M,'' ■-•7 v'.'.V,,''.--. :,'?; ■■.■•■'!ri.':-, ■■■•: -Vl r^i^;;- m-i^'^- FL-;S-a.W>;: ^■^-;'vS"' Southern Branch of the University of California Los Angeles Form L I 79 9 / STiH- i^«d*^. The propaganda continues to increase, but the idea it was organised to propagate takes a secondary place. More than this, the religious institution gradually finds itself in conflict with the very idea it was organised to propagate ; for the religious idea once accepted becomes so simple, so eloquent, so un- answerable, that the vast machinery which at first the dulness of humanity rendered necessary, and afterwards the rapacity of humanity found conven- ient, is finally discovered to have become a bewil- dering encumbrance. The plain rules of morality taught by Christ become encrusted with theological discussions and unessential details ; the simple de- votion of the fishermen of Galilee forgotten in the pomp of a papal court. In a similar w^ay the Republican party in the United States, organised to suppress slavery and preserve the Union, w'heu it had accomplished both, ought logically to have disappeared ; but the vast wealth and potentiality of wealth which every great organisation affords to the skilful few who control and the many who profit by it were too tempting to be abandoned. Moreover, the vast machinery of a national party, how^ever antiquated its principles, can serve an honest as well as a dishonest pur- pose — it can push a new issue, it can foil a new 12 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. error, it can serve to check the arrogance of a rival national part}^ So, what with the new questions which perjDetually harass the public mind, the tendency of the opposing party to go wrong, and the large personal interests involved, the Eepub- lican party keeps itself alive through appeals that are often insincere to so-called " party loyalty," assisted by large contributions to the protection fund. So also Christian creeds, pursuing the great work of their founder Christ, have created establishments, built churches, universities, asylums, hospitals. They have served the jDurposes of bad men and fulfilled the aspirations of saints; they have distributed in charity and licentiousness the mite of the widow and the surfeit of the millionaire ; and they have so wound themselves about the hearths and memories of our youth that outside of them there seems to be nothing sacred, and in them only can we hope to found a home on conditions of durability, happiness, and self-respect. Our minds may rebel against the baseless assumptions of Christian creeds, but our hearts will continue to lean fondly on the sentiments that cluster around the church organ and the Gothic arch. The Christian system, therefore, survives the de- cay of its creed and will long survive it, because it continues to do good, to sustain the weak and to cheer the strong ; because religion is an essential and not an accidental factor in the structure of man, and because it occupies a place which must remain CONFLICT OF SCIENCE AND RELIGION. 13 occupied, and for which we have not as yet found any substitute. And so religious institutions tend to become providential evils — evils because they perpetuate abuses under the name of religion, and providential because they perpetuate religion in spite of these abuses. For positivism and agnosticism are no substitutes for Christianity : one offends because it is too posi- tive, and the other because it is not positive enough. Neither appeals to any part of us except the reason, and no religion has ever survived that was founded on reason alone. For although we may intellectually assent to the propositions laid down by science, emo- tionally we cling to the ritual hallowed by memories of childhood, to music we have grown through long familiarity to love, and to the baptismal font and the altar step, which somehow we associate with pure women and as yet untainted youth. Whether this compromise will last long is a spec- ulation into which it is not necessary to enter ; the practical question for us is how we can best conform our conduct to it, and how far give to it the aj)parent sanction of outward observance. As a matter of fact, the true character of the compromise is revealed chiefly in the matter of ceremonial observance : women and children go to church, men stay at home ; women observe Sunday, men do not; women pray, men work. It is not easy for a man who has been over- worked during the week to devote one day of rest in seven to ceremonial forms 14 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. which mean nothing to him. Occasionally, when a child is to be baptised, confirmed, or married, a ritual that at other times has seemed sterile becomes clothed with significance, and reveals how much of the old religion clings to the ruined temple in him ; then, perhaps, he thanks God that he has never alto- gether abandoned the shelter of the church. But a tired body and a rebellious mind will in the end re- gain their sway, half-formed resolutions to resume religious observances will be forgotten, and Sunday will become once again a day of well-earned rest and relaxation. In very truth it cannot well be other- wise. The church service is not in itself a sufficient reason to compel an attendance which, in the absence of special stimulus, becomes unprofitable and intol- erably burdensome ; and so educated men, all the more potentially useful to the community because they are educated, doing their duty in their respect- ive callings, are kept out of touch with that most puissant of all the forces that have ever moved man — religion. This seems all the more intolerable and unneces- sary, because, as has been already pointed out, the gradual extension of sympathy or love which science shows to have accompanied the physical evolution of man in the past, and to give the best promise of physical evolution in the future, is no other thing than the doctrine of discipline and forbearance which every religion that deserves the name has I taught since the world began. Is it conceivable that no neutral territory can be found upon which CONFLICT OF SCIENCE AND RELIGION. 15 men of science and men of religion can join hands? The fact is, that if every self-styled scientific man were truly scientific, and every self-styled re- ligious man were truly religious, there would never have been any conflict between science and religion. The conflict is not, and never has been, between science and religion, but between science-loving men who disparage the Gospel and Gospel-loving men who disparage science ; combativeness falsely inter- preting the Gospel on both sides is the real culprit. Science appeals to the mind ; religion appeals to the heart. Some men have much head and little heart ; let them, if they will, be votaries of science. But most men have more heart than head ; ofi'er them science, and to the hungry you are giving a stone. Logic indicates, and experience has proved, that with these men religion is a mighty power — for evil if in the service of evil, for good if in the service of good. Well-balanced men have both head and heart ; such as these need religion no less' than science ; and science itself teaches that perfect development lies along the line of emotional as well as intellectual progress. But not only do science and religion appeal to difl!erent types of men, and to the same types in different proportions, but they deal with different subjects, or if they deal Avith the same subjects, (io so in a different way. Two exam- ples will serve to illustrate this contention. The conflict of capital and labour is one of the 16 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. most dangerous conflicts which are at present divid- ing US. What advice has religion to offer? what solution, what rule of conduct? Bead, if you will, the encyclical of the Pope on this subject, or the exhortation from Protestant pulpits. Condensed, they are all reducible to this : " Capitalists, be more generous ; labourers, be less exacting." And yet the labourer can hardly be characterised as exacting who asks for no more than certainty of work, star- vation wages while at work, and support when superannuated ; nor can the capitalist be character- ised as ungenerous who can truthfully answer that competition prevents his guaranteeing any of these three. While, however, religion has little useful to sug- gest as a remedy for this tremendous evil, economic science, collecting the results of experiment in Eng- land and France, offers an undoubted though per- haps incomplete solution : In England, co-operation has successfully re- placed competition in the distribution of necessaries, but has failed successfully to replace competition in production ; in other words, the co-operative stores where things are sold on the co-operative plan, as at Eochdale and the Army and Navy and Civil Service Stores, have proved prosperous and advan- tageous, although efforts to introduce the system of profit sharing in manufactories, under which the labourer becomes practically a partner in respect of profits, have failed. Had we, then, only the experi- ence of England to go by we should have to record CONFLICT OF SCIENCE AND RELIGION. 17 a very incomplete solution. But at this point comes the experience of France, where a diamet- rically opposite state of facts presents itself. Co-op- erative stores have in France signally failed, whereas profit sharing has been attended by encouraging results, not only in the diminution of strikes but in the elevating of the workmen and in the process of suppressing the conflict between capital and labour, by making the capitalist and the labourer one. And so the science of political economy, ever engaged in collecting facts, sorting them, and deducing prin- ciples from them, is at work in England at deter- mining the rules which have made there co-opera- tion in distribution a success, and the mistakes which have made there co-operation in production a failure ; and conversely in France the same science is arriving at a set of principles by which co-opera- tion in production may be transplanted to England and acclimated there. Here, then, where religion stood powerless and baffled, economic science steps in with a solution. On the other hand, the exact opposite may seem to be true if we glance for a moment at the polit- ical condition of our great cities in the United, States. Those versed in the science of municipal legislation have vainly striven, by the application of this science to the municipal problem, to arrive at a solution ; laws have been changed over and over again in the vain quest ; every conceivable scheme of automatic government has been propounded, dis- cussed, and sometimes applied ; the ineradicable 18 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. unwillingness to recognise the real source of the trouble has j^redisposed the minds of our citizens to believe that the difficulty resides in our laws and not in ourselves, and we have therefore patiently stood by to see experiment after experiment tried, although in our own experience we ought to have found sufficient reason to be satisfied that nine tenths of these exjaeriments must end in discourag- ing failure. Xo better illustration could be given of this than the changes that have taken place in the laws of the State of Xew York on the subject of the mayor's power of appointment. Prior to 1870 the appointments to office made by the mayor were subject to confirmation by the board of aldermen. Tweed, who was then at the head of the historic " Tammany Ring," desiring to concentrate power in the hands of the mayor, and thus escape the ne- cessity of trafficking for every appointment with the board of aldermen, changed this provision of the law in the so-called Tweed charter of 1870, which provided that thenceforth the power of appointment by the mayor should not be subject to confirmatiou by the aldermen. When the Tammany Ring was overthrown in 1871 by the Committee of Seventy, this committee very naturally restored to the alder- men the power of confirmation which had been withdrawn from them by Tweed. In doing this they pursued the system of checks and balances so dear to American institutions. It so happened that for some years after 1871 Xew York elected good mayors and bad aldermen. The result of this was CONFLICT OF SCIENCE AND RELIGION. 19 that the mayor could not get good appointments confirmed by the aldermen, and had generally to capitulate to the aldermen by either withdrawing a good appointment and making a bad, or by some other concession of an equally demoralising char- acter. Moreover, it became impossible to know which of the two — the mayor or the aldermen — was responsible for the bad appointments, because a mayor could always throw the responsibility for such appointments upon the board. The reformers therefore, in 1884, led by Theodore Roosevelt, de- manded and secured the passage of an act that re- lieved the mayor from the necessity of going to the board of aldermen for a confirmation of his ap- pointments, thereby, strange to say, restoring the distribution of political power to what it had been under Tweed's dishonest rule. The result of this last law was exactly what a very little political sa- gacity might have foreseen. The evil element in the political community, which before 1884 had con- tented itself with electing bad aldermen, now de- voted itself to electing a bad mayor, and since the enacting of this so-called reform law of 1884 the mayor's chair in New York has been filled until to- day by an unbroken succession of Tammany candi- dates. The real evil lay beyond the reach of polit- ical science or legislative enactment ; it lay in the indifference and discouragement of all those citizens who were not engaged in politics for private or for partisan purposes. This indifference was a question not of political science but of private conduct ; it 20 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. coixld be reached only b}^ sncli influences as are gen- erally termed religious, because they appeal to man's ethical sense against the evil tendencies which sur- round him. This whole incident furnishes an ad- mirable illustration of the truth of Montesquieu's contention, that the welfare of a republic depends upon the virtue of its citizens. When citizens have ceased to be virtuous, or when virtuous citizens have abdicated in favour of admittedly corrupt political machines, it is hopeless to expect that the govern- ment can be made good by changing the distribu- tion of political power amongst the thieves to whom it has been abandoned. Nothing, therefore, but an awakened sense of the duties of citizenship can reach the evils of municipal misgovernment. Where shall we find the voice to awaken it? Now, although science may justify to ns the Christian rule of " enlightened altruism," it has as yet utterly failed in inducing men to make the sac- rifices necessary in order to conform to it. A few men of cultivated brain and philosophic tempera- ment do undoubtedly, with a positivist ritual or without any ritual under the agnostic flag, lead lives of righteousness and morality; but neither positivism, nor agnosticism, nor any purely intellec- tual ism has as 3^et kindled enthusiasm among the masses, or reached the masses at all ; nor is such ever likely to appeal to any but those in whom cul- ture has developed the brain at the expense of the heart — wisely, perhaps, for themselves, but not wisely CONFLICT OP SCIENCE AND RELIGION. -21 for those who, subject to their example, are still un- prepared for a purely logical code of ethics. It is desirable, in the discussion of these things, to avoid any statement that may sound like a judg- ment. It may be that pure science is the religion of developed humanity in the future ; it may be that it will not do more than play protestant to the existing Christianisms, purifying them and ridding them of all that is not " sweetly reasonable " ; it may be that religion, deriving overwhelming strength from some new prophet of God, may with a new revelation sweep all our existing isms to Gehenna. Between religion and science it is not attempted to decide ; but it is urged that each has its separate function in the world, each addresses its own peculiar people save where, thanks to a better balance between heart and brain, they are both open to both. The multitude is not intellectually developed ; it does not act by scientific rule ; it is certainly to-day in- capable of self-sacrifice in the general cause of hu- manity. The voice it understands is the voice of authority that can quell or command the heart, or the voice of tenderness that can touch and lead it. For the teaching of virtue we must still fall back upon religion — religion with its music, its ritual, its flaming imperative, its kindling enthusiasm, its note of praise and its hush of prayer. He must be a great — or a rash — man who would attempt in one lifetime to solve a problem that can probably only receive its solution in the slow devel- opment of the race. The very education that has 22' EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. made us critical makes us bad material for prophets to work with. Were a Siddhartha to rise amongst us to-day he would probably never step' forth from his harem ; Christ would never return from the wil- derness, and Mahomet would perish ingloriously in the cave of Hori. It is not through the voice of any one man that the religious question to-day can receive an even approximate solution ; but it is to be hoped that througli the slow ascendency which man can acquire over his inclinations during gen- erations of effort and conduct he will at last reach -^ a point where the ethics of science become coter- minous with the ethics of religion. That there are certain directions along which his efforts may be more fruitful in the future than in the past is likely ; perhaps also there are fields of labour which have been neglected heretofore and which may richly repay culture and effort ; perhaps, even, there are strongholds of evil which exist rather through our tolerance than thi'ough their strength, and which will be found to have been a prolific source of moral depravity, acting where we least ex- pected and injuring where we felt most secure. These are some of the practical questions which it may not be unprofitable to study, and perhaps, to some small extent at any rate, answer. The object of the preceding pages has been to show that religion and science are not destructive of one another, but, on the contrary, join hands in teaching substantially the same rules of conduct ; that each, however, has a separate and necessary role CONFLICT OF SCIENCE AND RELIGION. 23 to play ; that religion appeals to the heart, science to the mind ; that religion orders, science persuades; and that because humanity is an exceedingly com- plex thing, being composed largely of men who have hearts more open to the command of religion than tliey have minds open to the persuasion of science, reli- gion, in spite of the defects in its creeds, has to-day a mission to perform which all should respect and support ; that the scope of action which religion and science should cover probably requires readjust- ment ; and that religion can be helped by a con- scientious study of what it really is, and what it may, with increasing wisdom, become. CHAPTEE 11, PERFECTIBILITY OF MAN. Christ said, " Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect." Nor could he ask of us less than perfection. He started from a state of perfection ; from the examjile set by an all-good as well as an all-wise and all-potent God ; he came down from heaven and reascended to heaven ; his mission to man was to fit man for a heaven not in this world but in the next. To demand perfection from man was consistent with his scheme of salva- tion ; to demand any less would have been incon- sistent with it. The command of science is a very different one. Science does not allow us to aim at perfection, or even to hope for perfection. Its injunction is a much more humble one, and because more humble per- haps more practicable and less hojDeless ; it may be summed up in the word improvement. Science, in asking for improvement, points to the history of man for encouragement ; religion, in de- manding perfection, could only derive from that his- tory despair. Science demonstrates that step by step evolution has, by proceeding from lower to higher 24 PERFECTIBILITY OP MAN. 25 types, stealthily but surely scored success ; religion would have, on the contrary, to record an uninter- rupted succession of failures. It is well to set a high standard, but a standard is too high if it is beyond our range of vision as well as beyond our range of hope. This is the mistake that science avoids. It moves slowly from one known order of facts to another, from the development of the protozoon to that of the mollusc, from that of the invertebrate to that of the vertebrate, from that of the savage to that of the civilised ; it argues that what has happened can go on happening, and be- cause development has not, so far as we know, pro- ceeded by leaps and bounds in the past, we have no right to expect that it will proceed by leaps and bounds in the future, though that it can be made to advance, and advance in the direction of improve- ment, seems to be indicated by the whole scheme of Nature as it becomes more and more unfolded to us. Nor is there any conflict here between the dic- tates of religion and those of science. Keligion, con- sistent with her role, deriving her language as well as her inspiration from the exaggeration of the East, overstates her case. Science, less dogmatic because less authoritative, proceeding cautiously from fact to fact, taking nothing for granted, fearing to err by claiming too much, hoping to attain by claiming lit- tle, understates. Thus religion tells us, if slapped on one cheek to turn the other also ; if robbed of a coat to offer the cloak also. Science teaches the doctrine of resistance, inculcates justice, orders reparation. 26 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. Eeligion teaches us to despise the body and care only for the soul. (Science answers, " Mens sana in cor- pore sano.'''' The ascetic who, yielding to religious temptation, outrages his body by too little love of it is to the eye of science as immoral as the gourmet who, yielding to his appetites, outrages his body by too much love of it. There are no lights and shad- ows in the teaching of religion. She loves to clothe her orders in set rules and commandments; she uses the imperative ; she consents to no exceptions ; she ad- mits of no compromise. Science is less positive. She recognises the complexity of man, his transitional condition, the weakness of his body, the limitations of his strength. And yet both unite in enjoining the same rules of conduct : " Love your neighbour as yourself," and " Do unto others as ye would that they should do unto you." Nor can we as yet dispense with the religious method even where it seems to dejoart most from common sense. Not only is every individual man a complex thing, but humanity is complex also. Eth- ical rules coldly reasoned out by science may be suf- ficient guides to philosophers ; they will be caviare to the general. The uneducated must be treated with authority, they must be impressed by ritual, they must eveu be coerced by fear. Let, then, reli- gion continue to do its work with those who cannot be reached by science, but let those who have out- grown swaddling clothes prepare themselves to stand alone ; let them recognise that perfection is not for our generation, and yet not in this recognition abate PERFECTIBILITY OF MAN. 27 one jot of effort towards self -improvement ; let them rather, by setting their standard within their compre- hension and within the limits of human attainment, live up to it, and by the hourly effort of every day form character able to resist in the hour of tempta- tion. But to do this we must be clear as to what in- deed constitutes our duty. We must be able to dis- tinguish between science that is true and science that is false, between theories that are sound and those that are unsound ; for if religion misleads us some- times, science may mislead us sometimes also. There is no monopoly of wisdom in this world. We are all seeking light. We probably never see the whole of any ethical question. Our organs of ethical vision are not yet complete ; in some of us they are absent altogeth- er. We have the same consciousness of ethical truths as earthworms have of light. The whole of one end of an earthworm is sensitive to or conscious of light, and this consciousness enables him to grope to the surface of the earth, but he has no eye, he can dis- tinguish no object. Just as the eye has developed from a mere sensitive surface, so our consciences have to develop from such dim notions of right and wrong as to-day confound as well as guide us. Now it is believed that there are certain great principles which will, when recognised, help us in our efforts to improve the ethical sense ; and having disembarrassed ourselves of the hopeless struggle to be perfect, it may be less difficult to recognise these principles, which, alas, are not consistent with such a 28 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. struggle. So long as we are bent on nothing less than perfection, so long are we unable to recog- nise the limitations which make perfection impossi- ble and the new rules of conduct which are consist- ent with those limitations. When we have learned to fly, then, perhaps, may we begin the attempt to reach the fixed stars ; but until we have learned to fly we had best leave the fixed stars alone. It has been necessary to point out the religious mistake of aiming at perfection ; it next becomes necessary to relieve the ethical student of the para- lysing doctrine so often taught by scientific men un- der the name of determinism ; for it is an essential part of the question involved in the perfectibility of man to know how far, if at all, men are themselves factors in their own perfectibility. If, indeed, man is " an iron balance in which to weigh pleasure and pain," then there seems no room for ethical effort, no reason for ethical discussion, and we are left to the hopeless alternative proposed by Herbert Spen- cer — philosophic calm. CHAPTER III. DETERMINISM. If one thing differentiates man from beast more than another it is his conscious faculty to help on the forces within him that tend towards good, or to defeat those forces by yielding to the baser inclina- tion. Physiologically man differs most from ani- mals in the dimensions, the convolutions, and the efficiency of his brain ; but this is merely a differ- ence of degree — a question of more or of less. If we compare the lowest type of man with the high- est type of beast, the difference becomes practically reduced to a faculty for speech and the use of tools ; and these may result as much from the shape of the cavity of the mouth and from the digitation of the forepaws as from any great increase in the capacity of the brain. The essential difference between man and beast seems to consist in a faculty possessed by men to abstain from a present pleasure in order to escape a future pain. It is true that animals can be taught by man to do this very thing ; but it is done by animals only through the education and under the eye of a human master ; it is not believed ever to have been found in a state of nature outside of man. 29 30 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. Now this faculty, of abstaining from a present pleasure to avoid a future pain, or of suffering a present pain in order to enjoy a future pleasure, is in one sense a direct development of the intellectual faculty, for when (as Huxley puts it) we learn the rules of the game, we find that physical well-being depends largely upon an exercise of this faculty ; later we learn that moral well-being is no less the result of intelligent self-control ; and so the deter- minists claim that the exercise of this faculty is only a form of enlightened selfishness, our own well-being constituting the end in view. And they are doubt- less so far right. But there are two considerations which, as man develops, tend to complicate this rea- soning, and these may be roughly named love and duty. For we have already seen that love tends to reach away from self — from the domestic relations, which are only a reflected form of self, to the tribe, the nation, and at last the race, self progressively becoming less and less until it reaches a vanishing point. And there grows up in the heart of man a new motive, called duty, which replaces selfishness by substituting therefor an abstract notion of right, to which we cling, and by which we conduct our lives irrespective of self, even in its remotest form. The determinists answer that this so-called love and duty are no other than pleasure in another form ; that he who suffers pain out of love for his race (as Christ is believed to have done) or out of a sense of duty (as Socrates) is merely obeying the greater im- pulse, which is none the less a greater impulse because DETERMINISM. 31 it seems to be an unselfish one. The maniac who destroys himself or the dervish who tears his flesh is the slave of an idea ; in his case the idea is a false one. In the cases of Christ and Socrates the idea was not a false one, but it was equally an imperative one; it dominated its victims no less imperiously. In this sense neither Christ nor Socrates was free to do otherwise. The nobility or unselfishness of the dominant idea does not make it any the less the de- termining idea. Determinism is therefore as true of the patriot and martyr as of the criminal or debauchee. Men who have grasped this argument tend to fall in love with their own perspicuity, and to re- gard with a feeling akin to contempt all those who cling to the unphilosophical convictions of con- sciousness to the contrary. To look upon the best part of humanity in its efforts to improve itself by defeating inclination and selfishness in compliance with the abstract rules of love and duty ; to look upon this heroic effort as a part of the human come- dy, a mere substitution of one idea for another ; to regard its victims as "fools of Nature" pluming themselves as heroes in a paradise of their own imagining, while they are to the superior eye of the philosopher mere manikins with strings pulled by the greater inclination — this, to some persons, lifts them to the plane of the select and superior few, and seems to gratify, although it ought to humiliate, their self-esteem. Against this tendency we must guard ourselves. 