yet what can more
revolt a mind who conceives of God as a being of infinite love than
the thought of enjoying a blessing at His hands which all other
men cannot equally share? But nearly all our religious fellow-
men are, as has been well said, "self-complacent Pharisees to
whom nothing comes acceptably which does not come of merit.
We hold that we are properly separated before God into virtuous
and vicious beings. Our religious habits have so little spiritual
innocence, and so inflamed us with mercenary intentions towards
God, that we are filled with every sneaking, private, personal
design upon His bounty." It is so with both Protestants and
Catholics. As to the former, I need only refer to Bunyan's hero,
Christian, who has been a model to all Evangelicals, and who yet
leaves his wife and family behind in the City of Destruction. As
to the latter, think simply of Cardinal Newman's famous “Myself
and God" as the only beings he was concerned about!—aye, re-
flect simply on the first question and answer of the Roman Catholic
Catechism: "Why did God make you? To know Him, to love
164
Our Destiny.
Him, and to serve Him in this world and to be happy with Him
in the next;" which answer I pronounce a wicked, immoral teach-
ing, for the simple reason that it is a half-truth-omitting the
other half, love of our neighbour-precisely analogous to the way
the devil is said to read the ten commandments: by covering
each "not" with his finger.
Ideas of God and Immortality are the crown of Morals, but the
latter would subsist to all eternity, though all religions were swept
into oblivion. Spencer's task is, therefore, lost labour: there is
no need of "a new regulative system to replace supernatural
systems." That, however, does not prevent religion from having
a vast reflex-influence on morals; it links the latter with the
Eternal in whose Divine repose, as Plato taught, it is contained.
It is surprising to see able men putting these problems aside with
a smile as being unimportant, as mere metaphysical puzzles of an
insoluble kind which we may cease to think about without pro-
ducing any particular effect on Morality. Yet, the truth is, that
Morality depends on what men are, whether Humanity is precious
or contemptible; depends on whether this life is a stage in some-
thing larger and wider or not.
What unity and vigour, how distinct and original a tone will
the conviction of God's vital presence in Humanity give to life!
To be, each of us, an integral part of the body of the living God,
what a race-consciousness that will produce!
And that other conviction, that we are all mysteriously per-
manent beings destined for the same holiness, what pettiness it
will confer on our private self, and what a sacredness on our
higher nature, and on all human beings!
Would it be pos-
sible in a country with such a belief that a Sidgwick could, in
regard to the proposition to set apart certain unfortunate women
from society, write these infamous words once before quoted in
this essay: "This view has perhaps a superficial plausibility, for
continence involves a considerable loss of pleasure.”
Men must have some theory to give colour and vigour to their
actions. The prevailing tolerance-really indifference-now a
necessary evil, will soon become intolerable. Socialism makes
this world a real one, but preparatory to another; makes selfish-
The Hereafter.
165
ness satanic, Individualism a delusion, and will teach us that while
unlikeness is a necessary condition for individuality, i.e., for being
useful in this world, it is our common humanity, as said, that
entitles us to the Divine regard.
I have finished this study in ethics. An inward force has seemed
to urge me on and leave me no peace till I had finished it, down
even in the abyss, shut out from those sympathies and friendships
I so much prize, but with the conviction that I really had a
message to deliver.
The explanation is very simple: Socialism,
with whose spirit I surely have familiarised myself, if any one
has, is the bearer to us of a revelation of God's will and of Man's
Destiny. Hence I can declare to those who, in toying with these
pages, perhaps may glance at these closing lines, that this essay,
in spite of its uncouth form, does contain solemn truths and im-
portant lessons, both timely and novel, and which will soon have
to be learned by us all.
Six years
To estimate these truths let me make a comparison.
ago I published The Co-operative Comwonwealth. I cannot com-
plain of its success in this country and England; later pheno-
mena certainly prove that it has scattered many germs, and that
not a few have taken root. But my point is, that its ideas, like
those of the books of Henry George and Edward Bellamy, moved
mainly in the plane of material interests. I more and more have
become convinced that Karl Marx's doctrine, that the bread-and-
butter question is the motive force of progress, is not tenable,
but that we must grasp the very highest moral and religious
truths.