32 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. Eeason may err as well as religion ; dogmatism may be a vice of one as well as of the other ; and reason alone may be as nnfit to decide some of our prob- lems as sentiment. For the question before us now is one of mixed fact and judgment. We have not facts enough to proceed to demonstration ; we must take the facts we have and reach our conclusions from these facts as best we may, with the least in- consistency and the least assumption. Unfortu- nately, one of the facts with which we have to deal is a fact of consciousness, and for that reason the most difficult of all facts to handle. For a fact of consciousness is one upon which different individu- als do not agree. To many the idea of a man being free to do one thing rather than another seems ab- surd; nothing in their experience justifies it. On the contrary, a review of their own actions in the past convinces them that, though they may at cer- tain times seem to have chosen to do one thing rather than another, they are convinced by the light of philosophy that as a matter of fact they have never done anything save what the greater inclina- tion dictated. Others are equally j^ersuaded that their decisions are voluntary and free ; that there are presented to them two courses, between which they choose with deliberation and freedom, some- times pursuing the course most in accordance with their natural inclinations because they believe it to be the proper course, sometimes denying themselves the luxury of yielding to their inclinations because they believe their inclinations to be contrary to their DETERMINISM. 33 highest duty. The determinists say this so-called freedom of choice is an illusion. The non-deter- minists retort that men born blind cannot discuss colour; that the absence of this faculty of choice in some does not justify these last in denying it to those for whom its existence is as certain as that of the world in which we live. And so the battle in- effectually rages, no convincing argument being pos- sible between combatants one set of whom deny the very existence of the thing concerning which they are fighting, and the others of whom are bound to admit that the thing in question may exist only in themselves and not in those who deny it. But need the battle continue to ineffectually rage? If each side ceases for a moment to strike at the other's demands and pauses to consider its own, will it not appear that both are right up to a certain point, and both wrong beyond that point ? Do they not both claim too much? Can they not both abate their demands and come to a conclusion founded on common sense and truth ? In one sense, and perhaps it may be added, in a purely verbal sense, the determinists are incontro- vertibly right — every man who adopts one course rather than another is following his greater inclina- tion ; if it were not so he would not have adopted it. This is so obvious that to contest it is vain. Let us take a concrete case : A man has to choose between jumping into an angry sea to save the life of an enemy at imminent risk to his own and seeing that 34 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. enemy drown before his eyes. No one is present. In order to put human applause or censure out of the way the scene may be hiid upon a desert island. If he allows his enemy to drown, the greater in- clination coincides with the natural instinct of self- preservation ; if he saves his enemy, the greater in- clination coincides with a notion of duty at war with the natural instinct of self-preservation ; but it is no less for that reason the greater inclination. This point must be yielded to the determinist. But how did this notion of duty arise? To what or to whom is it attributable? Can man contribute to it in any way ? Can education help it ? And if man can contribute to its existence, can he also con- tribute to its becoming at critical moments the greater inclination? Can education do this also? Now, if the determinists will admit that m.an can contribute in the minutest degree to either of these things, then he has conceded all that we, who believe in the so- called freedom of will, need ask for ; because, if man can create his greater inclination, then he is not the slave but the master of it. This is the pivot upon which all ethics turn. If man were the mere slave of his greater inclination his ethics would be those of a whipped hound ; he w^ould so conduct himself as to escape whipping ; his actions would be determined by what he believed would conduce most to his pleasure and relieve him most of pain. If he were intelligent and fortunate he would be prosperous ; if he were unintelligent and unfortunate he would be unprosperous ; his DETERMINISM. 35 prosperity would be mainly determined by the cir- cumstances which surrounded him and his faculty for hoisting sail to favourable and trimming sail to hostile breezes. ■ There is uo future, no mission, no advancement for such a man beyond gratification of desire and escape from pain. This is the order of ethical sentiment which has brought the animal kingdom to the point where it now is — every race pitted against every other race — preying upon and being preyed upon. This is the order of ethical sentiment which has put man at the top of the predatory system, which has made of him the great carnivore, the destroyer and devourer of all living things, and yet himself also destroyed and devoured in turn by the meanest of the animal kingdom. The consequences of such a doctrine are appalling. Amongst them may be counted the lesson to be drawn from evolution in the past as regards the life history of animal races. They have their rise and their fall ; they grow from small beginnings to a certain point, and then they degrade and die. The race has its life history as well as the individual. The book of the world contains indelibly inscribed on its pages of stone the story of many a dominant and now ex- tinct race. The age of the trilobite ; that of the reptile ; the stealthy appearance of the carnivora ; their rapid growth sharply distinguished into quad- ruped and biped ; the biped, by the development of his fingers, gradually calling to his aid that great factor in the development of man, the tool, and with the tool becoming master of all living things. 36 EVOLUTION AXD EFFORT. But the story is not finished ; the same inevi- table fate seems destined for man also. If the whole, history of creation in the past shows a gradual sup- planting of one race by another, the triumph of one race corresponding to the extinction of another, the survival of the fittest involving the non-snrvival of the less fit; if there have already disappeared from the earth races which at one time seem to have ruled it, the Ichthyosaur, the Plesiosaur, the Machairodon ; if to-day the great carnivora are rapidly becoming extinct, and man is left alone, with no animal to suc- cessfully contest his supremacy, what shall be the fate of man if left to the same blind forces which have brought him to his present place ? Shall he not also in the end yield to another race ? Is Huxley * not right when he says : " The theory of evolution encourages no millen- nial anticijjations. If for millions of years our globe has taken the upward road, yet, some time, the summit will be reached and the downward route will be commenced. The most daring imag- ination will hardly venture upon the suggestion that the power and intelligence of man can ever arrest the procession of the great year." If Huxley is right — if a downward route is in- evitable ; if nothing can arrest the procession of the great year — then there is but little reason for any ethics beyond those of the whipped hound : Dvm vivimus vivamus ; apres nous le deluge. * Evolution and Ethics, Romanes Lectures, 1893, p. 36. DETERMINISM. 37 We cannot afford to allow any of these discourag- ing results of science to go unchallenged. Scientitic men are apt to suffer from the near-sightedness which overtakes all persons confined to narrow hori- zons. Dissection of animal tissue, chemical analysis, and microscopic investigation bring the eye very near to the object examined. There must be an oc- casional step back. The fly on the dome of St. Paul's can judge as little of its architectural effect as the paliiiontologist of the destiny of man, when he coldly concludes, from the extinction of dominant races in the past, that man must in his turn be eventually ex- tinguished also. Man differs from animals in many respects, but in none so much as in his faculty to advance or hinder the forces that work for or against his own develoj)nient. In this respect he becomes himself a determining element in his own evolution. The question whether he can arrest the procession of the great year in his own case is one wdiich de- pends in part, perhaps altogether, upon himself. Is not this alone an argument in his favour? The whole destiny of man, then, seems to hang upon the answer we give to this question of free will ; for if we are going to relegate ourselves to the determinist condition of the lower animals, then we must expect to share their life history, and be our- selves overtaken at last by the doom which has over- taken them. But if there is in man a power or force which can overcome fate ; if he can escape the law of the greater inclination by himself making that greater inclination different from what it would 38 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. otherwise be ; if he is himself the spirit of the earth, framing his own destiny, lord of his own inclina- tions, the master and not the servant of those forces in Nature which make for decay, then may the race be immortal, and man become what the gospels have faintly shadowed — Emmanuel, or God with us. And so the question we have to answer is this : Has man made and can man make his greater in- clination ? If he can, then he has a conscious and volitional part to play in his own development, and it becomes of vital importance to him to study and understand that part not only for his individual ad- vancement, but for that larger ambition which in- cludes all his fellow-creatnres in the great work of relieving humanity from abasement and pain and lifting it into dignity and happiness. CHAPTER IV. DETERMINISM AND THE EVOLUTION OF LOVE. Has man, then, made, and can man by conscious effort make or assist in making, his greater inclina- tion ? The best answer to this question will be found in those actual cases in which he seems to have al- ready done so. Most conspicuous of these, perhaps, is the amazing degree to which man has by con- scious as well as by unconscious effort created for himself a new inclination in his relations to the female sex. The importance of this fact in the development of man cannot be too much insisted upon ; for man stands alone among the great car- nivora in the possession of the faculty of herding, jealousy between males as regards females being probably the principal motive which forces the other carnivora to their solitary life. The lion, the tiger, the gorilla never herd ; the same savage qualities which make them dominant over other races make them also unfit companions for one another. The consequence is that they are deprived of the advan- tages both for defence and attack which less formida- ble animals by herding enjoy. But man has been able to hold his own against his carnivorous rivals 4 "39 40 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. not by bodily strength but by mental ingenuity ; and the same ingenuity which devised the tool for de- fence against the lower animals devised also a scheme of existence for defence against one another. The tacit understanding Avhich obtains among herding animals as to the distribution of females, as to the sentry system, as to mutual abstention from injury to one another during the chase, becomes in man, through language, exj)ressed and written down. The notion of joi'operty arises, and of property in woman as well as of property in chattels. The necessity of respecting the property of a man in his women through fear of punishment at the hands of the community acts at first automatically to create a habit of self-restraint as regards women that may be the embryo as well as the jjrecursor of that senti- ment which in its highest development we learn at last to call love. But as civilisation advances woman herself becomes a factor in the community. She ceases to be property ; her consent becomes an element in the sexual relation ; and it is soon dis- covered that understandings and laws, written and unwritten, are totally unable to predetermine and maintain marital relations. The failure of law courts to deal with this problem restores it to the individ- ual. The duel in one country, assassination in an- other, vendetta in a third, horsewhipping in a fourth, are all tributes to the hopelessness of the effort by legislation to determine permanently in advance the sexual relations of two persons, each of whom is changing from day to day as to his needs, as to his DETERMINISM AND EVOLUTION OP LOVE, j^l aspirations, and as to those qualities of heart and mind which go to make up a good or bad husband or wife. And so by the side of the code of rules drawn up by the state there grows up a code of morals determined by the public sense of the com- munity and largely left to the conscience of the in- dividual. Indeed, as woman becomes more and more enfranchised, the necessity of protecting her from the pursuit of man becomes less and less, until at last, as in the United States, it becomes practically nil. The marriageable girl is thrown by the oc- cupations now open to her into the very jaws of temptation out of which a century ago it would have been deemed impossible for her to escape; even amongst the wealthy she abandons the tutelage of her chaperone so early as to become almost at once mistress of herself; and although there re- mains in the community some prejudice against divorce, this sentiment is disappearing so fast, that with the existing tendency to make divorce easy it may be said that marriage has practically lost its once indissoluble character, and is in some States rapidly becoming little more than a time contract. As to the wisdom or advisableness of this no opinion is here expressed ; the fact is noted as a fact, because it tends practically to restore men to that condition of liberty which prevails amongst lower animals, by altogether destroying the notion of property in women, which first rendered social existence possi- ble, and by partially destroying the mantle of indis- solubility which religion subsequently threw around 42 EVOLUTION AXD EFFORT. the sexual relation. And yet, whatever may be the ultimate effect upon the community of the twofold change, to-day, at any rate, men do not tear one an- other to pieces in their contest for female favours. "Women may travel from one end of the land to the other without fear of molestation ; and there has grown up between the sexes a sentiment called love, which in its highest sense has so little, if anything, in common with sexual passion, that this last is be- coming less and less a factor in the marriage rela- tion.'" Indeed, there seems to be a growing sentiment that in the selection of a wife the existence of desire should be counted rather as a reason against selec- tion than in favour of it, and that marriage should be instigated by sympathy of heart and mind rather than by that physical attractiveness which seldom outlives the first moon of married life. Through what an amazing cycle has humanity in this respect alone passed ! Starting from a condition in which sexual jealousy played so savage a \ydvt that it tended to consign humanity to the barbarism and dangers of solitude, the race evolved the notion of property in the female sex, which kept women chaste by compulsion and men chaste by fear ; then, came religion, with its humanising and beneficent doc- trine of indissolubility : " A man shall leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife, and they twain shall be one flesh." And at last woman, by the gradual extension to her, too, of the bless- ings of knowledge and liberty, is asking that the shrine in which she has been imprisoned be cast DETERMINISM AND EVOLUTION OP LOVE. 43 down, and that she step forth mistress of her des- tinies also. It is impossible to conceive a more complete in- version of the so-called natural order of things. In a state of Nature selection is determined by physical attractiveness alone ; the female is subjugated as well as persuaded by the male ; she is held bound to him by fear if not by inclination ; the relation is a tem- porary one, and terminated by the maturity of off- spring, if not before. In the human family, on the contrary, physical attractiveness is largely replaced by attractions of lieart and mind, and tends to be- come eliminated altogether ; violence has disappeared as a determining factor ; the slavery of the woman, after having been once enforced by law, has been replaced by a cult which, if it can be said to deprive her of any rights at all, deprives her only of those which a sovereign abandons when he mounts the throne. The relation, after having been rendered permanent by every sanction of religion and of law, is now being relaxed, so that it bids fair ultimately to depend only on the constancy of that new quality of the human heart called love, which, because it has nothing in common with the old savage instinct whence it has sjDrung, may eventually be relied on as a basis for the institution of marriage, with infi- nitely more certainty than the ban of the church or the penalties of courts of law. The foregoing considerations disclose with singu- lar felicity the prevailing error that prae-anthropic natural selection, and the principles of evolution 4i EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. which result therefrom, are still operating on the human race. So far is this from being true, that the principles of selection in Nature and in civilised man are found to be diametrically opposed to one another. In Nature, sexual passion is fierce, eager, and temporary ;"in man, love, which tends more and more to replace passion, is gentle, calm, and abid- ing ; the one arouses Jealousy, the other inspires faith ; the one creates solitude, the other courts society ; indeed, so essential to civilisation is the substitution of one by the other, that we may with- out grave error attribute to this substitution all that makes man greater than the lower animals. And now that the fact has been stated, what conclusion is to be drawn from it as regards man's conscious part therein ? It must be conceded to the determinists that so long as the fear of punishment or love of approbation constituted the whole law of chastity, the habit of self-restraint acquired was due to no conscious effort. But in that large period of quasi liberty that has for centuries existed, and of almost unlimited liberty that now exists, can it be contended by the most bigoted determinist that hu- man effort has had nothing to do Avith the respect and devotion which have replaced the passion and lust of an earlier day? Our literature abounds in stories of the conflict between love and duty ; of the triumph of the one, of the sacrifice of the other ; and while our hearts go out to Guinevere and Maggie Tulliver, we know that it is their expiation that makes them dear to us, and not their surrender. We DETERMINISM AND EVOLUTION OP LOVE. 45 know that it is by resisting temptation, and not by yielding to it, that our high ideals of love have been framed. We are conscious that the tug of Nature is in the direction of surrender, and that it is by the supremest effort only that we sometimes resist. We know that society, conscious of the overmastering sway of passion over us, has surrounded our women with safeguards, has to the utmost, diminished oppor- tunity for temptation, and has created a public opin- ion the fear of which shall keep us in the hour of trial. We know that with the whole force of custom, of public opinion, of lack of opportunity fighting on our side, the old Adam is still strong enough in us to harry many a conscience and ruin many a reputation. And yet, notwithstanding all the wrecks of human happiness which the struggle towards a high ideal of love involves, we see a noble intention aiming at a high purpose and justifying the price paid ; for every woman who has suffered in patience to keep her soul unspotted from the world, has contributed to render possible that sentiment which has lifted woman from a convenience to an inspiration, from a houri to a wife. This is what human effort has accomplished. Can it nevertheless be said that man is still, and must always be, the slave of his greater inclination ? And if there remain any doubt as to the effect of this pernicious doctrine upon the conduct of man, let us assume that two youths of similar tempera- ment are subjected, one to the teachings of a deter- minist, the other to those of an advocate of free will. The former is taught that he is the slave of 46 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. his greater inclination ; that if an order of sentiment called duty or dignity or love happens to be stronger in him than caprice or pleasure or lust, he will obey the former and not the latter; but if the latter hap- pen to be the stronger, he must obey the latter and not the former ; that he himself has no choice, and cannot by effort affect the result. The latter is taught that although he is in one sense bound to act in conformity with his greater inclination, neverthe- less he can by effort resist the evil and incline to the good, so that by virtue of his resistance he can create a faculty which will ultimately prefer the good and instinctively avoid the evil. Which of these two is most likely to make a brave man ? which most to advance the fight of hu- manity with evil ? wdiich to make the best son, the best husband, the best citizen? To this doubtless the determinists will answer : We are not concerned with the results of logic. Hope of heaven and fear of hell may also tend to make good sons, husbands, and citizens ; but we can- not for that reason believe in the existence of heaven and hell, such existence being unsupported by evi- dence and inconsistent with our convictions regard- ing equity and justice. We are driven by an unan- swerable logic to the conclusion that every act of a man complies with his greater inclination. If any act seems not to so comply the error is in the seem- ing. The fact that he has so acted is incontrov,ertible proof that it accords with his greater inclination ; he cannot act otherwise. Nor can he create his DETERMINISM AND EVOLUTION OF LOVE. 47 greater inclination unless there be in him an inclina- tion to make the effort to do so ; and in such case the inclination to make the effort is already the greater inclination. This brings us to a point where the meaning of the expression greater inclination can be usefully discussed ; for a brief consideration of it may lead to the conclusion that we are fighting only about words. The principle of the survival of the fittest is no longer applicable to the development of man. This principle has put man at the head of the animal kingdom, but his ethical progress depends to-day upon his ability to overcome the very qualities of the ape and the tiger, the combination of which made him superior to both — in other words, man is now engaged in fighting the very elements of his nature to which he owes his existing supremacy. Civilisation is teaching man how to cease to be savage, cease to be treacherous, cease to be selfish ; it is teaching him how to maintain his dominant j-)osition over tlie beasts of the field, and yet to sup- plant selfishness by altruism, treachery by wisdom, savagery by love. Man therefore finds himself per- petually standing, as it were, between two sets of in- clinations, forever hostile, forever at war with one another ; one set which he owes to his savage ances- tor, one set which he owes to wisdom and religion. These two sets of inclinations are marked by an almost constant characteristic. The former, or, as they may be called, the primary inclinations, are 48 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. those which we instinctively follow ; the latter, or secondary inclinations, it takes an effort to prefer ; the former appeal to our passions, appetites, and de- sires; the latter appeal to our intelligence and con- science ; the former generally promise present satis- faction, the latter generally involve present pain and only remote advantage. Now if there is one fact more than another with which those who have studied the forming of character are familiar, it is that men who habitually yield to their primary in- clinations become incapable, if not insensible, of those that are secondary; whereas those who habitually make the necessary effort to resist their primary in- clinations gradually form what we term character, or a habit of acting in conformity with the second- ary or higher inclinations ; so that the word char- acter may be distinguished from temperament, with which it is often confounded, by the fact that whereas our actions are determined by two sets of influences, those we inherit and those we make, I temperament should stand for the tendencies we I inherit and character for the tendencies we make. And if there is one fact more than another with which those who have formed their own character are familiar, it is that the formation of character is attended by unceasing effort. This effort in our childhood is exercised mainly by those to whom is entrusted the task of educating us ; in adult years it is exercised, if at all, mainly by ourselves. But to deny that effort is the sine qua non of all ethical self-improvement is equivalent to denying that ef- DETERMINISM AND EVOLUTION OP LOVE. 49 fort is necessary to climbing uphill. In both cases natural obstacles are being fought and overcome ; in both cases the instrumentality — human effort — is the same. And now we are able intelligently to discuss the meaning of the expression, greater inclination. To the determinist the expression means whichever in- clination ends by prevailing ; to the advocate of free will it means the inclination which has naturally the greatest hold upon us. In the determinist sense of the word all freedom is impossible. The Omnipo- tent himself was not free to abstain from creating the world ; the fact that he created it is to the de- terminist incontrovertible proof that he followed his greater inclination in so doing. Had he refrained from creating the world, this fact would have consti- tuted incontrovertible proof that he followed his greater inclination in so refraining. In both cases he would still be the slave of his greater inclina- tion. But this is absurd ; we must find, then, some other formula. Acts of choice that give rise to this problem of free will, involve the presentation of two alterna- tives : one agreeable to the instinct, but not com- mended by conscience ; the other disagreeable to the instinct, but commended by conscience. It requires no effort to adopt the former ; it requires effort to adopt the latter. If effort is exercised and the latter course is adopted, it seems to result that the agency which made the effort performed an act characteris- tically different from those acts which require no 50 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. effort but are the necessary result of habit or instinct, Xecessity characterises the latter; choice seems to characterise the former. We have here an inclina- tion on the one side great enough to determine ac- tion of itself were it not that there exists at the same time an inclination on the other side which, aided hy effort, may become great enough to over- come it. In other words, it is the effort of the se- lecting agent which makes the ethical inclination greater than the natural one. It is the faculty by effort of making the ethical inclination greater than the natural one which has been termed freedom of the will. Xow those persons who have this faculty and who exercise it are universally recognised as strong men ; those who have not this faculty and who fail to exercise it are universally recognised as weak men. The strong men are those who are ca- pable of advancing humanity ; the weak men are those who retard it. To which of these two shall we decide to belong ? We know that by effort we can increase our capacity to live according to a higher law, and that by abstaining from effort we shall in- evitably diminish such capacity. If we mean to sur- render, let us by all means adopt the comfortable hy- pocrisy of determinism. If we mean to fight, let us recognise that the merit does not depend upon the question of freedom, but on the effort which may determine our choice in the teeth of natural inclina- tion ; on the effort which beyond all things differen- tiates man from brutes, and advances him along the way to dignity and happiness. DETERMINISM AND EVOLUTION OF LOVE. 51 Then shall we cease to divide inclinations into greater and lesser, but rather into natural and eth- ical ; the natural representing those inclinations which we inherit with the ape and the tiger, the ethical those which we strive towards through effort enlightened by science and religion ; the ethical be- ing distinguished from the natural by the fact that the former involve effort, but lead to a higher and completer happiness, and the selection between the two constituting that large part of human activity which, as distinguished from instinct, has been dig- nified with the name of conduct. CHAPTER V. DETERMINISM AND COUEAGE. This subject cannot be left without dealing briefly with another human quality which illustrates with singular felicity the distinction between our higher and lower nature and one of the factors which has transfigured it — courage. Courage, like love, has in the development of our ethical nature moved through a complete cycle. Like almost every quality of the human heart, it has its origin in the conflict of life. Animals may be roughly classified into those that fight and those that flee. The former, through the application of the principles of the survival of the fittest, gradually im- prove their offensive weapons, and with this improve- ment grows also self-reliance ; and the courage that springs from self-reliance ; the latter — that is, those that flee — gradually improve their apparatus for flight, and with this improvement lose their willingness to fight or the courage which once marked their earlier condition. It is probable that the ancestor of the horse, when handicapped for flight by the large foot which was indispensable to support him in the marshes which he inhabited, was provided with de- 52 DETERMINISM AND COURAGE. 53 fensive weapons of more destructive character than the hoof upon which the horse depends to-day. If he had, he doubtless possessed the courage to use it. This courage he has lost with the necessity of it. Danger to the horse suggests flight ; it is only under exceptional circumstances that it disjDlays courage ; as, for example, when a mare is put upon the defence of her colt. And here we see another phase in the development of courage which illustrates Nature's plan in providing animals with just the courage necessary for the preservation of the race, or, to put it in a less religious and more scientific form, the automatic arrangement under which those ani- mals survive which have the courage to preserve their race without the courage sufficient to consti- tute foolhardiness. It would be folly for a horse to battle with a lion. On the other hand, if a mare were not furnished with sufficient desperateness to face a lion in the defence of her young, she would possibly lack the courage necessary to defend them against innumerable small carnivora to which they would in such case fall a prey. And so the courage of a mother in defence of her young is notoriously foolhardy, as in the familiar case of the hen defend- ing her brood against a Newfoundland dog, who could devour her and her entire progeny at a mouth- ful. Courage therefore seems automatically adapted in the lower animals to the service it has to render. How little conscious or deliberate it is may be seen from the reckless use to which the honey-bee puts its sting when the hive is attacked, although the use 54 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. of the sting involves death to the bee using it. The bumble-bee, on the other hand, which lives alone, which has no hive or community to protect, and whose fate is an individual matter, has no sting, and therefore suffers no martyrdom for others. To at- tribute to the honey-bee a conscious sacrifice of life for his community is to endow him with the virtues of a Quintus Curtius. It is more reasonable to be- lieve that he uses his sting without knowledge of tlie consequence, and that his action is practically auto- matic. When in the course of development the animal becomes more and more conscious, when his actions put on more and more the air of deliberate- iiess, those of them which involve courage put on more and more the natural language of rage or ap- prehension. The snarl of the dog contains in it much more of the " I would " than of the " I will " ; it shares with the spit of the cat or the hiss of the snake that element of warning which appeals to the sense of fear in the intruder. So we find courage or aggressiveness and fear or submissive- ness combined in animals very much in proportion to their aggressive and defensive apparatus, and to the special need therefore as regards the perpetu- ation of the race. Now it takes no courage in a lion to pounce upon a kid ; his courage is called upon only when the animal disputing him is about his equal in strength. Defence of self and of the community on the one hand, and the satisfaction of hunger and sexual passion on the other, are the occasions for DETERMINISM AND COURAGE. 55 the exercise and development of courage. Those deficient in courage tend to starve and die out ; but altogether the most beneficient tendency towards maintaining and developing courage in a race is the contest for the female, which prevents the weak or timid from reproducing themselves, and confines the perpetuation of the race to the courageous and the strong. In this short review we find all the elements that go to make up the highly complex quality of courage. We have the courage that springs from self-reli- ance in the lion. . We have the courage that springs from the ma- ternal instinct in the hen. We have the courage that springs from the social instinct in the honey-bee. In these three cases there seems to be no recog- nition of danger, because in the case of the lion there is none ; in the case of the hen it is ignored ; in the case of the bee it is probably unknown. Next we have courage tempered by a sense of danger in the snarl of the dog and the hiss of the serpent. Lastly may be recalled that ineffectual courage which makes the grizzly bear attack and often slay the hunter, though it already has a bullet in its heart ; that final display of vitality which, when we observe it in human affairs sticking to an aj^par- ently hopeless task, we call foolhardiness, and, when contrary to our expectations we see it succeed, we call heroism. 5 56 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. It is diflficult to analyse tlip courage of animals, because we do not know how large a part the con- sciousness of danger plays therein. One thing, how- ever, seems to be clear, and this is that the more highly organised the animal the more its courage seems to be attended by ferocity. In other words, anger seems to be an ally, if not a servant, of courage. All of the great carnivora are fierce as well as brave. Ferocity attends almost all their activities ; a sort of savageness even attends their wooing. Ferocity be- comes temperamental ; they hunt with ferocity ; they fight with ferocity ; and it is with ferocity that they make love. No wonder that man, who is the great- est of the carnivora, should inherit temperamental ferocity also. But ferocity and the social instinct do not harmonise. The wolf learns to keep his fe- rocity within bounds when he hunts in packs ; and so man learned to control this instinct when he aban- doned tlie solitary life of his ancestor in order to enjoy the advantages of social existence. There then arose in him a conflict between the instinct of ferocity and the herding instinct, which until he became a deliberating animal was largely automatic. Exhibitions of ferocity against his fel- lows Avere punished by exclusion from the com- munity; and as he became more and more depend- ent upon community existence tlie punishment of exclusion became more and more severe. Then came penal laws to exert a constant pressure on his savage instinct, and religion with its appeal to his super- stition and to those higher qualities which have DETERMINISM AND COURAGE. 57 slowly developed therefrom. Gradually ferocity and its poor relation, anger, have been put under re- straint, so that it may be said that in our social lives we seldom see exhibitions of either. These are re- served for the occasional hurly-burly of public ex- citement or the permanent shelter of the home. What effect has this suj^pression of ferocity and anger had upon human courage? Has it increased, or has it diminished, or has it altogether changed in form? It is impossible to doubt that civilisation tends to destroy courage. The history of the Modes and Persians amply illustrates this fact. Nor could it be otherwise, for civilisation breaks down cour- age in a twofold way : in the first place, it dimin- ishes and even extinguishes the occasion for its exercise ; in the second place, it educates — that is to say, it increases that knowledge and apprehension of danger which seem to be so conspicuous by their ab- sence in the lowest forms of animal life. Side by side, however, with this tendency to de- stroy courage civilisation carries with it tendencies to enhance it, for though we are bound to restrain ferocity in our individual capacity, we are not bound to restrain it in our collective capacity. The wilful destruction of human life by an individual on his own account is punished by death, but if committed on account of his nation is rewarded by the highest honours and offices of the state. In other words, war, and the consequent necessity for the qnalifica- tions that go to make good soldiers, have maintained a special education of youth which has kept alive in 58 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. the race that quality of courage without which the race might possibly have disappeared. Eeligion, too, has played a large role in the maiuteuance iu man of courage of the highest quality. The tenacity and principle that made martyrs in early Christian days, soldiers at a later period, and exiles in still more recent times ; the tenacity and principle which to-day strengthen the heart to resist the superstitions of education, to con- front the public ojjinion of the immediate environ- ment, and boldly cling to a conclusion because it is sincerely believed to be conformable to truth — these tend to create in us a courage which, if not identi- cal with that of our savage ancestors, differs from it only in qualities that redound to the honour and dignity of man. For this courage is indeed a dif- ferent thing from that instinctive and unconscious sting of the honey-bee, which, had it been informed, would have entitled it to a martyr's crown. It dif- fers from it in that it is fully aware of all the evil consequences that will j)robably result therefrom ; it differs from it still more in that, so far from being instinctive, it acts in a manner diametrically opposed to instinct ; it differs from it in that while the one developed without conscious effort, the latter has grown only through the continual, increasing, and often heart-sickening struggle of every day ; for if any man shall tell us that his courage has cost him no effort, it may be answered that in that case it cannot be accounted to him as a virtue, for he in- herited it from a savage ancestor ; whereas, to those DETERMINISM AND COQRAGE. 59 who in humility admit the struggle it lias cost them to be brave, let the palm of true courage be awarded, for they have created in themselves a virtue that is human, and have not contented themselves with qualities that they share with the lion and the ape. But courage such as this not only differs from the old in attendant consciousness of danger ; it differs also in this singular and valuable respect, that it can act without the impulse of ferocity or the assistance of rage. True, many men whom we cannot but characterise as brave, summon to their assistance the ancient allies of their despised ancestors. But the bravest in the highest sense is the man who without a ripple of indignation, but with the calm and skill of a surgeon, uses the weapon to slay an invader which, did circumstances exact it, he would with equal composure direct against himself. And so courage, like love in this highest sense, has become transformed by human effort ; from a purely instinctive and brutal passion, it has become a deliberate and elevating virtue ; and this trans- formation has been effected not by yielding to nature, but by refusing the natural and creating an artificial impulse, so that there has been created in man a new quality, true to his higher nature, tend- ing to his highest happiness, and consistent with that Godhead the attainment of which must con- stitute his liighest mission upon earth. But not only is it indispensable to recognise that such transformations as those from lust to love and from ferocity to courage, result from the effort of GO EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. man in his struggle against inherited instincts, in order to put an end to the paralysing tendency of the doctrine of determinism ; it is also indispen- sable because the whole tendency of civilisation is to destroy the very qualities which itself has rendered possible. Love, under the baneful effect of wealth and jirosperity, tends to degrade again into lascivions- ness ; coui-age into timidity and indolence. Kature is no longer fighting on our side. We parted com- pany from her when we declined to obey her savage laws ; when we resolutely ceased to employ the weapons with which she had armed us ; when we refused to allow the weak to starve and the sick to l^erish. We have undertaken a battle of our own. It is to ourselves, our intelligence, our resolution, our unceasing efforts, that we must now look for our well-being. The laissez-faire principle must be abandoned, as also the doctrine that the future can be left to the automatic principles of evolution that in prehistoric times prevailed. Nature put us at the head of the predatory system, and we have undertaken, in the name of God, to destroy all the qualities that entitle us to remain there, and re- place them by virtues diametrically opposed to them. This is not a season for rest or philosophic calm ; it is a season for effort, that man may complete the evolution of a higher nature as much opposed to the natural man as the gospel of love is opposed to the gospel of hate. CHAPTER VI. RELIGION : THE HISTORIC VIEW. Those who have read the widely diverging defi- nitions of religion collected by Mr. Kidd in his work on Social Evolution and the definition given by himself, will not expect any excuse for devoting a chapter to the question, What is Eeligion ? Nor is the collection made by Kidd in a remote degree complete. ¥ew definitions of religion have received wider or more intelligent acceptance than Schleier- maeher's, which makes the essence of religion to consist in the sentiment that we all have of our ab- solute dependence ; or, indeed, Feuerbach's, which finds the seat of religion in desire ; nor can Hart- mann's dictum be overlooked, which holds that re- ligion is due to the presence of pain and evil in the world ; or Darmesteter's, which makes religion to cover all knowledge and power outside of the do- main of science. Mr. Kidd's own effort to define religion is not a definition, but a theory. To him " religion is a form of belief, providing an ultrarational sanction for that large class of conduct in the individual where his in- terests and the interests of the social organism are 61 62 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. antagonistic, and by which the former are rendered subordinate to the latter in the general interests of the evolution which 'the race is undergoing." The argument upon which he builds his theory is briefly this : There is no rational sanction for the conditions of progress ; they are too unjust to the majority for the majority to have endured them, unless it had been induced to do so by a sanction that was ultrarational. This ultrarational sanction is religion. Mr. Kidd's theory is too ingenious, too modern, and too attractive not to deserve consideration. It is attractive because it seems to explain so much. There is no more pathetic thread in history than the uncomplaining patience with which the sub- merged classes have during long intervals of time endured their fate. That this should suddenly be exjDlained by a new definition of religion is capti- vating, but that it is so ex2:)lained is open to grave doubt. It seems much more likely that what Mr. Kidd has sought to explain needs no explanation. Horses endure the bit, slaves have endured the lash, humanity has endured despotism, the citizens of American cities endure municipal misgovernment, all for the same reason : sufferance is the badge of all our tribe ; man and beast endure because endur- ance is easier than insurrection. That religion has done much to inculcate the doctrine of obedience and submission is undoubtedly true ; but that re- ligion is nothing more than a sort of counterpoise to revolt can hardlv be admitted. RELIGIOx\ : THE HISTORIC VIEW. G3 Religion is such a complex thing that all who endeavour to trace it to a particular sentiment or to confine it within the four sides of a definition are likely to err. We cannot refer it, with Herbert Spencer, exclusively to the worship of ancestral ghosts; nor, with Mills, to the "craving for ideal conceptions, grander and more beautiful than we see realised in the prose of human life." No man who has seen a fellow-creature stricken dead by lightning is likely to scout the theory that primus in orhe Deos fecit timor ; and few are likely to be satisfied with the explanation that religion is no more than " an habitual and permanent admiration." Eeligions have varied in the history of the world as much as political institutions. The obvious and natural way to arrive at a definite idea of religion is to consider what is common to all religions, and what therefore differentiates them all. The task need not be a difficult or a long one. Religions have been concerned mainly with the effort to account for all that seems inexplicable in the world. Whatever altogether baffled explanation was set down as supernatural, and there was woven about it the fancies with which imagination loves to clothe mystery. As knowledge increased, much that was once deemed portentous yielded to investigation, and it is not unnatural, therefore, that all periods of active thought should be marked by increase in the domain of science at the expense of the domain of religion. It is this view of religion which inspired Darmesteter's definition of it. There are certain 64 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. subjects, however, which, because they are probably unknowable, have been the common problems of all religions in all times and places. These subjects are : How did this world come into existence? what is it for? what is man for? what is life? is there a life after death? and last, but not least, the justification of pain. Indeed, the problem of pain emerges as the great subject of religious enquiry ; for after the dei- fication of all the forces of Xature, which seems to characterise the first writings of most religions — as in the A^edas and in Greek mythology — there gener- ally survives the notion of a single First Cause or Creator, who becomes the principal object of wor- ship, The necessity of propitiating this one God gradually leads to the attributing to him of perfec- tion as well as omnipotence, and then there stands out the awkward fact of pain for explanation. And not only is pain itself difficult to reconcile with creation by an all-good as well as an all-powerful God, but the unequal distribution of pain is difficult to reconcile with the notion of justice. Indeed, this last problem touches man so closely that it swamps every other consideration, and the whole theological system seems to be constructed for the express purpose of furnishing something that will serve as a quietus on this subject. We find, there- fore, grafted on to the pantheism of the Vedas a triune God — Brahma the Creator, Vishnu the Pre- server, and Shriva the Destroyer — the inconsistency between the existence of evil and the omnipotence of the Creator being slurred over by the iucorpora- RELIGION : THE HISTORIC VIEW. 65 tiou of evil with God in a mystical and unthinkable trinity. This is a pitiable makeshift to a mind ac- customed to exact reasoning ; but in matters theo- logical the mind allows itself to be hypnotised by mystical words, because it has to begin by admitting that it is dealing with matters beyond its reach. But this trinitarian compromise of the conflict be- tween omnipotence and pain did not settle the in- justice apparent in the unequal distribution of suf- fering in the world. So glaring is this injustice, that Mr. Kidd finds in it a sufficient reason for religion in itself, and makes religion nothing but an irrational sanction for an otherwise insupportable evil. Undoubtedly the Brahman priests, whose pre- eminence over the other castes depended upon the religious control they could keep over their fellow- beings, felt the importance of furnishing a salve for this dangerous and ever-menacing thought, and so was evolved the notion of an hereafter, which could compensate for the injustice of this life; and the hereafter devised was an ingenious one, involving a strange intuition and anticipation of the doctrine of evolution which was to supplant it : The soul is believed by the Brahman faith to have reached the human stage only by passing through the bodies of lower animals ; it can complete its evolution by re- incarnation in man and increasing knowledge, or it can take a downward way by reincarnation in the lower animals. This doctrine served a double pur- pose : it explained how happiness above the aver- age in this life, if undeserved by human effort, could 66 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. be compensated by degradation in a future life, and how unhappiness below the average in this life could be compensated by advancement, or reincarnation in a more blessed form, thereby solving the problem of injustice as regards distribution of pain ; and it served to induce men to effort, in order to better their condition in this life and the next. There are, of course, a thousand points upon which the doctors of Brahma differed and disputed, but the central jjoint in this faith, as indeed it must be the central point of every living faith, is this question of pain. Buddha introduced no great innovation into this part of Brahman belief. He was essentially a re- former. He directed his efforts against the abuses which attended the ])0wer arrogated to itself by the Brahman priesthood, and against asceticism as a means of salvation, but his teaching is ethical rather than theological. He was not much concerned with purely speculative questions ; his gospel was a gos- pel of effort. He taught that appetite and passion were to be attacked by continual resistance, by oc- cupation in good works, by abstinence from evil thought, and by self-renunciation. His teaching brings prominently to view the essentially dual nature of most religions — that is to sa}^, the difference between theology and ethics. These two must be carefully distinguished, for they have no necessary, though they have a natural relation to one another. Theology is concerned with speculative religion; ethics with practical re- RELIGION : THE niSTORIC VIEW. 67 ligion. The one endeavours to settle the uneasiness of the mind, the other to determine rules of con- duct. It is in the neglect to recognise the dual character of religion that most definitions of it seem to err. Although there may he no necessary relation be- tween theology and ethics there is a natural connec- tion between them, for theology serves to furnish a motive for conduct. The religious motive for con- duct almost invariably takes the shape of divine command, and religions vary chiefly as to the char- acter of this command and its sanction. The God of Israel differs from the Atma of In- dian religions in many notable points. The He- brew mind, richly endowed with imagination and reverence, seems to have arrived at once at a con- ception of an omnipotent Creator without passing through the pantheistic stages of the Vedas and of Greek mythology; but not being possessed with the force of self-reliance which made the Greek and Roman soldier invincible in his prime, it projected for itself a God upon whom it could lean and alto- gether depend. The Hebrew mind was not specu- lative ; it was not concerned with problems of jus- tice and pain ; it was essentially practical ; it wanted a religion that could help Israel to fight its enemies and conquer. Such a religion they found in Jeho- vah, a jealous God, for whom Israel was a chosen people, and who could overcome the enemies of Israel by violence, by miracle, and, if need be, by guile. Such a religion could, so long as the leaders G8 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. of Israel were gifted with the faculty of inspiring enthusiasm and faith, achieve results that fall little short of miraculous; but the moment the leader failed and faith failed, the very fountain of their success failed, and the history of the Jews therefore becomes the history of a succession of failures. The Jewish religion could by its very nature never be- come that of any other race. Christ dealt a death- blow to the Jehovah of the Jews. The conception of God the Father is as different from the concep- tion of the jealous God of Israel as Vishnu the Pre- server is different from Shriva the Destroyer, to which he is opposed in the Brahman trinity. Christ did for the Jewish religion very much what Gauta- ma did for Brahmanism, in that he based the ethical system upon its reasonableness rather than upon a divine command — not that the divine command was wanting in either case, but that reasonableness was added to it. Moreover, for the harsh and even cruel doctrines of the preceding faith was substituted ex- hortation to benevolence and love. But Christi- anity could not come into contact with the Greek philosophy and Roman civilisation without becom- ing speculative, and therefore there was early add- ed to Christ's teaching the formidable institution which allied itself to the state under Constantino and devoured it under Hildebrand. Upon the vague threat of punishment to the wicked and the vague promise of reward to the good, which in Christ's mouth does not necessarily involve more than the measure of happiness which agnostics al- RELIGION : THE HISTORIC VIEW. CQ low to virtue and the measure of pain which agnos- tics allow to vice, was built a complex system of rewards and punishments in after life highly' local- ised and specialised, heaven for one and hell for the other, the keys to both of which were held by the Church, and precise places in which were allotted for a price by priestly condescension. Here, therefore, as in the Indian religions, we find the same imminent problem of pain answered in a somewhat different way : heaven and hell have replaced the Brahman doctrine of transmigration. The most cursory consideration of Islam will serve to indicate that here once more we find the speculative part of religion still devoted to the prob- lem of pain, but, with an insight perhaps superior to that of the Christian Church, the Koran deals main- ly with rewards — hardly at all with punishments. Punishment enough is there in this life. A religion that was to be propagated by war and on the battle- field must not make death a possible entrance to hell. Nothing but visions of Paradise were to attend the dying moments of the faithful ; enough for him to have behind the s]3ur of fate, and before a para- dise of houris. The religion of the Greeks and Romans has not been considered, because it was not of the dual char- acter which seetns essential to a complete religion. It could hardly be said to have constituted a reli- gion at all, for it is only with considerable ditficulty that we can find an ethical element in it, and cer- tainly it was without a shred of speculation. It 70 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. consisted in a poetic deification of the forces of Nature, the ethical tendency of which, if any, was to teach courage in war and respect for ceremonial institutions. The speculative problems of religion were discussed by philosophers quite outside of all relation to religion. It is undoubtedly due to this that philosophy is often confounded with religion. As a matter of fact, however, there is philosojihy which is religious, and philosophy which is totally outside of religion, although they both tend to merge into one another. For examjDle, the prob- lems of the mind can be studied from a purely physiological standpoint, or they may be studied in their relation to that product of the mind itself, the sonl. Tlie physiological view is purely philo- sophical or scientific ; the psychological view tends to become religious or ethical. Ethics themselves are often confounded with re- ligion, because they form so large a part of the re- ligious domain ; and yet, inasmuch as ethics consist of the science of conduct, and conduct is determined by state laws as well as religious commandments, ethics cannot be defined as exclusively a part of reli- gion. The foregoing considerations will serve to indi- cate that all the great and potent religions of the world have been concerned with two different mat- ters : First, theology — that is to say, speculation as re- gards matters not included in the domain of science ; and. RELIGION : THE HISTORIC VIEW. 71 Second, ethics — that is to say, determination of rules of conduct. Theology tends to become confounded with phi- losophy, and ethics with law. Both differ from both in one essential characteristic. All matters that concern religion deal with what, in tlie absence of a better term, we may call the higher nature of man — that is to say, those qualities and motives in man which differentiate him from the lower animals. It has been already pointed out that man is not differ- entiated from the lower animals by the develop- ment of his intelligence. In this matter he differs from them only in degree ; and the cave dwellers of prehistoric days probably differ from the troglodytes of the Miocene period in mental development but little, if at all. Man does, however, differ from them essentially in the fact that he is capable of self-con- trol ; that he can refuse himself present pleasure or suffer present pain from a motive called duty, which, however determining it may be, is nevertheless one which has come into existence largely through the efforts of man himself, and can, thanks to those efforts, become more and more a factor in his con- duct. This sentiment of duty has become evolved not only through ethics, but through theology. It is speculation regarding the mission of human- ity which has confronted us with the problems of creation, of justice, and of pain ; and it is out of the results of these speculations that there has slowly emerged a sense of responsibility, the dictates 72 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. of which have become grouped under one word — duty. Whether, therefore, we regard religion from its S2:)ecnhitive or ethical side, we find it mainly con- cerned with the same class of subjects, in all of which the divine element in man stands strongly contrasted with that which is natural or inherited. In the next chapter, on science and religion, the exact, relation between the divine and the natural in man will be more exactly described. Before attacking that subject, however, from the point of view of science it may be well to point out that the above effort to describe religion is carefully divorced from any and all religious creeds. It is believed to be as applicable to the agnostic as to the church- man, and is particularly addressed to that large and cultivated class of men who are estranged from the Church because of inacceptance of religious creeds and yet abstain from agnosticism because of un- willingness to abandon religious ceremonial ; who are inspired with what in the above sense of the word are the highest religious motives, and are not forgetful of old and hallowed religious associations ; who, in a word, are without any outlet or expres- sion of the religious impulse, which is confidently believed to be more capable to-day of forwarding the interests of humanity than when, divorced from science, it kept the world shackled in the so-called " age of faith." CHAPTER VII. RELIGION : THE SCIENTIFIC VIEW. It may seem an invasion of the domain of re- ligion for science to undertake to define the differ- ence between the human and the divine in man ; and if science undertook to exhaust the subject and to leave religion nothing to say upon it, the objec- tion would not be without foundation. But how- ever inadequate science may be to describe and deal with the divine part of the