In a nutshell they are these: Our churches teach, as Browning
teaches, that each individual person is, in himself, all-in-all, and
that his eternal progress can be accomplished by himself. This is
false; it is false! But equally false is the Positivist position that
the race, by itself, is the precious element, and that it is our in-
dividual duty to work for posterity, a thousand years hence, though
to us personally it can mean nothing at all. Socialism reveals
God's truth: that the individual person in the race is what is im-
portant; that each person is an eternal, integral part of Humanity,
that the fibres of each "self" are, and will eternally remain, inter
166
Our Destiny.
twined with those of posterity and of our ancestors. From this fol
lows this other truth, that our present great evil is not our abnor
mal wealth and abnormal poverty, so much as that men are used
as means to others' private ends. And the conclusion is, that the
Brotherhood of Man is the supreme interest of each one of us; that
it is Morality, it is our Destiny, and also the prescribed road to
our Destiny. This is the only conclusion that can accomplish the
tremendous feat of making the whole Humanity, with all its
scoundrels and innumerable disagreeable people, dear to each of
us-a duty which God imperatively lays upon us. But it is a
tremendous feat: those who overflow with love for mankind gener-
ally know so little of it, and are so inefficient.
Socialism, I am confident, will be found the key to the riddle
of life-the riddle of the Sphinx.
50. And now the most solemn moment has arrived for me.
When I reflect that what remains to be said may prove the spark
that, applied to the will of some of my readers, may turn them
into the Leaders of Men whom we so much need, I almost tremble
from the excitement that masters me. How blessed life then
would be! For everything else is ready-only leaders are
wanting.
What sort of a man is needed for that purpose? First, you
must believe that you have a life work to do, beside the labour
by which you gain your living, and that it is by far the most im-
portant, and resolve to devote all the leisure you can get to it.
The man who says, "Oh, it is very important indeed, but I have
but little time for it," is not wanted at all. Phillips Brooks said
lately, very truly and very eloquently, to the Harvard seniors:
"Now the one great thing we need is to believe that in character
and service lies the true life of a human creature. We do not
thoroughly believe that. We think of the struggle to be perfect,
and the effort to serve humanity as suburbs of human life, great
districts into which excursions are to be made, heavens into which
ecstatic flights are to be soared, not as the very city and citadel
of humanity, to live outside of which is not to be a man.”
Next, you must consider this life-work not a mere hobby, but
The Hereafter.
167
look upon yourself as God's co-worker. The more I reflect, the
more I become convinced that the leaders must come out from
among our profoundly religious minds. Only they can get up the
needed enthusiasm and the coming generation will perhaps rival
that of the crusades in enthusiasm—and bring about the Great
Change in love, and not in hate. You must feel within yourself
that God needs you, that He cannot do without you. Robert
Browning is wrong in claiming that we are here "for the purpose
of probation;" we are here to execute God's will. This is to come
back to that dangerous practical heresy I referred to in the
preceding chapter of that poetic volume, God in His World, that
men are mere spectators of God's activity. It is not so !-this
cannot be repeated too often. Such a sentence as "least of all do
we attempt the solution of any problem," shows that the author is
a "quietist," however much he repudiates it. God, indeed, plans
our future, but He always reveals His plan in time to those who
are to execute it. He does not directly act on the affairs of the
world. We must act out our own destiny, or nothing will be done—
that is the meaning of being God's co-workers, and of Free-will.
Oh, if it were written in letters of fire on every heart: We carry
out God's thoughts!
Lastly, God clearly has put a stamp on his co-workers. I mean
to say there are two temperaments among us those of an
individualistic, and those of a socialistic temperament-the latter
constantly growing in numbers, and they are the ones that are
now needed. You must be of the latter group. Even such a
splendid intellect and warm heart as Henry George is sterile soil,
because he is an individualist from the crown of his head to the
sole of his foot.