problem in its entirety, assuredly it ought to have something to say regard- ing the human part, and enough regarding the di- vine to be able to mark the boundary between them. At any rate, this is all that will be claimed for sci- ence in this chapter. It has been already pointed out that a study of animal forms has discovered an evolution in con- duct which roughly keeps pace with evolution of function ; and it becomes important at this stage of the enquiry to define our notion as regards what conduct comprehends. Conduct cannot be confined to intentional or ethical actions, for these last shade into actions that 74 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. are unintentional so insensibly that it is difficult, if not impossible, to draw any hard-and-fast line be- tween them. Conduct must be defined generally as an adjustment of means to ends, and is as applicable under this definition to the random movements of the infusorium as to the delicately adjusted aim of a marksman. What is meant by evolution in con- duct is, that there is traceable in the advance from lower to higher types a gradually increasing adjust- ment of means to ends. In the lowest forms of animal life there seems to be no purpose whatever in animal movements. Those of the infusorium seem to be determined not so much by any inten- tion or instinct on its part as by stimuli in the medium which it inhabits. As function develops, animal movements become less and less incoherent, and the more coherent they become the greater the economy of the race ; for the movements of the infusorium leads it as often into danger as towards food, and millions perish of exhaustion and starva- tion for the few that survive ; whereas, in propor- tion as function develops, and movements become more definitely adjusted to the end in view, there is a corresponding economy not only in the energy of the individual, but in the fecundity necessary for the preservation of the race. The progress, there- fore, seems to be from animals which are homogene- ous — that is to say, without distinguishable func- tions and whose actions are incoherent — to animals which are heterogeneous — that is to say, which have more and more specialised functions and whose RELIGION: THE SCIENTIFIC VIEW. 75 movements are more and more colierent. Again, we find indefiniteness of form accompanying inco- herence of action. Tiius, the amoeba has no precise form ; it can only move by changing its form, pro- truding a part of itself in the direction it wants to go, and then dragging the rest of it after. Other pro- tozoa are mere shapeless sacks. Increased definiteness of form, therefore, as well as definiteness of action, attends development from the lower to the higher order of being. In the same way periodicity marks the higher forms of life, whereas it is quite absent in the earlier forms. The aeration of the air in the blood, and the movements of the blood itself in lower animals, are the result of irregular movements of the body in which there is no trace of rhythm ; Avhereas in the higher forms of life rhythm attends both — the air in the lungs is regularly renewed in the continuous action of breathing, and the blood is poured through the body by the rhythmic beating of the heart. As animals become more and more developed there comes into being, and there becomes more and more developed, a nervous system, which informs them, by the sensations of pleasure and pain, as to which actions tend to prolong life and as to which tend to shorten it, so that it could be said with great probability that the lower animals are induced by sensations of pleasure to perform acts which tend to prolong life, and are deterred by sensations of pain from those acts which tend to abridge it. Even in man it can be said that, as regards most of the func- 76 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. tions of the body, pleasure attends the normal ex- ercise of animal functions, while pain attends ex- cessive or defective exercise of such functions ; though it must be admitted that pleasure and pain are not as determining factors in human decisions as they are in those of the lower animals. The next step we observe in the evolution of con- duct is the tendency of both motive and action to become more complex. Compare, for example, the vague movement of a worm towards the surface of the earth under the impulse of light upon the an- terior part of its body with the complicated move- ments of rapid flight which result in a deer from the definite picture on its retina of a pursuing carnivore. Or com23are this last again with the elaborate action of a judge's mind when charging a jury upon com- plicated facts that have been brought out by the examination and cross-examination of conflicting witnesses during a week's trial. This complexity is enormously increased by the role which conscious- ness plays in determining conduct, and above all by that judgment and choice which follow after. Dan- ger to a doe suggests flight ; but if the doe have just dropped a fawn, a few bounds away will betray her fear ; but the pause and the anxious look back to where the fawn lies will reveal the anxiety of the mother; she will be torn between timidity and ma- ternal love ; and though timidity may prevail in the doe, in other animals less able to defend themselves the maternal love will stay and fight. Here, then, we find a new element involved — the element of judg- RELIGION : THE SCIENTIFIC VIEW. 77 ment ; and this element of judgment is in some ani- mals extremely well developed, as, for example, in the dog, whose sagacity in selecting out of the dozen dogs he meets on a day's walk which of them he can afford to patronise, which he must placate, which he may bully, and to which he must cringe, is hardly surpassed by man himself. And this sense grows with the occasion for it. When animals herd, as has been already noticed, rules of social life have to be agreed upon and obeyed ; and as they become more clearly expressed and more certainly enforced there arise a totally new set of motives for conduct, until at last a man's action becomes determined not by the immediate impulse, but by a set of secondary and even still more remote impulses, such as good fellowship, religion, law, and respect for public opin- ion. And as pleasure tends to accompany the ex- ercise of every function which is adjusted to its spe- cial end, if consistent with the maintenance of life, the exercise of self-restraint on the suggestion of these secondary impulses gradually becomes attended by pleasure, and so the discipline which was at first reluctantly accepted as a necessity ends by being willingly adopted as a virtue. Moreover, attending the evolution of conduct is a corresponding extension of human sympathy, to which reference has already been made in the first chapter, purely self-regarding actions gradually yielding to those which include others in the sex- ual, parental, and tribal relation, so that at last self becomes a vanishing quantity in the cult which we 78 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. finally entertain for the whole race. This exten- sion of sympathy is not an accidental attendant of evolution. Were it not for the growth of parental altruism, j^rogeny would not be sufficiently protected to survive ; and as a highly organised individual be- comes more and more dependent upon the support and help of his fellow-creatures, society, like a spe- cies, survives only on the condition that every gen- eration hands over to the succeeding generations at least as much in the way of benefit as it received from the last. Parental altruism, therefore, must be extended to social altruism ; for if it be not, society, and, as a part of society, the individual, will perish. Now social altruism — that is to say, the considera- tion for others which gradually results from the necessity of men's accommodating to one another in the social state — is no more than a compendium of every virtue ; for out of the exactions of social life there spring first the necessity and next the habit of self-control ; and out of the habit of self-control, guided and governed by the perpetual pressure of social obligations, there result all those other virtues which make social life possible, prosperous, and happy. In the foregoing sketch of the evolution of con- duct the effort has been made to omit every state- ment that could give reasonable ground for contro- versy, and to keep within limits that would command the consensus of all scientific men. But in order to do this many debatable points have been a little slurred, and to these points it will be necessary to RELIGION : THE SCIENTIFIC VIEW. 79 recur ; but before passing to the discussion of them it is well to point out how conformable the main conclusions of the foregoing are with the ethical teaching of religion. Even Mr. Herbert Spencer is constrained to yield a reluctant and somewhat con- descending acknowledgment of it. "After thus observing how means and ends in conduct stand to one another, and how there emerge certain conclusions respecting their relative claims, we may see a way to reconcile sundry conflicting ethical theories. These severally embody portions of the truth ; and simply require combining in proper order to embody the whole truth. " The theological theory contains a part. If for the divine will, supposed to be supernaturally re- vealed, we substitute the naturally revealed end towards which the Power manifested throughout evo- lution works, then, since evolution has been, and is still, working towards the highest life, it follows that conforming to those principles by which the high- est life is achieved is furthering that end. The doc- trine that perfection or excellence of nature should be the object of pursuit, is in one sense true ; for it tacitly recognises that ideal form of being which the highest life implies, and to which evolution tends. There is a truth also in the doctrine that virtue must be the aim ; for this is another form of the doctrine that the aim must be to fulfil the conditions to achievement of the highest life. That the intui- tions of a moral faculty should guide our conduct, is a proposition in which a truth is contained ; for 80 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. these intuitions are the slowly organised results of experiences received by the race while living in presence of these conditions. And that happiness is the supreme end is beyond all question true ; for this is the concomitant of that highest life which every theory of moral guidance has distinctly or vaguely in view. " So understanding their relative positions, those ethical systems which make virtue, right, obligation, the cardinal aims, are seen to be complementary to those ethical systems which make welfare, pleasure, happiness, the cardinal aims. Though the moral sen- timents generated in civilised men by daily contact with social conditions and gradual adaptation to them are indispensable as incentives and deterrents ; and though the intuitions corresponding to those senti- ments have in virtue of their origin a general author- ity to be reverently recognized, yet the sympathies and antipathies hence originating, together with the intellectual expressions of them, are, in their primi- tive forms, necessarily vague. To make guidance by them adequate to all requirements, their dictates have to be interpreted and made definite by science ; to which end there must be analysis of those condi- tions to complete living which they respond to, and from converse with which they have arisen. And such analysis necessitates the recognition of happi- ness for each and all as the end to be achieved by fulfilment of these conditions. " Hence, recognising in due degrees all the vari- ous ethical theories, conduct in the highest form RELIGION : THE SCIENTIFIC VIEW. 81 will take as guides innate perceptions of right duly enlightened by an analytic intelligence, while con- scious that these guides are proximately supreme solely because they lead to the ultimate supreme end, happiness, special and general." * But Mr. Spencer does not make the conformity between the teachings of religion with those of science as great as it really is. He puts himself in an attitude of hostility to theology, which is un- necessary and illogical. Though he may deny the revelations of the " divine will," he too has to evoke the " Power manifested throughout Evolution " ; and he cannot, by giving capital letters to the one and re- fusing them to the other, set his God above the God of Christianity. The power manifested throughout evolution is the God man has more or less ignorantly worshipped since the beginning of the world. We may fight about his manifestations, his attributes, his personality, his laws, but never about his iden- tity. We must all agree that there is no God but one God; the question is, Who is his prophet? Now several observations suggest themselves re- garding the scientific explanation of the evolution of conduct just concluded : In the first place, it assumes that this evolution has proceeded automatically from the beginning, and can proceed automatically to the end. In the second place, it slurs over the important Data of Ethics, pp. 203-205. 82 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. fact that pain and pleasure are no longer determin- ing reasons for conduct in man. In the third place, it assumes that evolution is as applicable to civilised man as to savage brutes. The untrustworthiness of pleasure and pain as guides to action in man is met by Herbert Spencer with the argument that these "anomalies" are "not necessary and permanent, but incidental and tem- porary " ; * that they result from the conflict between the two moral natures adjusted to militant activities on the one hand, and industrial activities on the the other ; that pleasurable and painful sensations are fairly well adjusted to peremjDtory physical re- quirements. It is the emotional pleasures and pains which are in so considerable degree out of adjust- ment to the needs of life. He sums up the subject himself as follows : " Mankind, inheriting from creatures of lower kinds such adjustments between feelings and func- tions as concern fundamental bodily requirements, and daily forced by peremptory feelings to do things which maintain life and avoid those, which bring immediate death, has been subject to a change of conditions unusually great and involved. This has considerably deranged the guidance by sensations, and has deranged in a much greater degree the guid- ance by emotions. The result is that in many cases pleasures are not connected with actions which must * Data of Ethics, chap. vi. RELIGION : THE SCIENTIFIC VIEW. 83 be performed, nor pains with actions which must be avoided, but contrariwise. " Several influences have conspired to make men io-nore the well-workin£j of these relations between feelings and functions, and to observe whatever of ill-working is seen in them. Hence, while the evils which some pleasures entail are dilated upon, the benefits habitually accompanying receipt of pleas- ures are unnoticed ; at the same time that the bene- fits achieved through certain pains are magnified, while the immense mischiefs which pains bring are made little of. "The ethical theories characterised by these per- versions are products of, and are appropriate to, the forms of social life which the imperfectly adapted constitutions of men produce. But with the prog- ress of adaptation, bringing faculties and require- ments into harmony, such incongruities of experi- ence, and consequent distortions of theory, must diminish ; until, along with complete adjustment of humanity to the social state, will go recognition of truths that actions are completely right only when, besides being conducive to future happiness, special and general, they are immediately pleasurable ; and that painfulness, not only ultimate buc proximate, is the concomitant of actions which are wrong. " So that from the biological point of view, ethical science becomes a specification of the con- duct of associated men who are severally so consti- tuted that the various self-preserving activities — the activities required for rearing offspring, and those 84 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. which social welfare demands — are fulfilled in the spontaneous exercise of duly proportioned faculties, each yielding when in action its quantum of pleasure, and who are, by consequence, so constituted that excess or defect in any one of these actions brings its quantum of pain, immediate and remote." * Mr. Spencer seems to have no doubts or fears about the future. In his mind the admirable mechanism which has brought man automatically where he is, will bring him automatically where he would be. The limit of evolution can be reached only in permanently peaceful societies,! and in that direction are we being by evolution slowly urged, until at last " there will disappear that apparently permanent opj)osition between egoism and altruism. . . . As, at an early stage, egoistic competition, first reaching a compromise such that each claims no more than his equitable share, afterwards rises to a conciliation such that each insists on the taking of equitable shares by others ; so, at the latest stage, altruistic competition, first reaching a compromise under which each restrains himself from taking an undue share of altruistic satisfactions, eventually rises to a conciliation under which each takes care that others shall have their opportunities for altru- istic satisfactions ; the highest altruism being that which ministers not to the egoistic satisfactions of others only, but also to their altruistic satisfactions. " Far off as seems such a state, yet every one of * Data of Ethics, chap, vi, f Ibid., chap. ii. RELIGION : THE SCIENTIFIC VIEW. 85 the factors counted upon to produce it may already be traced in operation among those of highest na- tures. What now in them is occasional and feeble, may be expected with further evolution to become habitual and strong; and what now characterises the exceptionally high may be expected eventually to characterise all." * Mr. Spencer does not in so many words say that humanity can attain perfection without effort, but it would be difficult to read the Data of Ethics without concluding that this was Mr. Spencer's opinion ; and it is submitted that no opinion could lead to more pernicious results. Nor, indeed, is such a conclusion inconsistent with the doctrine of determinism which Mr. Spencer, in common with most scientific men, professes. A philosophy the whole trend of which is to make man the puppet of his inclinations and the result of the same automatic agency that ad- vanced animal life from the ascidian to the cepha- lopod, cannot be redeemed by such a page as that which closes The Study of Sociology, and bids us " see how comparatively little can be done and yet find it worth while to do that little : so uniting philanthropic energy with philosophic calm." But men of science are not agreed with Mr. Spencer as to the possibility of man, as we know him, ever attaining the condition of peace and universal altruism which he describes. Evolution is a very terrible process. It is too savage a concep- * Data of Ethics, chap. xiv. 86 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. tion of creation ever to have been imagined by the mind of man. It is because the horrors of it are facts which unmistakably surround us on every side that we have been obliged to yield to it a reluctant ac- knowledgment. And one of the terrible facts of evolution is, that unless propagation is sufficiently great to create a struggle for life, degeneration sets in — or, in other words, unless a race perpetually pro- duces more issue than can be accommodated, there will be no struggle, no privation, no misery, and therefore no selection; and the moment selection stops, not only advance stops but decay sets in. Evolution, like life, knows no compromise ; it can exist only on the condition of activity. Eest is a prelude only to corruption. This biological fact — the central fact of Mr. Kidd's book, and from the ghastly consequences of which he offers us no escape — if applicable to man could result in nothing but discouragement. Fortu- nately, it shares the same fate as Mr. Spencer's placid prospect. These blind processes of Nature are no more applicable to man, in the sense in which Spen- cer and Kidd would apply them, than are those of climate to a hothouse or the rustle of leaves in the wind to a church organ. But at this point we must take up the argument a little further back. The progression from the lowest to the highest forms of life is given to us by the evolutionist as an unbroken series of logical and necessary sequences, some of the links of which may be lost, but all of which can with satisfactory assurance be inferred. RELIGION : THE SCIENTIFIC VIEW. g? All these links are represented to us as bearing to one another the necessary relation of cause and effect ; the forces that have been operating as having operated with all the regularity of law ; the results as having come about with the certainty of fate ; and, lastly, all these laws are assumed and discussed as applicable to humanity without mitigation or exception. And yet the fact is that, so far from each of them being the necessary effect of a known cause, they all rest suspended in space without any foun- dation in cause of any description ; and at least twice, if not oftener, in the course of the series there has entered into the sequence a new fact equally uncaused and unexplained. In the first place, science has as yet furnished no explanation, and will probably never furnish any explanation, for the existence of force or matter. These have to be taken for granted. Unfortunately, scientific men — not all of them, but most of them — forget that they know no more about the origin of either or both of these than Topsy did about her own ; and because they can trace a great deal about the evolution of force and matter they dis- regard the profound ignorance upon which all their subsequent superstructure is founded, and conclude as dogmatically as though they stood planted on a rock. The next gap in their knowledge comes very soon after they have begun to trace the formation of matter into centres of order in the planetary system, for the appearance of life in the world is Just as un- explained and baffling as the presence of force and 7 88 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. matter themselves. But life probably existed in cosmos long before consciousness, and the advent of consciousness is again as bewilderingly unac- counted for as that of life or force or matter. And so, in spite of the beautiful regularity with which the laws of evolution do work, once we have reconciled ourselves to total ignorance as to the causeless com- ing into existence of force, matter, life, and conscious- ness, we must admit that, as regards these four (though it is possible that force and matter are one and the same thing, and we must say three, and not four) effect appears to be without known cause ; in other words, so far as we know, these constitute exceptions to the law of cause and effect ; and un- thinkable though to our minds effect must be with- out cause, as regards force, matter, life, and conscious- ness, we must admit either that they are without cause or that we are so ignorant about the whole matter that we do not know enough to label our own ignorance. Under these circumstances one would imagine that men accustomed to exact reasoning would be chary of denying a phenomenon of our own con- sciousness as clear as that which persuades us that we have the faculty of choice merely because such a faculty would add another to the list of unexplained events. One would imagine that they would be all the more chary of such a denial when they took into consideration the fact that the faculty of choice, if we have it, is a faculty of which we could have no knowledge except through consciousness, which is RELIGION : THE SCIENTIFIC VIEW. 89 itself as unexpluiued as consciousness itself. Nor is this hypothetical faculty of choice an insignificant matter. If it exists, it is the most portentous gift that has been made to man ; it lifts him higher above the lower animals than any other quality that he possesses ; it lifts him not only above all other created beings, but it makes him master of fate itself ; in fact, it is the embryo Godhead in him to which every religion has appealed, and in which alone lies hope of his salvation. This must not be considered as an attempt to de- feat determinism by the hypothesis that man is pos- sessed of a faculty of choice, based upon no stronger argument than a datum of consciousness inconsist- ent with rules of logic. Determinism has ceased to have its paralysing effect from the moment that its anathema on human effort was found to be nothing but a word puzzle ; or, in other words, from the mo- ment we recognised that, although to suit the forms of logic we have to admit that we must obey the greater inclination, we are nevertheless responsible and free because we are able ourselves to make the inclina- tion which we subsequently obey. Nevertheless, it is impossible to overlook the undoubted fact that some of us are as clearly conscious of a faculty to choose a disagreeable alternative over an agreeable one as we are conscious of our own existence; we are conscious not that we have in the past by effort created a greater inclination, but that we are capable now in the present of choosing to act in accordance with a less inclination, because we have a faculty — a special 90 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. faculty, different from anything else in the world — by means of which we can violate the instinct which favors compliance with tlie greater inclination, and act in the teeth of that instinct against that incli- nation. Now, of this faculty we are as conscious as we are of our own existence. The consciousness of our own existence is not disputed, and yet it is en- tirely unexplained ; it is as causeless as the faculty of choice. If we have to admit the one, why not bow to the same necessity and admit the other? It is not necessary that all men should have this faculty ; indeed, it is extremely unlikely that all men would at first have it. Consider how few men or women would ever exert such a faculty ! The vast ma- jority of our fellow-creatures lead purely impulsive lives ; most of them are born with social impulses which make them good fathers, brothers, and sons ; some of them are born with poor social impulses which make them drunkards and incapable ; some of them are born without any social impulses, and these are criminals. How many of them stand squarely before a temptation the punishment for which is not in sight, and refuse to yield to it ? How many of them have temperamentally bad tempers, and without any reason save a sense of duty overcome their temper? or are lascivious, and deny themselves? or are glut- tonous, and abstain ? In a word, how many lead lives of principle and self-restraint without hope of heaven or fear of hell, and with no motive save that of dignity or self-respect? And yet it is these last only who would be exercising this faculty of choice; RELIGION : THE SCIENTIFIC VIEW. 91 for it is of the essence of this faculty that it should be exercised in the absence of such a motive as fear or hope, which would in itself be sufficient to out- weigh the attractiveness of the temptation. In other words, the attitude of the person exercising this supposed faculty must be this: he must be powerfully attracted by the temptation ; it must be one to which he can yield practically without fear of punishment ; he must be buoyed by no belief in a future reward ; dignity and self-respect must in the presence of the magnitude of the temptation seem folly and nonsense ; and yet he must stand firm and resist. The man who does this has a faculty which those who only resist in the presence of a greater natural inclination or fear of pain know nothing of, and concerning which, therefore, they have no right to speak. But the advent upon the world of such a faculty is neither impossible nor improbable. The Amhly- opsis sjoelmus which inhabits the Kentucky cave has no eyes ; if it were exposed to light, it is proba- ble that the most adaptable individuals of the spe- cies would begin by experiencing a sensation on the surface of a portion of their skin that would resem- ble the anterior part of the body of the worm, which, as has been already mentioned, is sensitive to light but not capable of distinguishing objects. Should these individuals be able to communicate with their fellows, how inconceivably difficult would it be for them to convey the character of the new faculty, with the embryo of which they were becoming en- 92 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. dowed. They would, in tlie first place, lack the idea of light, which none could conceive save those who were possessed of the embryonic faculty of vision ; they would lack words to convey an idea which most of them could not conceive ; and the very vagueness of the sensation would contribute to their difficulty, and to the contempt with which their hearers would characterise them. Such is the condition in which we are as regards the faculty of choice. It is as unthinkable for the majority of our fellow-creatures as light is unthink- able for those born blind ; it is as causeless as con- sciousness ; and it is an impertinence for one faction of humanity to pretend to have a faculty that the rest of humanity can know nothiug about. And yet this faculty is within the reach of all ; it exacts of us but two things : faith and effort. Not faith in what we know cannot be true, but faith in what we know may be true ; not effort towards an ideal we know we can never reach, but effort in a direc- tion every inch of progress along which is so much rescued from evil and so much gained in all time for good. And that " Power which manifests itself through- out Evolution," to which Mr. Sj^encer refers ; that Power which created the matter and the force, which started evolution, which broke through the so-called necessary chain of cause and effect, to bring into the world uncaused life first, and uncaused conscious- ness afterwards, is just as able to put into the hearts of men uncaused faculty of choice also ; and He who RELIGION : THE SCIENTIFIC VIEW. 93 has manifested himself not only thronghont evolu- tion, but in the matchless lives of Buddha and Christ, in the leadership of Moses, in the wisdom of Confu- cius, in the fervour of St. Paul, in the poetry of Shakespeare, in the music of Beethoven, and in the frescoes of Michael Angelo ; who to-day inspires men to deeds of beneficence, whether it be one who, swaying the destinies of a great empire, in the name of justice abandons an easy victory over a weak but exasperating foe, or, in the humble life of a sister of charity, spreads the blessings of love iu the strong- holds of misery and hate— this Power has, since the earliest dawn of light, striven to awaken us to a knowledge of Emmanuel, or God with us. And what is this God with us but the great faculty of overcoming evil — which in our humility and weak- ness we have heretofore believed to be the exclusive attribute of God himself? Not outside, but within is the battle to be fought ; not outside, but within is the enemy; and not out- side, but within, the conqueror. Madame de Stael has said that religion was a struggle, not a hymn. Bat with a strong belief in our own Godhead, with a clear recognition that the result depends upon our own efforts, with resolution to continue the effort to the end, and with courage to fight, whatever the odds, this struggling embry- onic faculty which men deny to-day, will gain in strength, in definiteness, in comprehension, so that what seems now a struggle of discouragement will end in hymns of praise. 94 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. And now having recognised that, though evolu- tion does automatically proceed from cause to effect, its apparently necessary sequence has been broken in several notable instances, and having drawn pregnant conclusions therefrom, we have next to consider whether Mr. Spencer's explanation why pain and pleasure are no longer determining mo- tives for man is a satisfactory one, and whether the l^riuciples of evolution are as applicable to man in the future as they have been to the lower animals in the past; for these two questions are intimately as- sociated with one another — the answer to both re- sulting from th'e same as yet unconsidered fact. Mr. Spencer recognises that the failure of i3ain and pleasure correctly to determine what ought to be the conduct of man is due to a conflict, but he regards the conflict as one between two moral na- tures adjusted to what he calls militant activities on the one hand and industrial activities on the other ; and he considers the conflict a purely temporary one, destined to disappear in the era of peace, to- wards which evolution is directing us. It is submitted that this is not an explanation, Mr. Spencer is generally so lucid, that the moment he ceases to be so we are startlingly aware of it. llis standard is sufficiently high for obscurity which we should overlook in most writers to become con- spicuous in him ; it challenges our attention, and suggests that it is not a mere obscurity of expres- sion but an error of thought. There seems no necessary connection between the confusion attend- RELIGION : THE SCIENTIFIC VIEW. 95 ing militant and industrial activities and the con- fusion regarding pleasure and pain. If evolution were proceeding normally from a militant to an in- dustrial condition, there is no more reason why pain and pleasure should wrongly guide during this phase of development than through any other. The conflict which does effect this confusion in the working of pleasure and pain is a far more radical one, and, strange to say, one of which Mr. Spencer takes little or no account. It is nothing less than a conflict between man and the principles of evolu- tion itself. In order to appreciate to the full this very opposite view of man's relation to l^ature we must turn from the works of Mr. Spencer to those of Prof. Huxley. It is like moving out of an ice house into the open air. The ice house has its uses ; there are to be found classified and scrupulously well arranged the corpses of every emotion or senti- ment that have ever animated the human breast ; nay, from the accumulated glaciers of geologic time have these specimens been collected and preserved for us, and there they lie dissected out for our ex- amination and study, from the ancient religion that began with an ancestral ghost to the more modern philanthropic energy which lies congealed in philo- sophic calm. But after some weeks of this care- ful and edifying work we feel that we need the air, and this air we get in the breezy pages of the great agnostic* For here man no longer figures as one of * Prolegomena to Evolution and Ethics. 96 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. the millions of manikins slowly ground forth upon a continually more and more heterogeneous plan, over the workings of which he never had and never will have any but a merely derisory control. On the contrary, he appears as a combatant, instinct with vigour and life, defiantly pitting himself against the very forces of Nature to which Spencer tends to regard him as hopelessly subjected. For man is no longer mere plaster in the mould of evolu- tion ; he has taken to the business of moulding himself; he has parted with ferocity and passion and impulse, and has put in their place cour- age and love and self-restraint ; he is studying ISTature as a chess player studies his board ; he is learning the moves of the destroyer and the answer- ing moves with which they are to be met. Xature is discovered to include two sets of forces : those that make for life and survival and advancement, and those that make for death and degeneration. Man has undertaken by knowledge and by art to put on his side the one and to counteract the other ; he collects his food from all the corners of the earth so as to secure variety ; he cooks it in order to destroy dangerous germs and to reduce to the ut- most the labour of digestion ; he collects fuel in a convenient form in houses of ingenious contrivance, so that he can secure light, heat, and ventilation ; chemistry, physics, mineralogy, architecture, me- chanics, and their allied industries, all help him in his Avar against the hostile elements of Nature ; physiology and medicine fight disease ; astronomy RELIGION : THE SCIENTIFIC VIEW. 97 guides his ships ; the winds fill his sails ; steam turns his wheels ; the fitful flash of lightning is converted by his art into a steady illuminating glow ; every useful force in Nature is turned to account in order to fight those other forces in Nature which are in his way. Ever conquering for himself new territory, he finds every new territory occupied by a new demon which he has to study and exorcise; he no sooner overcomes his ferocity than he becomes a prey to indolence, or conquers his indolence than he returns to ferocity ; he no sooner enlarges his brain than lie breaks down his body, or builds np his body but debilitates his brain ; as the individual improves productiveness decreases, and the propagation of the race is left to less-developed types ; and so, like a skilful fencer, he is forever advancing a step and retreating a step, seizing on his advantage here, covering a false at- tack there, but on the Avhole gaining and continuing to gain if he will only fight the fight manfully to the end. And it is because man is fighting Nature that Nature no longer conveys to him by the simple though cruel warning of pain when he must leave off, or by the alluring message of pleasure when he may persist. He has created for himself an arti- ficial habitation, where he must often endure pain that good may come and abstain from pleasure lest evil ensue ; and it is this very confusion of pleas- ure and pain that is making him wise as well as brave ; for knowledge, which at first was mere curi- 98 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. osity, has now become to him a dire need ; and cour- age, which he once directed only against his fellow- creatures, he now summons to the daily conflict with himself. We can therefore subscribe neither to the quiet assumptions of Mr. Spencer as to the automatic con- veyance of humanity to the gates of universal peace, nor to the dreadful doctrine of Weismann, that un- less there is enough misery to create conflict and selection the race must degenerate. Nor is it neces- sary to follow Prof. Huxley to the " procession of the great year." What the future has ultimately in store for the race no man can tell. What it has immediately in store for us and for our children we can tell, and it is our busiuess to know. Those who know this best will do best for themselves and their environment. A brain to know, a heart to love, and a soul to choose — these constitute the equipment of a man ; and with this equipment he need not fear to go out to battle with the world. If, therefore, we revert to the original subject of this chapter, as to what light science throws upon the difference between the human and divine in man, we have to distinguish between the teach- ings of different philosophers. We cannot rest on the comfortable assumption that evolution is au- tomatically doing the work of advancement for us ; nor need we believe that there is no future for man but one of perpetual misery and conflict. The plain story of human life is not a difficult one to read if we will approach the facts without bias or prejudice. RELIGION: THE SCIENTIFIC VIEW. 99 Man is a battlefield in which the forces of Xature are at work in ceaseless conflict as in other animals ; but he differs from all other animals in this, that he is himself a factor in the fight. Now all the tendencies in him which he inherits from his savage ancestors and which make against the social ideal are opposed to those tendencies in him which make for this ideal and have come into existence dnriug the struggle ; it is to those continually opposed and opposing tendencies that we refer when we speak of the human and the divine in man. Were they always sharply opposed in us, the difficulty of dis- tinguishing them would not be great ; unfortunate- ly, so far from being s]iar[)ly contrasted they often merge into one another. We are like soldiers who are called upon to fight an army a large part of which wears the same uniform as ourselves ; we can- not always distinguish our enemies from our friends. Human qualities include not only vices that are hostile to the divine — as, for example, passion, fero- city, selfishness, but also weaknesses that, without being directly hostile, may through unwisdom or excess become so. Hunger, thirst, sexual desire, are all needs which require legitimate gratification ; the body cannot function at all without satisfying the first two, and can probably not function at its best without satisfying all three ; and yet there is not one of them that does not continually engage us in a conflict which partakes of ethical character and results in ethical consequences. Without, then, endeavouring to enter too curiously into the ques- 100 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. tiou, it can be broadly stated that every tendency or desire or effort that we share with tlie lower animals is human as contrasted with those with which they find themselves in conflict ; and these last, because they are prompted by sentiments which in all ages have been termed religious, and because they are the evidences of the God in us, we call divine. And here, at the risk of interrupting the logical sequence of the argument, it seems indispensable to point out that no effort will be made in these pages to deal with any problems of tlie remote past or of the remote future except in so far as those problems have a direct bearing upon our conduct to-day. This may seem defective to many religious people — and the word religious is here used in its widest as well as its narrowest sense — because they have been long accustomed to regard some of these problems as inseparably connected with both ethics and the- ology. Such problems as the origin of the religious sentiment, the immortality of the soul, and the future state are amongst those to which reference is here made. It may be contended at once that the origin of the religious sentiment has already been consider- ably discussed. So it has ; but only so far as our knowledge of it in the past tends to contribute to the framing of rules of conduct for the present. The pretence of having in any sense explained how tbe re- ligious sentiment arose in the human heart is here ex- pressly disclaimed ; and for an excellent reason — no less a reason than because no theory has as yet been given, and none can as yet be imagined that does ex- RELIGION : THE SCIENTIFIC VIEW. 101 plain it. How the faculty of choice — if such exists — arose, is as little explicable as how the shapeless sac of the protozoou developed into the complex organ- ism man ; how it acquired its senses, its organs of vision, of smell, of taste. We can watch and describe the process, but we cannot explain it. We have in the end to refer it, as Herbert Spencer does, to the " Power manifested through Evolution " ; and reference to this unknown Power implies not only the limits of our knowledge, but recognition of a force superior to natural laws, and therefore entitled to the name supernatural. Of course it is possible that all that seems now supernatural may with increase of knowledge cease to be so, and fall within natural laws. But this future possibility is not a resource upon which we can draw to-day. We must admit to-day that we are wholly incapable of explaining how there came into existence the wonderful faculty of seeing with the eye, and the still more wonderful faculty of seeing with the heart or mind. Nothing can be more amazing than this trinity of sense : the material organ of the eye with its faculty of vision ; the quasi material organ of the mind with the faculty of imagination ; and the apparently immaterial, purely spiritual or- gan of the heart or emotions with its faculty of reli- gion. Herbert Spencer may be satisfied with his doctrine of ancestral ghosts ; science may be satisfied with the evolution of ethical synchronously with that of physical function ; but these are merely de- scriptions of processes. Every effort to explain leads 102 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. lis back necessarily to the unknown Power who has decreed that these things shall be as described, and who, working in the main along the line of cause and effect, is free to depart from that line, and has departed from it. Eeligion, to many of us, and perhaps to the best of us, is the whole of life. Other things become dwarfed by its side ; like grief, it becomes a " solemn scorn " of all things else. To these, the attempts of science to trace religion, to measure or define it, seem no less than a sacrilege. Nor is this sentiment without foundation in reason. When we are brought by calamity face to face with the cruelty of life there is no alternative but either to surrender or fight. If we surrender, we consign ourselves to a life of wretchedness; our wretchedness adds itself to the wretchedness of others, and we contribute to increase the pain in the world. If we fight, we join the ranks of those who have the hope and courage to believe that the human lot can by human effort be im- proved, and then we contribute to diminish the pain in the world. If we have suffered enough, this battle with pain, whether it be physical, mental, or moral, becomes overwhelmingly the most impor- tant work that there is in the whole of creation to do. Now, religion is the categorical imperative which sets us on to this work ; and once engaged in it we can hardly suffer with patience the dilettante dandy- ism that sometimes characterises scientific enquiry into its origin. Reverence sets religion upon an altar ; builds a temple about it ; sacrifices to it the RELIGION : THE SCIENTIFIC VIEW. 103 pride of previous convictions ; boldly proclaims it supernatural, and drives from its shrine with indis- criminate indignation philosopher, sceptic, and cynic alike. Now, if we must bow to the supernatural in the world, is any philosophy which pretends to ignore it philosophical '? Is not the temper that tries to keep it in the background irreverent? Is not the inconsistency that admits it in one page and denies it in another sacrilegious ? And so, while the study of those facts which science has marshalled to demonstrate the process through which religious sentiment is evolved is in- structive and necessary to an understanding of the relation of religion to conduct, no attemjot will be made to deal with the inexplicable problems how re- ligion came into the world, why man was set upon preferring the noble to the ignoble, why he chooses to do a hard thing instead of consenting to do an agreeable thing. We can trace the gradual devel- opment of the religious faculty as we trace the growth of the organ of vision in the animal king- dom ; we can demonstrate its reasonableness ; we can show the ultimate advantage of ethical conduct in the end ; but here the mission attempted in these pages ends. Pain is a fact ; religion is a fact ; little is known of the past ; nothing is known of the future. But that religious effort can do something to diminish pain is a conclusion of certain and in- calculable value ; and so whatever may have been the origin of the religious sentiment, whether our souls be mortal or immortal, whether there be a 8 104 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. heaven or a hell, the enhancement of the religious faculty must remain the one essential effort, and how this can be promoted the one essential enquiry. What, then, is the outcome of it all? As has been already, with perhaps w^earisome iteration, charged, the salient, horrible fact of life is pain. But jjain comes attended by a thousand min- isters of love and consolation. That the life of char- ity, as St. Paul understood the word, is the life which, if followed by all, would most diminish pain in the world, cannot be doubted. That the life of charity can be consistently lived in this world of villainy and injustice is doubtful in the extreme. Life must therefore consist of a comj^romise between charity and self-defence, or, as Mr. Spencer would put it, between altruism and egoism. It does not consist in floating calmly on the propitious waves of evolution, nor need it be darkened by fears of the misery necessary to create selection ; but it does consist of a conflict between the human and divine in us that is sometimes difficult, sometimes exhila- rating, sometimes desj^erate. The man who hopes that religion can show him a royal road to perfection or happiness is like the camel that, having to climb a mountain, asked the way to do so across the plain. We must all strive to increase our knowledge so that the soul may know what orders to give the body, and the body be strong to carry out the orders of the soul ; and we must strive to keep alive in us that faculty of choice or ability to create the greater in- clination which makes us masters of ourselves ; we RELIGION : THE SCIENTIFIC VIEW. 105 must be clear that it is by our own efforts that we can work out our own salvation ; we must revere the God in us, and the God in those around us ; we must seek knowledge, health, courage, and reverence — not any one, but all togetlier — that a man may be teres atque rotundus, with a wholesome mind, a wholesome body, a wholesome, courageous, revering heart. When religion and science have come together to make up such a man as this, then, perhaps, he may be fitted to undertake self-government on that larger field which, because it is larger, is for that reason more complicated and more difficult, and yet upon which every adult male is now at liberty to break a lance in his own cause as well as in that of the commonwealth — politics. But before we enter on the subject of politics we have still to consider the relation of the Church to the state. CHAPTER VIIL THE CHUKCH AND THE STATE. Two recent books have undertaken to deal with the role which the Church has to play in practical life. One of them, penned in the cloistered seclusion of the university, unfolds with scholarly calm the history and mission of the Church universal ; it handles the subject with love and reverence ; it appeals to the reason and the heart of culture, and concludes in favour of the hope and belief that the Church is destined to increase its command over the consciences of men. The other, pounded out in the turmoil of the city, dictated hurriedly to stenographers during moments snatched from the absorbing duties of a publisher, prompted by the sceva indignatio of one who has seen vice triumph on the very steps of the altar, regarding Christ and the Church as mere pawns in his game, and in a rage to find that they do not prevent a stalemate, seizes that Church universal by the throat ; reminds it that it is, or should be, also a Church militant ; rates it for not usurping the duties of the state in the suppression of gambling, prostitution, and polit- ical corruption ; threatens to create a rival civic 106 THE CHURCH AND THE STATE. 107 church which shall do what the Church militant has failed to do ; and closes with a chapter that antici- pates time as well as victory in a description of Chicago rid by his scheme of gamblers, prostitutes, and politicians, and converted by a maritime canal into a seaport, the capital of the United States and the — hostess of the German Emperor ! It would be impossible to conceive of men more different in temperament and education than Mr. Lilly and Mr. Stead ; nor would it be possible to treat the same subject more differently than they do ; and yet upon one essential point they entirely agree : both see and declare that the Church fails to deal with the evils it was instituted to destroy, and both seek a remedy. Mr. Lilly, after an able ex- position of the superior claims of Christianity over Buddhism and Islam, traces the influence of this Church through the middle ages, the Eenaissance, and our own time. He points out that the history of the world presents us with three distinct conceptions of the relation of religion to human society : in ancient times it was national ; during the middle ages it was universal ; to-day it has become indi- vidual. The great and distinguishing peculiarity of the middle ages is that in them throughout Europe the whole structure of man's life, both public and private, was built upon religion ; and as there was but one religion, and the Pope was the head of that religion, the papacy constituted a power independent of national lines, a spiritual kingdom — the Catholic Church, with which Christendom was coterminous. 108 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. Guizot is quoted in support of this statement. " It is just at the moment when the Roman Empire is breaking up and disappearing that the Christian Church gathers itself up and takes its definite form. Political unity perishes, religious unity emerges." * To quote Mr. Lilly himself upon this point : " Hence Christendom, rather than the particular region of it in which they happened to dwell, was regarded as their true country and the first object of their patriotism. The rigid lines of de- marcation which in the ancient world had separated races, and had made the words stranger and ene- my synonymous, were broken down. The phrase ' Christian commonwealth ' was a realit}', and the several European states were sections of it. Eor the first time in the world's history, as a learned writer has well observed : ' we see not merely man, but humanity. The citizen and the helot, Greeks and barbarians, have disappeared, and in their place is a family of brothers, with one divine Father.'" f The Pope, too, according to Mr. Lilly, was the arbiter of Europe ; he was forever interposing between rival states and conflicting parties with the words of the leader of Israel, " Sirs, ye are brethren." The great injury which the Eenaissance did the world was to break down the power of the Pope. From that period, what with the abuses in the Church denounced by Luther, the political * Guizot, sec. xii. p. 230. f Lilly's Claims of Christianity, p. 111. THE CHURCH AND THE STATE. 109 secession of England, and the pbilosopby of Rous- seau, religion has tended more and more to become a matter of individual conscience, less and less one of obedience and faith. But the legitimate conse- quence of separating Church and state is to restore to the Church the plenitude of her sovereignty in her own domain. In the exercise of that sovereignty it is inevitable that she should come into conflict with the state, for the two polities exist side by side for different ends though they govern the same persons. Marriage and education, for examjile, are obvious occasions of conflict, and the difficulty is increased by the fact that the new liberalism is to a large extent fanatically anti-Christian. But the principles of Christianity are impregnable ; they alone can withstand the modern tendency to strengthen the state against the individual, and it is probable that in this new age " the office of the Catholic Church in vindicating the rights of con- science, the immunities of the city of God, will be of even more importance to mankind than in the primi- tive and medieval ages. But we must ever re- member that it is a new age. The old regime has vanished in the ecclesiastical as in the civil sphere. The intellectual conditions of life have changed as well as the political. And it is a grave question how far Catholicism has as yet responded to the needs of modern thought. Philosophy must expand in order to deal with the fresh problems raised by modern physics and modern metaphysics, collecting and collating the elements of truth scattered through 110 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. S3'stems the most incongruous. To rear such a philo- sophical edifice is the great architectonic work lying before us in the order of thought." * It is not easy to understand how Mr. Lilly pro- poses to settle the conflict which he recognises must be waged between the Church and the state on mat- ters so fundamental as marriage and education, nor how the story of the Church can be deemed complete without reference to the check which the Church put upon scientific research in the middle ages, or the revenge which scientific research has taken on the Church in recent days. Last, but not least, how far, if at all, the Roman Church can " respond to the needs of modern thought " without sapping the very foundations on which she rests, must remain extreme- ly problematic. That the Roman Church will con- tinue to do its great work among those that profess her creed must be the pious wish of all who believe that a large part of humanity stands in need of the peculiar kind of support and consolation which the Roman Catholic Church seems peculiarly fitted to give ; that the movement of humanity is not to-day clearly in the direction of progress all frank people must admit; that Christianity does by the everlast- ing truth of its morality keep man up to his fight with evil must also be admitted; that the Roman Church did in the middle ages contribute towards the survival of Christianity as an institution even Protestants may admit ; but whether the Roman * Lilly's Claims of Christianity, p. xxxv. THE CHURCH AND THE STATE. m Church can ever recover its old international suprem- acy, or whether, even if it could, it is desirable that it should do so, is more than doubtful. A large ]3art of the Eonian Catholic population in America would undoubtedly reject such a suggestion with patriotic indignation ; Protestants would combat it with fa- natic rage, and all men of science would respond to it with an emphatic No. In any conflict which the Koman Church undertakes with the state in America, whether on the subject of marriage or edu- cation, she will be hopelessly worsted. Nothing, therefore,- remains for her to do but to expand her philosophy so as to make it " respond to the needs of modern thought." When she begins this work it will be time to discuss her ability to do so. As yet we can but recognise that she does exert a tremendous force upon the individual lives of men ; that she does take care of her poor, visit the sick, and, through the angelic lives of some of her orders, spread the blessings of loving-kindness amongst men. That she may continue to do this, and by modification of dogma may increase the number of those whom she beneficially affects, is devoutly to be hoped ; but that her relations to the state and her conflicts with the state may be diminished to the ut- termost cannot but be desired by all who have her interests most at heart. Let us now close Mr. Lilly's book for a moment and turn to Mr. Stead's. We must not allow our- selves to be shocked by the title of Mr. Stead's book into the belief that for that reason it is worthless. 112 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. Mr. Stead knows notliing of the sentiment that pauses after pronouncing the name of Christ. But if reverence be conspicuous by its absence, there is no lack of discernment in its pages ; they fairly burn with apostolic zeal, and the suggestions they contain demand our earnest study. Mr. Stead sees that re- ligion has failed to do its work in Chicago ; that " the churches, by insisting so exclusively upon the other life, have banished Christ from his own world, and by the substitution of divine worship for human service have largely undone the work of the incarnation." * He also sees with the keen eye of the practical man — and it is here that he strides far ahead of Mr. Lilly — that " the separation of religion from politics has enthroned Satan in the City Hall," and that it is only by restoring to religion its control over the public as well as the private lives of men that he can be driven therefrom. He sees that almost every social evil depends for its luxuriance upon the char- acter of the local government ; that almost every great problem with which our churches and chari- table institutions are wrestling depends chiefly for its solution not upon the churches and charitable societies, but upon the faithfulness of our public serv- ants ; the problem of pauperism upon the wisdom and devotion of our charity commissioners; the problem of vice upon the watchfulness and fidelity of our police ; the problem of education upon the impartiality and enlightenment of our school trus- * If Christ came to Chicago, p. 14. THE CHURCH AND THE STATE. 