In order to succeed, these three things are absolutely required:
stalwart, right Convictions, Energy and Organisation. Right
Convictions are the sine qua non, and our philanthropic people do
not have them at all. How many splendid men and women there
are in our large cities who war against the devil, ignorance, vice,
intemperance and crime. They go daily among the poor, instruct
them and relieve misery wherever they can. If these should
sometimes be discouraged, it would be no wonder, since theirs is
168
Our Destiny.
truly a Sisyphus labour: for every miserable case relieved, a fresh
victim or two are thrown into the social abyss. No, there is a
better way to go to work. God Himself points the way by every
sign at His disposal. Ah, if a few of these persons in every large
city would perceive the pointed finger! Here in Boston a few
noble clergymen of different denominations have come together
and are preaching by speech and writing. If but our warm-
hearted people would hear their voices! If they would bring some
of their friends together, energetic, intelligent persons, and com-
mence to study these great social problems, and then come to the
correct conclusion, that is, that Socialism is the coming radical
Divine Social Order. The advice of the Christian Union: "Chris-
tian ministers should study Socialism, not in order to identify
themselves with it in name, but to sit in judgment upon it," is not
fit for earnest minds who want to do God's will, as little as the
practice of that other minister who invites young men to come
weekly to his house for discussion, but "makes no attempt to
foist any theory upon the young men, nor argues specially for any
economic scheme." They should improve even on the Christian
Socialists who want to draw people, in the first place, into the
Church, and work for Socialism only secondarily. Socialism-and
the greatest service "Nationalism" has done is that it has made our
people indulgent to that word--Socialism should be their first and
exclusive object.
Again, I want these men to say loudly and determinedly: "We
want Socialism inaugurated in our life-time, surely." There is not
a town, I am confident, in any of our Northern states, where not
three young men can be found of the right stamp. Let them seek
out each other, form a brotherhood-it is with such a grand aim
in common that friends are made—and grasp the hands of similar
brotherhoods in surrounding towns, and within a year we may
have a great American Brotherhood, resolved that the United
States shall in twenty-one years be a Socialist Commonwealth.
It is only Energy that is needed I am confident that there are
now enough young men in the land of the right kind to effect the
desired change. A new wave of thought--and that socialist
thought-is evidently approaching, as the philosophy of Spencer
The Hereafter.
169
and his class that rose with such startling rapidity to ascendancy
is evidently declining.
The last requisite is Organisation.
One warning is absolutely needful for these men and their asso-
ciates, that is: beware of becoming all officers and having no pri-
vates. An army of mere generals is worthless. These men I speak
of and their friends should in time become the natural leaders, but
of whom? Ah, the privates are ready at hand: that is one of the
great signs of the times.
We have already seen that our wage-earners, our labour-organisa-
tions, have for years been filled with the true socialist spirit;
without recognising God's finger, they nevertheless have seen His
sign before all others. They have several times attempted to
form political parties, tried to influence legislation, but without
success, simply for want of competent leaders. Once they thought
they had such a leader in Henry George; we all know how
splendidly they seconded him; but they soon discovered that he
did not really sympathise with them. I repeat: what they need
is leaders, not decidedly not a programme or principles. These
they have already, nobody is competent to elaborate a better
programme for them.
The great danger of the associations which I should delight
to see formed, is that they keep aloof from the working-men;
that they simply gather together men of their own class and be-
come a clique of unpractical doctrinaires—a mutual admiration
society. They must sympathise with the wage-earners, that
means, sympathise with the aims and aspirations of the working-
classes, but beware to patronise them; the moment the wage-
workers repudiate them, they had better dissolve. They must
learn that our whole civilisation has been a struggle about the
condition of the producers. This is then the practical policy for
them to pursue with untiring zeal and on all occasions to be a
mouthpiece for the wage-workers in the cities and of the farmers
in the country, and to organise the sympathy which already exists
for them in the other classes. We have seen just as these pages
are being finished, a sad—as it seems to me--and glaring evidence
of the need of precisely such an organisation. As is well-known,
170
Our Destiny.
the Federation of Labour had resolved on last May 1st to force, by
strikes, a normal working day of eight hours. All clear-seeing re-
formers know this is the necessary first step, and every one else—
even our politicians-knows and admits that the measure is just
and must soon obtain. Now, instead of calling out the whole
body of Organised Labour in all the cities, the opportunity was
frittered away by limiting the movement to the carpenters, as a
feeler. Perhaps it was the best to be done-under the circum-
stances, but these circumstances should no longer have existed.