113 tees ; moreover, all these officers derive their inspi- ration for good or evil from the mayor, who stands above them all. Mr. Stead sees that if religion is to do its work in our x^LUierican cities it must take hold of local politics with a resolute grip, and his book is largely an exposition of this necessity and an exhortation to this end. The facts stated therein are familiar to every student of municipal govern- ment in the United States ; they are not overdrawn — it would be difficult to overdraw them; tlie depth of degradation they reveal is appalling, but hardly more so than the indifference with which it is regarded by the citizens whose lack of civic sense is hirgely responsible for it. The question of munici- pal misgovernment will be treated in a separate chapter. What concerns us particularly in Mr. Stead's book is the method proposed by him to correct it, viz., the organization of what he terms a civic church. In reading Mr. Stead's chapter on this subject we must learn to read without impatience that, in contemplating tlie evils rampant in Chicago, he " felt sorry for Christ." AVe must learn to excuse the in- veterateness which insists on preserving the name civic church for the associations Mr. Stead desires to see formed for municipal improvement, although he admits that Cardinal Manning wrote him : " Call it anything but a church, and I am with you with all my heart; call it a church, and not one of my people will lift a finger to help you " ; and although the Methodists were even more vehement in their denun- ciation of the term. We must get over our astonish- 114 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. ment to find that this proposed cliurcli is to be " not only a place of worship, but a pleasant lounging place where the members may find any recreation they de- sire," and that it is to include " a large amusement hall, billiard and pool tables, checkers, dominoes, and other games, and stands for the sale of cigars, light temperance drinks, and lunches." All these things are the Salvation Army side of Mr. Stead's book, and not for that reason the least valuable to the student of the religions of to-day. We cannot afford any longer when our reverence is shocked on one side of the road to pass disdainfully over to the other. The Salvation Army is doing a great work upon the mem- bers of the army itself, if upon no one else ; the methods it employs challenge our attention and respect, however distasteful they may seem. Xo one who has heard them defended by Mrs. Ballington Booth can fail to recognise that they have enlisted in the cause at least one woman of genius and refine- ment. The lesson to be learned from Mr. Stead's book is that the great evils from which humanity is suffering to-day are evils that can be handled only by religious sentiment ; that the handling of those evils has been in great part surrendered to the state ; that the state has itself been delivered over to cor- rupt political machines ; that such machines are not only unwilling, but unable, to deal with those evils ; and that nothing but a religious awakening of the citizens to their public duties can save countless millions from misery, and the state itself from deg- radation. * THE CHURCH AND THE STATE. 115 Mr. Lilly seems to think that the Eoman Catho- lic Church may still prove able to overcome evil by enlarging its creed so as to respond to the needs of modern thought; and Mr. Stead, tired of waiting for this millennial day, proposes to run an oppo- sition church on the lounging-place, cigars, and pool-table principle. Are either of these sugges- tions practicable? and, if not, where do they fall short ? The extreme danger of restoring the Church to a position which could precipitate her into conflict with the state has been already briefly referred to. In Anglo-Saxon countries such a proposition is too repugnant to require discussion. The Church is ex- pected to act upon the conscience and conduct of the individual, but is also expected to abstain from all collision with the state. How, then, can the Church, as such, attempt to deal with political mat- ters? and if the Church cannot do it, whence is the new Messiah to arise ? There is a deeper reason than one of mere policy for confining the Christian Church to its influence upon individual conduct, and the reason is obvious enough. Christ aimed at no more ; he did not at- tempt to deal with man's relation to the state except upon the memorable occasion when the Pharisees sought to ensnare him with the question, " Is it law- ful to give tribute unto Caesar, or not?" and with divine sagacity he answered, " Render therefore unto Cffisar the things which are Csesar's ; and unto God 116 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. the tilings that are God's." * Christ disappointed the Hebrew hope that their Messiah would be a political deliverer. His message was not to captive Israel, but to captive humanity. Quite apart from the question of policy, which alone would have sufficed to prevent Christ from setting himself against the whole power of the Eoman Empire, the character of his mission was essentially individual, not political ; his whole teaching is directed towards helping men to be lov- ing and just towards one another ; to eradicate evil in its very source — the human mind ; to prefer things spiritual to things worldly. It constituted a morality which every man was entreated to apply to his daily life. Man's private conduct, not his public conduct, was the object of Christ's concern. Nor is this strange, for in those days man's public conduct could call upon him but for a single virtue — obedi- ence. St. Paul carries the exhortation to obedience still further, for he contends that all temporal rulers are heaven-appointed : " For there is no power but of God : the powers that be are ordained of God. Whosoever therefore resistetli the power, resisteth the ordinance of God : and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation." f There is no room here for the divine right of insurrection, but only for the divine right of kings. Paul is un- ceasing in his exhortation to obey the powers that be ; I nor does Peter refrain from a similar in junc- * Matthew xxii, 17, 21. $ Hebrews xiii, 17 ; Titus iii, 1. f Romans xiii, 1, 2. THE CHURCH AND THE STATE. HY tion.* But if Christ abstained from dealing with public questions merely because his gospel did not include them, it is far otherwise with the apostles. To tliem and to the success of their teaching it was absolutely indispensable tliat no doubt should exist as to the purely religious character of their exhor- tations ; hence the care with which obedience to the temporal powers is taught, and the charge of treason to Roman rule avoided. How entirely different is the relation of the in- dividual to the state to-day ! Throughout the whole of the middle ages — the age of faith — obedience remained the single rule that determined the relations of the citizen to the state. It was only at that period of the " breaking loose of human faculties" called the Eenaissance that the virtue of yesterday became the reproach of to-day. Eevolt and revolution stamp every page of history until the manacles which Church and State had put upon the minds and conduct of men were loosened. The sovereignty which had resided in the crown and tiara was shattered into as many frag- ments as there were citizens in the state possessed of the franchise. Government passed from the throne to the people, and the duty of the citizen changed from the exercise of obedience to that of authority. Is it possible to conceive of a more complete over- turn? And there is nothing in the teaching of the * I Peter ii, 13, 17. 118 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT, gospels, much less in that of the Church, to provide for this altered state of things. Nor has the Church been at all able to accommodate itself thereto. In many countries she has been dethroned and dimin- ished. She has had to confine herself strictly to dealing with her parishioners in their i^rivate as distinguished from their political capacity. She has — to use the modern phrase — been obliged to " keep out of politics," And not only has the Church been obliged to keep out of politics, but so also have all the institutions to which the Church gives rise — charitable societies, foundling asylums, orders, hosj^itals, homes for the aged. It is a pity that there cannot be added to this list the most important of all her institutions — parish schools. These, unfortunately, bring her into that " necessary conflict " with the state which Mr. Lilly confesses and deplores. At any rate, serious as this question of education is, it is clear that the Church is endeavouring to make its conflict with the state at this point as little felt as possible, and at all other points the divorce between the Church and politics is absolute. Nor is this state of things confined to the Ro- man Church ; it is necessarily the case with every Church and every creed. Even such purely lay institutions as the Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor, and the Charity Organisa- tion Societies, have to steer clear of politics, and carefully insert a clause to this effect in their con- stitutions. THE CHURCH AND THE STATE. II9 Now this liolding off from politics has had a singuhir and subtle reaction not only upon the Church, but upon all who attend church. These last have become so accustomed to the idea that as churchmen they must have nothing to do with politics that they have learned to regard all questions concerning the state as outside of their jurisdiction ; the more devoted they are to their Church and their Church institutions the more they abstain from tak- ing any interest, much less active part, in political matters ; so that abstention from politics has grown to be a sort of virtue, and, indeed, a matter of pride. Gradually all persons in oflfice become regarded with some of the consideration which St. Paul exhorted the Romans to entertain for the powers that be, and churchgoers become resigned to municipal abuses in very much the same spirit as they became resigned to clerical abuses in the days of the Borgias. This tendency is enhanced by the fact that the Church and Church institutions are continually brought into contact with municipal officeholders, and gener- ally in the relation of men who have favours to ask. Every Church is a landowner. The Roman Catholic Church is a very large landowner. Every owner of land is brought continually into contact with the city authorities in regard to such questions as assessments, improvements, sewers, police protection, and the like. In such cities as New York, where a per capita allowance is paid to religious institutions for those whom they support, this relation is intimate and apt to become collusive. Charitable societies are 120 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. continually called upon to confer with the heads of public charities, of prisons, of public schools. The necessity for this intercourse occasions a mutual disposition to be on good terms with one anotlier ; especially is this the case with those who are in the relation of suppliants for favour. There arises there- fore amongst churchgoers and charitable people a notion that, however evil the city authorities may be, they are to be appeased, not fought, and, in the lan- guage of a contributor to the Charities Eeview, that more can be got out of them by co-operation than by resistance. When, therefore, municipal abuses become too great for endurance, and the outraged citizen who is not a Churchman goes to the kolXol KayaOoi of the community for help to correct them, he is amazed to find that but little if any help can be exjoected from them. Clergymen very justly say that they cannot divide their congregations by introducing amongst them the sword of politics. The same answer is made by such bodies as the Young ]\Ien's Christian Association, by the managers of workmen's and boys' clubs — in fact, by every religious institution that has a pulpit or educational influence. But this is not all. The habit of tolerating municipal abuses and of conciliating municipal bosses has created a temperament which is perhaps a still more redoubtable enemy to good government than the enforced neutrality of religious bodies; for it is temperament that determines conduct, and it is from the conduct of her citizens that a citv benefits I THE CHURCH AND THE STATE. 121 or suffers. Xow if the temperament of the best of her citizens is one of submission to municipal mis- government and of aloofness from all matters polit- ical, then the salt has lost its saltness, and we may well ask, Wherewith shall it be salted? Doubtless there enters into this apathy as re- gards the general weal a sense of property in a par- ticular good work which absorbs the public spirit of those who succumb to it. One wealthy citizen of New York has a university in Chicago to which he devotes whatever millions he cannot spend out of his income ; he therefore cannot subscribe a dollar to save his own city from Tammany misrule. An- other gentleman has devoted himself to young men's clubs, and cannot allow his name to be asso- ciated with any political faction that might tend to diminish his influence in his clubs. Another has devoted himself to the rescue of children from the streets, and feels that all the time at his disposal is sufficiently taken up thereby. And so we are like a well-intentioned but insubordinate crew on an un- seaworthy ship. Each one of us has attached him- self to a particular leak, and will not hear of giving heed to any other matter, however much greater may be its importance to the safety of the ship. It is useless to point out to him that while he is sponging away a few comparatively harmless drojDS at the point to which he is devoting himself, tuns of water are pouring into a gaping hole in the ship's side. " That is not my business," answers the placid philanthropist ; " I have only a limited amount of 122 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. time at my disposal ; I cannot devote that time to more than one point on this sliip's surface. I have associated my name and my personality with this particular leak, which, you may observe, I am now engaged in watching and staunching ; I am attached to it, and I flatter myself that it has become attached to me. The task is an humble one ; but I am not ambitious. I know my duty better than you do, and nothing — no, not the safety of the ship, nor your safety, nor the safety of my fellow-creatures, nor even the safety of myself and family — will induce me to swerve from the task, modest though it may be, which I have learned to consider peculiarly my own." That this sort of self-righteousness and self- regard has something to do with the abstention of pious people from politics must be admitted ; and yet it must be regarded as symptomatic of the evil rather than the evil itself. The evil itself lies deeper down in the temperament created by a sys- tematic reference to the Church as a guide in mat- ters of conduct, and a systematic silence on the part of the Church regarding that large part of a citizen's duties which, now that he is sovereign, lie outside of the Church, outside of himself, outside of his home, in that public arena which has been cursed by the name of — politics. That this state of things should be disheartening to those who are endeavouring to supjiress a par- ticular abuse at a particular time is not astonish- ing ; but that it should be disheartening to those who study these questions upon a wider horizon is TPIE CHURCH AND THE STATE. 123 hardly possible. When an evil is the necessary re- sult of a change for the better, there is every reason to hope that it will carry its own remedy with it. This is the usual course of development ; and that the evil under examination comes within this cate- gory seems highly probable. A brief consideration of this question will not here be out of place. Is the evil under discussion a necessary result of a change for the better ? When, on All-Saints eve, 1517, Luther nailed his ninety-five theses to 'the door of the Castle church at Wittenberg, he little knew, and the world little knew, what a revolution he had started ; for by attacking papal authority he attacked all author- ity in its very stronghold. The Pope in his person represented the authority of the Church, and it was the Church that had held up the authority of every Christian king in Europe. It was but a step — and a very natural step — from the discussion of the authority of the Church to the discussion of the authority of the crown ; and if ecclesiastical abuses had paved the way to the one, there were not want- ing lay abuses to pave the way to the other. Abuse of authority brought its own remedy in state as well as in Church government. The same people that claimed the right of jirivate judgment in matters clerical claimed it later in matters political ; and so they overthrew the temporal as well as the ecclesias- tical despot, and undertook the task of governing themselves. But here came the rub. It was an 124 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. easy and delightful task to j)ull down the Pope and the king, but the setting up of a substitute was less easy and altogether troublesome. The task, there- fore, which the people failed to perform was taken in hand by the few enterprising men who in every community know how to take advantage of the rest. The people did not awake, and has not yet awaked, to the responsibility it assumed in undertaking to govern itself. It seems a simple thing to cut out a cancerous growth ; but the scar that is left behind is likely to give place to a hundred cancers in its place. The growth can be extracted, but not the disease. So the king who abuses power can be de- throned ; but this dethronement of a king does not suppress the abuse of power for all time. The gov- ernment has to be run, and governing involves the exercise of power. Somebody must exercise this power. The perpetual question for the people to de- cide is, Who shall exercise it ? The difference between monarchical and popular government is not that in one case the monarch and in the other case the peojile rule. The difference is that in one case who the ruler shall be is determined by circumstances beyond the control of the peojile, and in the latter it is determined by circumstances within the control of the people. The privilege of the people, therefore, is not to gov- ern themselves, but periodically to select those who are to govern them, either by making their laws or by executing them. In order that popular government should work prosperously two things are above all requisite : THE CHURCH AND THE STATE. 125 First, the people must be free to express their will at the polls; and, second, the people must be suffi- ciently enlightened to express a will that is wise and honest, and not one that is foolish or corrupt. Now, if we take the second of these two first, it will not take long for us to decide that the people are not and could not be reasonably expected to be sufficiently enlightened to express a will that is wise on many of the subjects that are presented for their votes, llow is it possible, for example, to expect that the mass of the people have sufficient informa- tion to come to a conclusion upon such a question as that of bimetallism, when experts cannot agree upon the subject themselves? How much more is the subject complicated when consideration is taken of the fact that a large part of the people is debtor to the other part, and the debtor part is told, how- ever wrongly, that silver legislation will facilitate the payment of debts ! or when the whole com- mercial class is told, however wrongly, that stagna- tion in business is due to insufficiency of coin in circulation ! The same is true as to the question of free trade, or the purchase of railroads by the state, or the referendum, or single tax, or, indeed, all the other complicated questions of social and political economy that are periodically presented for their decision. That the people are not sufficiently informed on these subjects no one can doubt. But, strange to say, it is not upon the decision of these questions that popular government has proved most disap- 126 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. pointing. It is a matter not only of astonishment, but of great encouragement, that the popular de- cision has, on the whole, so far corrected itself where it has made a mistake that no great harm has resulted from it. The point where popular gov- ernment has most notably and grievously failed is in the administration of municipal government, and this is due mainly to the fact that the people are not free to express their will ; and here we are brought back to the first of the two requisites for 2'>rosperous popular government above referred to. Consideration of this subject leads us to the study of municipal misgovernment, as to the exact cause of which too careful attention cannot be given. CHAPTER IX. MUNICIPAL MISGOVERXMENT. Practically all citizens of the United States are members of the Eepublican or the Democratic party. There occasionally arise groups independ- ent of both these parties in various parts of the country ; but for many years these groups have hardly reached the proportions of a national party, and for the purpose of this discussion, therefore, we may divide all citizens into Democrats and Republicans. These national parties cannot exercise their func- tions without an extensive and elaborate organisa- tion. They have to hold national conventions for the purpose of nominating candidates for the presi- dency and vice-presidency of the United States; they have to hold State conventions — that is to say, a convention in each State — in order to nominate can- didates for election to Congress and State offices ; and they also hold conventions in every city for the purpose of nominating candidates for the municipal offices therein. These conventions are attended by delegates duly elected at primaries or meetings to which all voters belonging to the party are admitted ; and for the purpose of securing a sys- 127 128 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. tem for holding such elections each party has an or- ganisation in every electoral unit. The number of these electoral units may be measured by the fact that in New York city alone there are no less than eleven hundred and forty-one election districts, each elec- tion district joolling between two hundred and fifty and three hundred votes. There is in every election district some one person, called the captain of the district, whose business it is throughout the entire year to keep in touch with the members of his party in that district and to bring them to the polls on election day. This means the employment of a vast number of men and the expenditure of vast sums of money and time. The fact that the population of the United States is more and more forsaking the country to congregate in cities makes the cities more and more important in the game of national politics ; and not only do the cities represent a large voting population, but city offices and city employ- ment furnish a large amount of the patronage or spoils upon the hope and distribution of which party success to a great extent depends. Xow, it is not reasonable to suppose that the mass of citizens who are absorbed in the occupations of daily life can afford the time to do the hard work necessary in order to play a role in party organisa- tion. The party cannot afford to deal with ama- teurs — that is to say, with men upon whose persever- ance and punctual attendance to their duties it is impossible to count. The result of this is that the party machinery has necessarily fallen into the hands MUNICIPAL MISGOVERNMENT. 129 of professional politicians. This is particularly so in cities, where the large number of offices and em- ployments to be filled on the one hand, and the large number of applicants for such offices and em- ployments on the other, furnish the conditions most favourable for the development of the machine. It has been already pointed out that every party organisation requires the use of money. This is too obvious to require explanation. The necessary result of it is that every organisation goes more or less into the business of money-making; and the dominant organisation — that is to say, tlie organisation in any given city which controls the offices — ends by making money on a very large scale. It is quite unimpor- tant to which of the parties this organisation belongs. In Philadelphia the dominant ring has for many years been Republican ; in New York it has been practically always Democratic. It is the ring which belongs to the dominant party in a city that secures office, and maintains itself in power through the patronage and spoils thereof. But there are two sets of offices in every city — the offices in the gift of the city proper and those in the gift of the Federal Government ; these last are considerable. In New York, for example, there are the offices and employ- ments which belong to the extensive and compli- cated machinery of the post office, customhouse, internal revenue, and Federal judiciary. As the Federal Government is continually shifting from one national j)arty to the other, it frequently happens that the Federal offices are in the enjoyment of one 130 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. machine, while tlie cit}' offices are iu the enjoyment of the other ; this keeps alive in every city two rival machines, one of which tends to remain permanently in the city offices, and the other of which comes irregularly into the possession of those that are Fed- eral. Thus, in Xew York, Tammany, the Demo- cratic machine, remains pretty constantly in power in the city, whereas the Eepublicau machine only enjoys office when the Republican party is in power at Washington. Now these rings are in politics for " what there is in it," and for nothing else. The 2">eople and amateur politicians may take interest in the national issue, but the professionals take interest only in se- curing office. The natural consequence of this is that the political leaders find it more to their advan- tage to come to an understanding with one another than to fight one another ; and so the tricks and ex- pedients with which they are familiar on the race course and in the prize ring are naturally introduced into the political arena. The devices resorted to are numerous; for example, the nominating machinery being in their hands, they can agree to put up a weak candidate for an office which one of them agrees to surrender to the other ; or they can agree to pass the word round on election day that a par- ticular candidate is to be scratched — that is to say, his name scratched out of the ticket. An illustra- tion of this may be cited in the campaign in New York of 1888. Hill was in that year running on the Democratic ticket for Governor of the State ; MUNICIPAL MISGOVERNMENT. 131 Cleveland was running on the same ticket for the presidency. The Kepublicans ran Harrison against Cleveland for the presidency, and Warner Miller against Hill for the governorship. It is openly stated and generally believed that the leaders of the respective machines entered into the following agreement — or as it is termed in the language of politics — " deal " : The Republicans agreed to sacri- fice Warner Miller to Hill provided the Democrats would sacrifice Cleveland to Harrison ; this was called "trading" the governorship for the presi- dency. Three interesting observations are to be made regarding this election : In the first place, Hill is a notoriously corrupt machine politician ; Cleve- land has always stood for independence and ujjright- ness. This " deal " had for effect, therefore, to defeat a good candidate for the presidency and to elect a bad candidate for the governorship. In other words, "deals" are never effected for the benefit of the community, but only to its prejudice. In the second place, the treachery was committed in the. most cor- rupt districts of New York city and Brooklyn; that is to say, it is in the bad city districts that these arrangements are carried out. This is demonstrated by the vote cast therein, the story being told in the fact that Democratic tickets were voted with the substitution of Harrison for Cleveland, and Repub- lican tickets were voted in which Hill was substi- tuted for Warner Miller. In the third place, it is to be observed that Tammany is not in the least concerned regarding the national issues or party 132 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. principles to which it belongs. Cleveland rep- resents those issues — not Hill ; for the President has in his veto the determining voice in moulding the policy of his party, whereas a governor is compara- tively seldom called npon to take action npon a mat- ter involving national issues. To sacrifice Cleveland to Hill, therefore, was to sacrifice the national issue for the spoils of local office. Now this is what Tammany stands willing to do at every election, and yet nothing exceeds the patriotism of its professions or the appeals to party loyalty in its manifestoes. Unfortunately, the citizens of New York have shown a lamentable willingness to believe in the one and to respond to the other.* Another favourite method of carrying out deals between party machines is throngh the constitution of so-called bipartisan boards. It is a favourite theory of machine politicians — and one to which, nnfortunately, intelligent and sincere citizens often adhere — that the departments of the city should be run not by a single responsible head, but by a mul- tiple board of commissioners divided equally between the two political parties. This plan obliges a divi- sion of the spoils between the two parties to what- ever extent it is admitted. It might seem as though the Democratic ring would object to a plan which * See, for mi example of this, the enormous majorities which the Tammany ticlvet received in November, 1892, because it was headed by Cleveland, whose election it had defeated in 1888, and whose nomination it had done all in its power to defeat only three months before. MUNICIPAL MISGOVERNMENT. I33 would oblige them to divide offices with the Repub- lican machine, but as a matter of fact Tammany is interested in keeping alive a corrupt machine in opposition to itself, lest haply in the absence of a corrupt opposition there should arise an opposition that was not corrupt, and that could, by the confi- dence it would inspire, bring together and keep to- gether the real majority in favour of clean govern- ment that must exist in every city. Nothing would be so disastrous to Tammany in New York as the disappearance of the Republican machine. Indeed, it may be said that the Republican machine has contributed more to the maintenance of Tammany in power than all the boasted organisation of Tam- many itself ; for whenever the better wing of the Democratic party or a citizen's committee has put up a candidate who could command the votes of all good citizens, the Republican party has seldom failed to put up another candidate good enough to divide that vote and thus secure the election of the Tam- many candidate. Moreover, if there were no corrupt Republican machine with which to " trade," a large part of Tammany's strength would be withdrawn from it. Hence the willingness of Tammany to divide offices with the Republican machine to an extent sufficient to keep it alive, care being taken that the division be not sufficient to permit of its becoming dangerous. The sources from which political machines de- rive money are numerous. For example, every can- 134 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. didate for office is called uj^on to pay au assessment for his nomination in the first place, and for his election in the second. The assessments paid to Tammany Hall are officially known to have been extremely large. It is needless to point out that judges who owe their election to an organisation which demands and receives a cash price therefor can hardly be counted upon for unbiased judgment where their political organisation or its prominent members are at stake. Another considerable source of income to the machine is to be found in the contributions of large corjjoratious who seek thereby and get what is called protection. In some States, where the ma- chine is not as well organised as in New York, cor- jjorutions have in self-defence to pay large sums in bribery to individuals in the Legislature. The risk and trouble attending this have caused corporations in New York very willingly to accept the plan pro- posed by Tammany Hall and the Republican ma- chine, under which, by paying large subscriptions to these two organisations, they receive protection from adverse legislation in Albany. As the organisation owns the members of the Legislature which it elects, it can deliver their votes for or against a measure upon payment of a commensurate consideration. Large contributions are also obtained by the organi- sations from all those persons whom they have to employ, such as contractors, auctioneers, etc. The worst development of this money-making system is to be found in the assessment levied by the police MUNICIPAL MISGOVERNMEXT. 135 on gamblers, swindlers, and prostitutes ; the black- mail levied by the city departments on all persons who sell goods, whether wholesale merchants or street venders, for so-called obstruction of the side- walks ; that levied upon builders for privileges to which they are sometimes entitled, and for toleration to which they are often not entitled ; that levied upon all persons who have occasion to violate the excise laws, the health laws, the tenement-house law, the laws on adulteration, and other laws passed for the benefit of the community, thereby putting those en- trusted with the execution of these laws in direct complicity with the violators thereof, and the police upon a corrupt and vicious understanding with the very criminals they are appointed to suppress. It would seem that such an odious form of gov- ernment as this could not resist the indignation of its citizens. A very brief consideration, however, will serve to show that the very character of the evil is one which makes it extremely difficult to overcome. There are about twenty-eight thousand places of employment and offices in the gift of the city of New York. This means that the organisa- tion can count upon twenty-eight thousand votes directly, and indirectly upon those of thousands of persons connected by blood and friendship with the persons who enjoy these offices, and again upon many thousands more of those who are kept in the hope of succeeding to their places. The criminal and quasi-criminal classes, which are in complicity with the police, vote, of course, in a body for their 10 136 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. protectors. Every man engaged in sale, wlicther merchant or street vender, every builder, plumber, liquor dealer, has an interest in placating a power that can persecute him by overscrupulous enforcement of the city ordinances. The large corporations contrib- ute to both political parties, and remain unwilling to fight either. The large army of contractors, con- tractors' employees, and men who have business re- lations with the city swell the number of the ring's adherents. Not only is this number large, but it is compact ; it is held together by the strongest of human motives — self-interest ; it attends carefully to its political duties, and implicitly obeys the orders of its chief. The discipline is perfect ; the organisa- tion matchless. So much for the factors that go to make up the strength of the powers for evil. When, on the other hand, we turn to the consideration of those factors in the city which ought to be counted upon for opposition, we find them, in the first place, absolutely unorganised, separated by private and social inter- ests into almost antagonistic cliques, and, above all, divided into two hostile political camps by the rivalry of opposing national parties. They are with- out any nominating machinery except that of the national parties to which they belong, and it is only under conditions of the most extraordinary exaspera- tion that they can be induced to act irrespective of these parties. Indeed, only once, until last year, in the whole history of New York has this been accom- plished, and this only after the ring had defied the MUNICIPAL MISGOVERNMP]NT. I37 city by admitting the wholesale robbery of which it was guilty, and asking the insulting question, " What are you going to do about it? " Temper had probably as much to do with the defeat of the Tammany ring in 1870 as public spirit. But if we study this deplorable state of things in connection with the circumstances which led up to it, we shall have to conclude that it is a necessary phase through which our experiment in popular government had to pass ; and, like every malady of this character, it must end by purifying our Govern- ment or destroying it. Which it shall do, what are the chances for and against, and how, if at all, we can by efforts of our own determine the result, are enquiries full of the profouudest interest for us all. It was a necessary phase through which we had to pass, because, when the heroic period of revolution was over and our ancestors were no longer buoyed up with the exhilaration of heroic action, the return of every man to his daily duties became not only a rule but a virtue ; there was no voice raised to remind him that in shaking off the Government of England he had assumed the government himself ; and that if he abdicated, another ruler, as arbitrary, and per- haps less respectable, would mount the vacant throne ; there was no religious duty upon him to perform his public as well as his private duties ; there was as yet no abuse to gall once more the withers so lately galled by England ; and so the public fell into a pro- found 2)olitical trance, from which it has not yet 138 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. awaked. It is idle to say that the occasional excite- ment of the people at election time can in any sense be considered deliberate political action ; they are kept in a state of permanent hypnotic trance by the confusion of national issues and the din of party war ; they see the motions of political life proceeding before their inactive senses ; primaries called to elect delegates to conventions; conventions meeting and talking ; candidates nominated ; processions and brass bands ; speeches and torchlights. Then, when elec- tion day comes they are aroused enough to get driven to the jjolls ; they are given a Hobson's choice be- tween two sets of equally unfit candidates ; they dis- gustedly deposit their chosen ballot, or throw both away and return to their j^olitical eider down. The whole game is really being played, for tliem, and they are mesmerised into the notion that they are playing it themselves. For what, as a matter of fact, does take place ? The national parties, with their respective hench- men, call primaries ; nobody attends these primaries but professional politicians* ; professional politicians therefore dictate who shall be delegates to the con- ventions. The delegates who attend conventions are instructed by their chiefs and nominate a candidate selected by their chiefs. The people therefore have nothing to do with the nomination of candidates; the only time when their intervention is asked or per- * Article on Primaries by A. C. Bernheim, Political Science Quarterly, 31arch, 1888. MUNICIPAL MISGOVERNMENT. 139 mitted is on election day, and then only to deposit their ballot for one of two equally objectionable can- didates. It occasionally occurs that one of the parties finds it advantageous to put up a candidate who stands well in the community ; the dodge is often a success- ful one, because such a candidate attracts all the votes of those who Avant good men in office irrespec- tive of party. But when the candidate gets into office it soon becomes clear that, whatever his previous record has been, he is in office for the benefit of his party and its chiefs, and not for the benefit of the people. And so it has become inevitably impressed upon the minds of the people that voting on election day is practically a farce ; that whoever be the candidate proposed for their votes, and whichever be the can- didate selected, it is the machine only that profits by it. Hence a growing tendency on the part of the public to abstain from the polls altogether. It is practically only in presidential campaigns that per- sonal fitness enters into the selection of the candi- date ; and this is due not to the inclinations, but to the wisdom of political leaders ; for the national chessboard is such a large one that machines abstain as much as possible from nominating candidates for Federal office whose records will not bear examina- tion. Public opinion when collected from the vast territory over which a presidential election is held is too great a force to be defied. Citizens therefore pre- serve an interest in presidential campaigns; they 140 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. feel less at the mercy of the machine, and are gener- ally given candidates of such good personal character that the choice is determined by the political ques- tions involved. This is as it ought to be. But in local elections hope deferred has succeeded in making the heart sick. Abstention from the polls is believed to be an indication of indifference; it is much rather an indication of discouragement and despair ; for to cast a vote for a candidate who is known to be unfit for office, or for one who, though personally fit, is practically certain to serve as the mere cat's-paw of the party which puts him in office, is repugnant not only to common sense, but to self-respect. It is probable, therefore, that those who abstain from vot- ing on election day include the most deserving as well as the most indifferent. Our citizens have still to learn that the mere casting of a vote on election day is an idle formality unless preceded by the efforts necessary to secure the nomination of candidates worthy of our votes. Voting is the last of our politi- cal duties ; organization the first. The hold which national parties have upon mu- nicipal politics is still more subtle than has yet been made to appear. Election for State and national offices taking place upon the same day as election for municipal offices, the names of all the candidates have to be presented upon the same ballot. There are so many offices to be filled that the ballots are ex- tremely complicated, and anything that serves to in- crease the confusion of the voter serves to diminish MUNICIPAL MISGOYERNMENT. 141 the chances of the party which is the occasion of this confusion. It has become, therefore, an axiom with practical politicians that it is indispensable to be able to oifer a voter an entire ticket which he can, with- out complication or confusion, deposit in the ballot box, free from the necessity of manipulating it him- self by the addition or erasure of any names. Now, if any eifort is made in any city to bring together those men who desire good municipal gov- ernment irrespective of national politics, and they put up candidates for municipal offices without at the same time putting up candidates for State offices, they cannot put a complete ticket into the hands of the voter. If they only put up a ticket containing the candidates for municipal office, there is put upon the voter the necessity of combining the ticket of the municipal reformers with the ticket of one of the national parties ; and experience shows that this in- volves the voter in trouble and confusion to which he is not willing to submit. It follows, therefore, that none but the most conscientious and enthusiastic supporters of the municipal reform movement will vote a reform ticket ; the mere trouble of adding or subtracting a few names or adding a few pasters is sufficient to deter the mass of voters from the use of an incomplete ticket. And yet, on the other hand, the municipal reformers cannot put a complete ticket into the hands of the voter, because this would in- volve putting up candidates for the State and na- tional offices, thereby occasioning the very confusion between municipal and national politics which they 142 EVOLUTIOxX AND EFFORT. have particularly set out to avoid. The only remedy for this is for muuicipal elections to be held at a dif- ferent time from the national and State elections. This would not only render possible a purely munici- pal ticket, but it would also facilitate the possibility of organising municipal associations for the purpose of improving municipal government by separating municipal government from national politics ; for the moment it becomes possible to put a purely mu- nicipal ticket in the field it removes one of the prin- cipal objections that national partisans now have to such organisations. To-day they decline to join such nonpartisan organisations because they fear to be put in opposition to their own parties by the conflict which yearly arises in the making up of the ticket ; for, as things now are, national parties put into the field a ticket covering municipal as well as State offices, and, as has been already shown, they have many reasons — mostly bad — for so doing. But if an election is purely municipal the national parties have no excuse for putting up a municipal ticket, no na- tional issue being involved. If they do, they invite defeat at the hands of their own partisans ; for, at any rate, the issue will then be fairly presented as between partisan and nonpartisan candidates, no citizen desiring good government being any longer under compulsion to vote a national ticket for fear of sacrificing a national issue. Much importance, how- ever, cannot be attached to this reform until those who want good municipal government are persuaded of the importance of organised muuicipal parties to MUNICIPAL MISGOVERNMENT. 143 that special end, and are willing to undertake the special trouble and expense of constituting and main- taining them. Many efforts are being made in vari- ous cities of the States to do this very thing, but the movement is still in its infancy. Another direction in which national politics ex- ert a baneful influence upon our citizens may be observed in the practical certainty with which efforts at organising associations to reform municipal poli- tics are sure to split, at some time or other, along the line which separates the Eepublican from the Democratic party. Over and over again indignation has brought citizens together for the purpose of re- sisting the vicious despotism under which they live, only to break to pieces the moment a committee is constituted, because partisans in the committee en- deavour to use the committee for partisan ends. The result of this is that either the committee breaks into two parts and then its work practically comes to an end, or one faction in the committee overcomes the other faction, and then the support of the beaten faction is practically lost to the reform movement. There is still another hold which the national parties have upon our municipal affairs. Cities have a very small measure of local government. The board of aldermen have in many cities reached so low a pitch of degradation that they have been gradually shorn by a jealous Legislature of all their powers, and the city is governed not by its board of 14J: EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. aldermen or council, but by the Legislature of the State. New York is thus governed by Albany, Chicago by Springfield, and Philadelphia by Har- risburg. It not infrequently occurs that a measure of the most vital municipal importance is defeated in the State Legislature because it falls into the hands of a majority from the country which ' is entirely ignorant of municipal needs. So also it not infre- quently happens that the State majority belongs to a different national party from that of the city officers, and then these two engage in perpetual war, one against the other, the Legislature legislating officers out of office and endeavouring to control tlie city against the wishes of the majority therein. But perhaps the most serious element in this control of the Legislature over cities is to be found in the fact that, so long as the cities elect members to the State Legislature who are to have a voice in making laws for the cities, it becomes essential for all organisations constituted for the purpose of mu- nicipal reform to put up candidates for the Legisla- ture. Now in so doing they directly interfere with the national parties, for State matters are entirely in the hands of national parties, and the members of the Legislature are called upon to legislate for the State as well as the city. Moreover, it is the members of the Legislature who constitute the elect- ors for the United States Senate. Every member, therefore, of the Legislature is an object of interest to the politicians at Washington ; so that national parties cannot in their own interests abstain from MUNICIPAL MISGOVERXxMENT. 145 intervening in the nomination and election of mem- bers of the State legislatures ; nor can those who are interested in the welfare of the city abstain from so doing either. The above considerations serve to show the con- siderable difficulties that stand in the way of the organisation of associations constituted for the pur- pose of rescuing city government from national politics, and inferentially, therefore, the difficulty of breaking down existing abuses in municipal govern- ment. N"or is it to be expected that the national parties will ever willingly surrender their hold upon mu- nicipal politics. Cities offer too much in the way of spoils for national parties to be willing to dispense with them. Those who do the routine work of politics for national parties must be rewarded, and national parties have practically only one form in which to make this reward — office. Now, the leaders of national parties, those men who, by their intelli- gence and temperament, deserve the first prizes in the State, are drawn away from the political mass to Washington ; but the humbler workers — those who do what may be called the dirty work of politics, who love politics for its excitement, for its freedom from regular duties, for the comparatively large re- wards it offers for small service, for the character of the service itself, and the personal consideration which attends it ; all those men who haunt liquor saloons and places of amusement and disreputable 146 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. sport — these are kept at home in our cities, to cor- rupt and govern us. As a matter of fact, national parties have heretofore regarded municipal office only as strongholds of patronage, rewards for party service, or occasions for political traffic. They in- terfere with municijjal government only to cor- rupt it. As has been already observed, some people are of the of)inion that city officials are not all as bad as is pretended, and that more can be obtained in the way of municiiml improvement by co-operating with these officials than by resisting them. In the words of a recent contributor to the Charities Eeview*: " Under our existing political conditions, experience seems to show that more can be accomplished by the quiet, intelligent, and well-directed efforts of individuals, and of such organisations as societies for city imjirovement which do not directly antagonise those who wield political power, and which receive the approval of the general public, than by spas- modic movements for reform." This view is so largely entertained that it is worth while throwing upon it the light of some actual experience. Let us, therefore, briefly review some of the efforts made in this line in the city of New York during the imme- diate past, and draw from them their lesson. One of the defects in our municipal government in New York, which is most felt by the citizens be- * Charities Review, Archibald Welch. On the Sanitation of the Dwellings of the Poor, February, 1893. MUNICIPAL MISGOVERNMEKT. I47 cause it is the most obvious, is the faihire to dean the streets. For some years prior to 1892 a group of the ablest citizens in this city endeavoured by co-operation with the city officials to improve the city government in this respect. It is not necessary to more than mention the names of James C. Carter, Frederick E. Coudert, Professor Chandler, and Mrs. Kinnicutt to demonstrate the probability that this effort was " quiet, intelligent, and well-directed." Nor, indeed, were the public officials unwilling to co-operate with these citizens ; on the contrary, the universal testimony of them all was that both the Tammany Mayor and the Tammany Board of Street Cleaning showed the best possible disposition to do the work they were put in office to do. Both this distinguished group of citizens and the public offi- cials with whom they were brought into contact entertained the most cordial and earnest desire to improve the condition of the streets. And yet what was the result of this co-operation ? Every man, woman, or child who had to walk our streets during the winter of 1892-'93 could testify but one way — the result of this co-operation is admitted to have been an unqualified failure. The fact is, that no effort could succeed under the then existing system of municipal government in securing the perform- ance of the simplest and most obvious of its duties; and the reason of this is so clear that it seems hardly necessary to state it. Every office in this city, from that of mayor to that of street-sweeper, was either a reward for partisan service in the past or a 148 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. bribe for partisan service in the future. This does not mean that the political organisation which dis- tributed these offices was not desirous of governing the city well ; on the contrary, its maintenance in power depended partly upon not outraging public convenience too much. Tammany, therefore, was keenly alive to the importance of keeping our streets clean ; but the relation of Tammany to its emjjloyees was very much like that of the Eoman Emperor to the Prgetorian guard — the servant was stronger than the master. Those who occupied the public offices did so because they controlled votes ; these were necessary to the maintenance of the political organi- sation which put and kept them in power, and for this reason no effort, however earnest, however well- directed, could with this material properly adminis- ter the business of the city. It was the political sys- tem which selected our public officials that alone was responsible for the misgovernment to which we so long submitted. Again, the Association for Improving the Condi- tion of the Poor has a department specially devoted to the question of the sanitation of the houses of the poor; it employs a number of insjoectors who have no other business than that of visiting tene- ment houses and reporting to the society such as are in an unsanitary condition. The reports of these in- spectors are submitted to the Board of Health for action. Any one who desires to be informed regard- ing the working of this department can, by applica- tion to the secretary of the association, learn for MUNICIPAL MISGOVERNMENT. 149 himself that every complaint made to the Health Department is immediately attended to, provided the owner of the house complained of has no " po- litical pull " ; but if the owner belongs to the ma- chine which governs the city, no complaint, however well-founded, receives adequate attention; and yet no one will doubt the "quiet, intelligent, and well- directed " character of the efforts of this Society for Improving the Condition of the Poor. In conclusion, if we need further illustration, let us turn to the Health Department itself. To this department is entrusted powers the magnitude of which few citizens appreciate. Its othcers can, with- out prior appeal to the courts, walk into any man's house and turn him out of it upon an hour's notice. It can close any factory, destroy any property, and confine any individual, in case it deems such action necessary to public health. These powers are grant- ed to it in view of the public necessity that disease should be immediately rooted out before it gets a foothold, without regard to the individual inconven- ience that it may occasion. Is it not, indeed, im- portant that such powers as these be confided to men whose position in the community ofi'ers some guar- antee that they are not to be abused ? No wonder that our citizens were some time ago gratified to learn that by the side of the department, possessing as it does such autocratic power, there was placed an advisory board of professional men occupying a high position in the medical community, whose surveil- lance furnished security that the acts of the Health 150 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. Board would be tempered by wisdom without losing their executive force? And yet, what haj^pened in 1892 in this department also ? The superintend- ent, who had for twenty-two years ably and satisfac- torily performed his duties in connection with this department, and had become an expert in the per- formance of these duties, was informed by the polit- ical organisation that then governed the city that his place was needed for jDolitical jDurposes, and he was required to send in his resignation upon an hour's notice. The counsel to the board, who had satisfac- torily occupied that position for about the same period, and who had also acquired special and tech- nical ability in handling the law work of this de- partment, was practically dismissed in the same man- ner and for the same reason. The members of the Advisory Board sent in their resignation one by one in consequence of the injury done to the city by this intrusion of partisanship into a dei)artment of our city government which, clothed as it is with great powers, should be least subject to partisan influence. It was supposed that the citizens would be induced by this courageous act of the Advisory Board to take some action against the step which provoked it ; but the grip which Tammany had upon the city at the time was too powerful, and the Health Board has shared the fate of every other city department. When we consider what questions the various departments of the city have to deal with on the one hand, and the character of the men to whom these departments are entrusted on the other, we cannot MUNICIPAL MISGOVERNMENT. 151 but recognise that, in the first place, the city is called upon to handle and solve the greatest problems that come up to us for solution, and that the solution of these problems is left to men whom we know to be neither able nor willing to undertake it. Not only have they to keep our streets clean, our houses wholesome, and our port free from infection, but they have also to deal with such questions as pauper- ism, education, prostitution, and crime. Every one of these problems is of incalculable difficulty, and needs the application of all the result of human ex- perience and the acumen of human sagacity. jVIost of them need also reference to that religious sense to which we are indebted for almost all the real ad- vance that has been made on these subjects ; and yet all the cities in the United States have, without exception, practically to admit that these matters have been abandoned to the hands of those who con- stitute the least competent class in the community, and are themselves often the associates and partners of crime. But, as has been already repeatedly observed, this condition of municipal government is one through which we had to pass in order that the people might learn from bitter experience that the universal fran- chise imposes a responsibility as well as confers a benefit. If we turn now from the actual evils attending our municipal administration to the elements in the community which give reasonable ground for hope that these evils can be overcome, the prospect is an 11 152 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. encouraging one ; for it is possible to demonstrate that not only is the majority of voters in favour of good government, but that whenever that majority has been appealed to in sufficiently rousing terms it has so declared itself. In 1893 an opportunity was given to test the people on this subject in the State of New York. The abuses which existed more or less in every election district in the State took a somewhat more aggravated form in that of Graves- end. The whole city of Brooklyn, too, had, since the last administration of Seth Low, taken a persistently downward path. These two considerations brought about an overturn in that city. A mayor was elected by a swingeing majority on the platform of good government ; political offenders were subsequently landed in the penitentiary, and it may be said that in the fight between the people and the politicians the former came out entirely victorious. While this battle was waging in Brooklyn another battle of a similar character was fought in the State. A cer- tain Isaac H. Maynard had been rewarded for jug- gling with election returns by an appointment to the Court of Appeals. His term of office having expired, the Democratic party, which was respon- sible for the appointment, and for bad government in the cities of Brooklyn and New York, nominated him for a new term. He was defeated by an over- whelming majority. These results are quite suffi- cient to satisfy us that the people who desire good government constitute a majority, and will so de- clare themselves if they are appealed to in sufficient- MUNICIPAL MISGOVERNMENT. 