A brotherhood such as I plead for, giving them energetic, moral
support, would have made the eight-hour day a fact to-day.
There are very many socialistic measures ripe and waiting now
for such a brotherhood: nationalisation of the telegraph system with
a true civil service for it; municipal control of the innumerable
public conveniences and, necessities; advances by government to
our farmers, and more than anything else, the thorough education
of our children—which, however, the more it is improved, will
show the more, that education is absolutely futile without a social-
istic order of things. Ah, such a brotherhood will be divine.
What friendships it will give rise to! What influence for good it
will possess ! What love for good and noble manhood it will
breed!
THE END.
Cowan & Co., Limited, Printers, Perth.
SOCIAL SCIENCE SERIES.
Uniform in Scarlet Cloth.
Each 2s. 6d.
1. WORK AND WAGES.
Prof. J. E. THOROLD ROGERS.
"Nothing that Professor Rogers writes can fail to be of interest to
thoughtful people."—Athenæum.
2. CIVILIZATION: Its Cause and Cure,
EDWARD CARPENTER.
"No passing piece of polemics, but a permanent possession."-Scottish
Review.
3. QUINTESSENCE OF SOCIALISM.
DR. SCHÄFFLE.
"Precisely the manual needed. Brief, lucid, fair, and wise.”—British
Weekly.
4. DARWINISM AND POLITICS.
D. G. RITCHIE, M.A. (Oxon.)
With an appendix, showing its application to (1) The Labour Question;
(2) The Position of Women; (3) The Population Question.
"One of the most suggestive books we have met with."—Literary World.
5. RELIGION OF SOCIALISM.
6. ETHICS OF SOCIALISM.
E. BELFORT BAX.
E. BELFORT BAX.
"Mr. Bax is by far the ablest of the English exponents of Socialism.”
- Westminster Review.
7. THE DRINK QUESTION.
Dr. KATE MITCHELL,
'Plenty of interesting matter for reflection."-Graphic.
8. PROMOTION OF GENERAL HAPPINESS. Prof. M. MACMILLAN.
“A reasoned account of the most advanced and most enlightened utili-
tarian doctrine in a clear and readable form."-Scotsman.
9. ENGLAND'S IDEAL, etc.
EDWARD CARPENTER
"The literary power is unmistakable, their freshness of style, their
humour, and their enthusiasm."-Pall Mall.
a
SOCIAL SCIENCE SERIES-Continued.
10. SOCIALISM IN ENGLAND.
SIDNEY WEBB, LL.B.
"The best general view of the subject from the moderate Socialist side.”
-Athenæum.
II. PRINCE BISMARCK AND STATE SOCIALISM. W. H. DAWSON.
"A succinct, well-digested review of German social and economic legisla-
tion since 1870.”—Saturday Review.
12. GODWIN'S POLITICAL JUSTICE (On Property).
EDITED BY H. S. SALT.
"Shows Godwin at his best; with an interesting and informing Intro-
duction."-Glasgow Herald.
13. STORY OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. E. BELFORT Bax.
"A trustworthy outline."-Scotsman.
14. THE CO-OPERATIVE COMMONWEALTH.
LAURENCE GRONLUND.
15. ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES. BERNAard Bosanquet, M.A. (Oxon).
Ought to be in the hands of every student of the Nineteenth Century
spirit."-Echo.
"No one can complain of not being able to understand what Mr. Bos-
anquet means."-Pall Mall Gazette.
16. CHARITY ORGANISATION.
C. S. LOCH, Sec. Char. Organ. Soc.
"A perfect little manual."—Athenæum.
"Deserves a wide circulation."-Scotsman.
17. THOREAU'S ANTI-SLAVERY & REFORM PAPERS.
EDITED BY H. S. SALT.
SWAN SONNENSCHEIN & CO., LONDON.

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
3 9015 05059 2453
DO NOT REMOVE
OR
MUTILATE CARD
ATRIA
ייי