153 ly urgent terms to bring out the entire vote, and if the indignation aroused is sufficient to overcome partisan considerations. Nor can this be otherwise. It is inconceivable that a majority of citizens in any community can want bad government. The men who want bad government are those who prey upon the community. Because they commit their spoliations throuffh our tolerance and under color of law we sometimes forget what they are ; but inasmuch as they elect themselves to office in spite of us and use their offices to blackmail and despoil us, we can hard- ly regard them in any other light than as freebooters. Now freebooters can never exist in greater numbers than those on whom they prey ; it is essential to a prosperous system of brigandage that the brigands be few and the victims many. This is the weak spot in all organisations for public plunder; when the or- ganisation reaches its climax of success it must neces- sarily fall to pieces, for there is not then enough plun- der to go around. Were the good citizens properly prepared, they could at such moments seize the suc- cession. But they are seldom so prepared ; they often sound the note of dissolution, but others collect the inheritance. Tammany has broken up more than once by the dissidence of malcontents, as when Irv- ing Hall and Mozart Hall organised out of its debris ; and by the revolt of its respectable members, as when Abram S. Hewitt and others of his inclining foirnded the County Democracy. But Irving and Mozart Halls were never anything but rival machines, and the County Democracy soon got into the hands of men 154 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. as evil and less prudent than the leaders of Tamma- ny. Nor was this matter for surprise. The bulk of the men of jSTew York, who work with limb and brain, had not yet recognised the duty that j)opular govern- ment imposed on them ; they were not willing to de- vote the time necessary to preserve the County De- mocracy from the ever-present professional politician ; and as Tammany was more on the alert for an occa- sion to destroy the County Democracy than the ex- cellent citizens who organised it, the sinners in the County Democracy were promptly landed in the peni- tentiary. And yet the melancholy fact must here be chronicled, that amongst these men w'ho carried the colours of our last reform movement are some who have been conspicuous for dishonesty amongst the leaders of this defunct and discredited organisation. This little piece of history has been told in order to give a point to the following general conclusions : In the first place, a corrupt machine must occa- sionally be defeated by its very success, for success means increase in numbers, and increase in numbers means more plunderers than plunder. In the second place, such a breaking up, though often brought about by disinterested men, does not result in more than a momentary advantage, because the citizens are not sufficiently organised to keep in control. In the third place, the spasmodic character of our reform movements causes them often to be left in the hands of new and inexperienced leaders, who are lack- ing in the exj)erience or the backbone necessary to MUNICIPAL MISGOVERNMENT. I55 exclude from our ranks men whose past careers ren- der them notoriously unfit allies to the cause. Soci- ety needs a remembrancer. If, however, we recognised that ignorance was a crime ; if we kept ourselves so informed that forget- fulness was impossible ; if we devoted the necessary time to organisation — it is clear that we are in the majority, and that forces are continually at work on our side which must end in delivering over the ene- my into our hands. As matters now stand, however, it is clear from the foregoing considerations that our Government — and especially our municipal government — is not one by popular representation, but by popular misrepre- sentation. In other words, the elections, except un- der exceptional conditions, carry out the will not of the people, but of a few corrupt political leaders, and it is only rarely, fitfully, and under extraordinary cir- cumstances that the real popular will is expressed. It is also clear that this is due to the fact that the citizen has abdicated in favour of political machines ; that in so doing he has been guilty of a political crime; and that if he performed his clear political duty — that is to say, if he took the necessary steps to see that the proper candidates were nominated, and gave as much time to secure such nominations at periods of small excitement as he does at periods of great ex- citement — it would be perfectly possible, nay, easy, for him to have his way year in and year out. In other words, the citizen only attends to his political duties when driven to it by impulse and temper ; he 156 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. never performs them for the same reason that he does his domestic duties — because they are duties, and he feels under a moral obligation to do so. It is believed that if the citizen knew what vital inter- ests dejjended upon the yearly elections ; if he were alive to the uselessness of devoting his time to chari- table and philanthropic societies so long as the ad- ministration of our public charities, of our public schools, and of our public prisons was in the hands of ignorant and self-seeking politicians ; if he appre- ciated that it was idle to spend his money on private charities so long as the money of the city was being squandered in manufacturing the very paupers and criminals which it was his aim to succour ; if, in a word, he understood that his well-intentioned efforts have only for effect to trim the luxuriance of vice, and by trimming to promote its growth, it is believed that the energy, wealth, and disinterestedness that now dissipate themselves in infructuous if not in absolutely injurious effort would, by concentration in better-directed channels, purge the State of poli- ticians, relieve the labouring classes of the incubus of pauperism, and largely diminish the effect of crime. It is to this demonstration that the following chap- ters will be devoted. CHAPTER X. THE PEOBLEM OF PAUPERISM. Every city in the land is a gigantic mill daily engaged in withdrawing healthy labourers from the farm and converting them into paupers, lunatics, and convicts. We have taken the necessary course of constructing asylums for our lunatics, poorhouses for our paupers, and prisons for our criminals, but we have not attempted to deal with the failures in our population until they became so far demoralised as to be fit only for these dreary and expensive insti- tutions. In fact, although the flow is always from the farm to the city, and never from the city to the farm, we have entirely failed to provide an outlet for the refuse of our population ; on the contrary, we have provided a good cement bottom for it, so that none of our stagnant water can escape even if it would. Of late, however, the study of sociology has begun to find and to apply new methods. The words of Seneca, " Poena non irascitur sed cavet," are begin- ning to find an application in the substitution of re- formatories for prisons, and in some countries the question of pauperism has also been handled by the 157 158 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. creation of wliat are known as labour colonies. It is questionable, however, if even in Holland the ques- tion of colonisation has reached anything more than the earliest stage. But in other parts of the w^orld somewhat different experiments of a similar kind are being tried, and we are likely soon to have an accu- mulation of varied experience on the subject. It has already been intimated that our present methods deal with the whole question too late. The fact is, the moment a man holds out his hand for alms he gives notice to society that he is caught in the outer edge of the whirlpool ; private charity then keeps him alive only to increase his faculty for in- juring the body politic. Except in cases of universal depression, where large quantities of worthy and will- ing labourers are unable to find employment on ac- count of exceptional economic conditions, the man who asks for alms belongs to what may be called the " incajjable " class. The word " incapable " is in- tended to include all persons who cannot work con- secutively owing to temperamental defect, whether this defect be one of physique, of morale, of intelli- gence, or of temper, or whether it arise from illness, drunkenness, or any other cause beyond the pale of political economy. It will not do to wait until the incapable man has become a burden upon the parish after having become the father of a large family, or until he has qualified for jail after a career of crime ; the process during which he gravitates towards the prison, the poorhouse, or the lunatic asylum is one fraught with as much evil for society as for himself. THE PROBLEM OF PAUPERISM. 159 It would be interesting to trace the evils for others to which this incapable man gives rise. Here are some of them : 1. He brings into the world children who are likely to become as incapable as himself. In addition to the well-known history of the "Jukes family," it may be interesting to note that researches lately made into the names of those enjoying public charity in France show that thev tend from sreneration to generation to be the same — that is to say, those who generation after generation receive public benefac- tion belong to the same families.* 2. By being willing to accept alms he can content himself with a lower wage, thereby unfairly compet- ing with the self-respecting labourer, and tending to drag down the rate below that necessary for suste- nance. The working of outdoor relief in England has illustrated this. 3. He drains the pockets of his neighbours by ap- peals for help. No one who has investigated cases for the Charity Organization Society can fail to have discovered that poor people contribute large amounts to one another in times of distress. It is seldom that the pauper applies to the rich until he has exhausted the pockets of his neighbours. 4. He renders wholesome dwellings unwholesome by his shiftlessness and want of regard for sanitary rules. All those who have given much time to the question of sanitary tenements will testify to the * Yves Guyot. 160 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. hopelessness of keeping tenements clean so long as there are shiftless tenants in the building. What- ever be the efforts made, and however great be the majority of tenants desirous of keeping their houses in good order, a single unclean tenant will be suffi- cient to make their efforts useless. 5. By failing to pay his rent and by perpetually moving from one tenement to another, he raises the rental for his fellow-tenants, the proprietor having to take account of " non-lets " in fixing his rent. An estimate of " non-lets " regularly enters into the de- termination of what rent must be charged in order to make a building pay. Every real estate agent is familiar with this fact. 6. By surrendering himself to laziness, drunken- ness, and crime, he spreads the contagion of these vices to others. The laissez-faire theory, that the pauper must not be treated but must be allowed to die, will not work. Experience shows that he does not die until he has done an incalculable amount of harm. More- over, humanity and the proper extension of human sympathies make the application to man of the law of the survival of the fittest in this respect impossi- ble. It is admitted that the criminal must be dealt with, but it does not seem to have been clearly un- derstood that the incapable man is as hurtful to the community as the criminal. Moreover, our method of treating the criminal has not kept pace with our information. The simplest plan of educating chil- THE PROBLEM OF PAUPERISM. 101 dren is to punish them whenever they annoy. This plan has yielded, in a civilised community, to more intelligent methods ; children are punished less and less, and encouraged more and more. Persistent vice only is punished, and then for the purpose of treat- ment rather than for that of vindictiveness. No such progress has taken place in our penal legislation ; we still pursue the old-fashioned plan of meting out punishment proportionately to the success of the criminal act. If, for example, a robbery be of a sum of money of less than twenty-five dollars, the crimi- nal is punished by an imprisonment of not more than one year, or a fine of not more than five hundred dol- lars.* If a robbery be of a sum of over twenty-five dollars and under five hundred dollars, then the pun- ishment is imprisonment for not less than two years nor more than five years. If a robbery be of a sum of more than five hundred dollars, then the punish- ment is not less than five years nor more than ten years. As if the amount that a thief succeeds in robbing has anything to do with the punishment he deserves, or the treatment that may be necessary in order to rescue society from further injury at his hands ! The moment we begin to consider the criminal as a human being to be reformed, and not as a sinner to be punished, there is no longer any reason for dis- tinguishing, so far as the advisableness of treatment is concerned, between the criminal and the pauper ; * New York Penal Code, see sections 531, 533, 535, and 15. 162 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. both are dangerous ; both are imperfectly responsi- ble. The experience of the Elmira Reformatory shows that a large percentage of the criminal class can be reclaimed ; it is j)robable that the same would be true of the pauper if we found the proper method of reclaiming him. The whole problem probably consists in selecting the best method. Assuming that the Elmira Reformatory is pursu- ing a suitable line in the treatment of criminals and leaving the vexed subject of corporal punishment aside for the present, the question arises whether the same plan, or perhaps some more economical plan, might not be adopted with paupers ; in other words, can previous efforts help us to devise a plan of col- onisation that will effectually deal with the paujDer as well as the criminal ? Much has been written and something done to prove the possibility of returning incapable men to the land, but schemes for doing this through the vol- untary act of the incapable man must be at once elim- inated (except in rare cases) as impracticable. It is the very nature of the incapable man to refrain from taking any step to imf)rove his condition ; he will not voluntarily subject himself to any discipline or labour. The success of the so-called labour colonies in Germany, which seem to be recruited by the volun- tary action of paupers, has given rise to the notion in Europe that voluntary farm colonies would abol- ish tramps and poor-houses ; this notion, however, is drawn from an imperfect knowledge of the work- ing of the labour colony system in Germany. It is THE PROBLExM OP PAUPERISM. 1G3 true that laboiirers are not compelled by any decree of a court to enter a labour colony or to remain there ; but they are practically forced into the labour colony by the law of vagabondage which exists in Germany, and they are compelled to remain there by the cer- tainty that they must ultimately return if they leave the colony without proper equipment for self-sup- port. The system of Natural-verpflegungs-stationen^ taken in connection with section 361 of the German penal code, practically leaves the tramp no recourse but ultimately to shelter himself in a labour colony. The above-mentioned section of the penal code per- mits a court to imprison tramps or persons falling npon the parish, unless they can show that their pov- erty is due to circumstances for which they are not resj)onsible ; but even then, the moment a man is found begging he is at once put into one of the sta- tions referred to, where he is given a night's lodging and food, provided he does half a day's work ; he is given a certificate, called a Wander schcin, indicating the place to which he is destined with a view to se- curing work, the route by which he is to go to this place, and the stations where he is to be supplied with food and lodging as in the first instance. As each station is in communication with employers of labour, it is practically certain that, except under un- usual circumstances, a man who is willing to M'ork will eventually find it ; consequently his failure to find it raises a presumption of unwillingness or in- capacity and secures his committal to the penitenti- ary. A pauper is thus put upon a track from which 164 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. he cannot escape, and which leads either to employ- ment, to the penitentiary, or to a labour colony ; in other words, the labour colony is practically imposed upon the incapable j)auper as an alternative to the penitentiary. The development of this system in Germany is due in great part to the licensed tramping which grew out of the old rule, that skilled labourers should spend two years in moving from town to town in search of employment between the close of their apprentice- ship and the day of starting out on their own ac- count. That it is necessary to maintain such a net- work of tramp stations as this in America or else- where, and thus encourage the tramj) system, seems extremely unlikely. The purely penal colonies in Holland have dem- onstrated the fact that paupers and misdemeanants can be supported upon laud at about half the price that they cost in the poor-houses in England,* and that at the same time land can be reclaimed and brought into cultivation under this system which it would be too costly to reclaim by private enterprise. In his work entitled Back to the Land, Mr. Moore explains why these penal colonies are not self-sup- porting, and gives reasons for believing that, by some- what changing the system, agricultural penal colo- nies could be made self-supporting. This is also the opinion of the committee appointed to investigate this matter on behalf of the English Land Colonisa- * See Herbert V. Mills. Poverty and the State. THE PROBLEM OF PAUPERISM. 165 tion Society. The report of this last body, however, proposes to make the system self-supporting by de- voting a very large area of land to the work. It is probable, however, that it proceeds npon somewhat wrong principles. In the first place, the society proposes to create agricultural colonies, entrance to which and resi- dence in which would be purely voluntary. In the second place, it proposes that these colo- nies should be self-supporting by allowing four acres to a man. Such a colony would undoubtedly be useful so long as there was a large proportion of worthy labourers unemployed. Experience, however, shows that this is seldom the case ; that is to say, indus- trial crises giving rise to dismissal of worthy labourers are rare, and last relatively a short time. To organ- ise a large permanent system of agricultural colonies to meet an evil which arises only once in ten or twenty years, is acute only for a few months and then disappears almost altogether, seems a mistake. The evil which is permanent does not arise from the un- employed who are willing to work ; it arises from the unemployed who are unwilling to work, and. whatever plan is suggested to meet the permanent evil must be one that deals with the unwilling. The only alternative, therefore, seems to be a compulsory commitment of paupers to farm colo- nies conducted upon principles of military disci- pline, having grades of employment suited to the different classes of paupers, criminals, and unem- 166 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. ployed with which it would deal, and in which criminals, unwilling and willing labourers, will all be carefully kept apart. Such farm colonies need not necessarily be put upon a self-supporting basis. The reasons for not endeavouring to make them self-supporting are nu- merous. In the first place, the class it would be destined to deal with now costs the State millions of dollars every year. These millions are devoted to keeping the evil alive. If they were devoted to quenching the evil they would be well spent, and the commu- nity could afford to pay them ; but the very quench- ing of the evil would diminish the number to be treated, and so, without taking into account the economy of the proposal, the mere fact that the in- capable man was being treated instead of being en- couraged would diminish the expenditure. Nor is it the cost of the pauper which hurts the State so much as the injury which he inflicts upon the self- respecting workman with whom he competes, and whom, by competition and contact, he degrades. In the second place, schemes of this character, which start on the expectation of being self-sup- porting and fail in being self-supporting, discourage those engaged therein. In the third place, labour colonies, though not self-supporting, ought to be less expensive than ex- isting methods. At present we have insane asylums of enormous cost, prisons of enormous cost, and workhouses of enormous cost, and in addition to THE PROBLEM OF PAUPERISM. 107 these ten million dollars are known to be distrib- uted annually by charitable societies in New York city alone, without including the millions annually spent by private individuals and private, charities of Avhich no record can be kept. The plan proposed ought greatly to diminish the cost of our existing institutions ; it ought to bring into cultivation land not now cultivated ; it ought to permanently im- prove land not now deemed capable of cultivation ; and it ought, in a large measure, to diminish the necessity for private charity. With these advan- tages why attempt a self-supporting plan ? Another objection to the self-supporting plan is, that it involves the devoting to it of a larger quan- tity of land than perhaps can be conveniently spared. This objection, however, could be met by the adop- tion of a more suitable system of cultivation than the one usually employed by us. The Chinese plan, which proceeds upon the assumption that land is ex- tremely valuable and human labor extremely cheap, is the one which will get the most out of the land in the way of subsistence for the largest number. If the experiment of treating a large mass of paupers is to be tried, it is indispensable that the colony should not be at a great distance from the town. The product of their work requires a near market ; expense of transportation, therefore, should be reduced to the minimum. Now it is near large towns that land is most valuable ; hence the impor- tance of adopting a system of agriculture which will support the largest number on the smallest surface. 13 1G8 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. As has been already suggested, this can best be achieved by the adoption of the Chinese system. Agriculture is a part of the Chinese religion. The book of the Eise of the Dynasty of Tcheou con- tains an agricultural code, some of the most remark- able provisions of which are the following : " The inspectors of agriculture should take care that the seed be properly prepared in manure. The grain must first be soaked in a bath of juice ob- tained by cooking beef bones ; then, according as the seed is iiitended for land — that is, red, yellow, black or white, compact, friable or siliceous — they shall be soaked in fsecal matter (dried and reduced to a powder), whether of cattle, goats, sheep, swine, dogs, foxes, badgers, or deer." In reference to human manure used by the Chinese the following extract provides : " The inspectors of agriculture shall take care that no molecule of it shall be lost or wasted. It shall be collected in vases and shall ferment during six davs. After this, use shall be made of it with ten times its bulk of water. For rice, it shall be poured over the ground during vegetation, not be- fore, as much as is needed and no more ; for it is not the land which must be nourished, but the plant ; and if too much is poured over the land it evaporates in the air. As regards land not inundated, it shall be deposited at the foot of the plants while growing ; for if it were put between the lines a large part would be lost. By so acting with wisdom and economy little will be spent, an abundant harvest THE PROBLEM OF PAUPERISM. 109 will be reaped, and the people will be prosperous. In the north provinces, which do not produce a harvest during the winter, the manure not used shall be mixed up with the earth and made into bricks, which shall be transported to the south provinces." Two other special features of Chinese agriculture must not be overlooked, namely, the use of water and transplanting. Much labour has been usefully expended in con- structing irrigation canals, by which water is dis- tributed over the entire country. Undoubtedly a large part of the fertility of the soil is due to these important works. In no way could pauper or con- vict labour be used to better advantage. But it is in their use of frequent transplanting that Chinese methods perhaps differ mostly from ours. All the crops are practically treated in China in the same way as spring vegetables are treated by us ; that is to say, all seed is planted in rich mould, under glass if necessary, or, if not, under glass protected by a wall from the north winds, and with a southern exposure. After the seed has sprouted the plant is transplant- ed, sometimes once, sometimes twice, and sometimes even thrice. The advantages arising from this sys- tem are manifold. In the first place, all the time during which the seed is germinating it is occupy- ing a very small surface, and the land where it is destined ultimately to bring fruit is being employed in another crop. In this way the same field is made to bear many crops in the same season. In the second place, the plant is made more lYO EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. vigorous by transplanting. The descending root is replaced by a multitude of horizontal roots, which give the plant strength and serve to pick up nour- ishment from the surface, thereby making deep digging unnecessary. A single grain of wheat cul- tivated in this manner has multiplied itself as many as sixty times. Luzerne has been harvested twelve to fourteen times instead of once. In the third place, there is an economy of seed. For a single acre a few pints of grain are sufficient, instead of the usual bushels. In the fourth place, there is an economy of labour in the area which is to be cultivated in order to pro- duce this result. Plants which are grown in this way by us tend to be weak ; this is counterbalanced by the system of soaking in manure already referred to. Another advantage derived from this kind of cul- ture is, that it permits of the introduction of annual plants borrowed from warmer climates. Thus in Mongolia the winters are long and cold, the tempera- ture descending to thirty degrees below zero; the summers, though warm, are short — so short, indeed, that potatoes freeze in the middle of September. Under ordinary culture nothing but grass could live ; by transplanting, however, wheat rijoens at the end of August. The herbaceous cotton-plant is also ac- climated by the same method. Another advantage resulting from this system is, that the ravages of hail and inundations are imme- diately repaired, by the fact that there is always in THE PROBLEM OF PAUPERISM. 171 reserve a large quantity of plants ready to be trans- planted at any time. Though hail may destroy a particular crop, there is always another crop ready to substitute therefor. What this culture can do maybe judged from the number of inhabitants which any one given dis- trict supports. For example, the district of Ouang Mokhi, described by Simon, contains twelve hun- dred hectares, or say three thousand acres, and sup- ports ten thousand inhabitants — that is to say, three to an acre. Contrast this with the four acres to a man proposed by the English Land Colonisation Society. One of the subsidiary advantages of this garden culture is that it relieves the country from its dreariness. Such a population as this has all the ad- vantages of a town, with none of its disadvantages ; for every district has numerous pagodas or com- munal buildings, which, though used mainly for re- ligious purposes, serve also for markets, clubs, and tlieatrical performances. The Chinese peasant does not confine himself to agriculture ; he carefully provides himself with raw material for occupation during those hours which he cannot spend in the field. For example, he makes his own linen, cotton, silk, and therefore his own clothes ; he makes his own oil ; and though these articles are not made as cheaply by hand as by fac- tory labour, yet he produces so much more of the raw material to the acre that the net result is an advan- tage to him. Take, for example, the oil that is derived from the turnip seed : whereas our factories 1V2 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. would get thirty-three kilos of oil from one hundred kilogrammes of seed, the Chinaman only gets twenty- five and twenty-eight. But one hectare produces for them twenty-two hundred and fifty kilogrammes of grain, whereas for us only fourteen to fifteen hun- dred ; the advantage, therefore, is on his side by one hundred kilos of oil more than for us. The same re- sult can be worked out for sugar. Culture of this kind is by no means deadening to the intelligence ; on the contrary, the Chinese peasant is intensely wide-awake ; the necessity of adapting his methods to his climate, the changing conditions of the seasons, and the fact that he con- trives to provide himself with industrial occujiations when not engaged in the field, make of him a very different human being from the agricultural labourer as he is known in England. Xo effort, however, to deal with the incapable is likely to prove successful unless he is exposed to the process of military discii^line. The notion that the pauper cannot be made to work is due, I think, to an entire misconception as to the methods which might be adojited to make him work. As has been already stated, no labour colony organised upon the voluntary system Avill ever achieve much with the incapable ; and as long as philanthropists have in their minds the possibility oi persuading the pauper to work on land, all efforts in the compulsory direc- tion are likely to be kept waiting. They do not seem to have considered the notion of applying military THE PROBLEM OF PAUPERISM. 173 discipline to these men. What military discipline can do for them is evidenced by what it does for the army, which is recruited, in England at least, from the very dregs of the population. The public tolerates flogging for insubordination in the army, because it has been handed down by tradition as right and proper; but if it is necessary to flog in order to make good soldiers and sailors, why should we shrink from adopting the same method for res- cuing unwilling paupers from misery and crime? But a very little consideration will suffice to show that practically no flogging would be necessary. lie- course is now seldom had to it in the army or navy. Two regulations have in England lately contributed to reduce the amount of flogging almost to zero, viz. First, that flogging must never be imposed on the same day that the offence is committed ; second, that every case of flogging must be reported at head- quarters. If such conditions were imposed at the Elmira Reformatory there probably would never have been occasion for the distressing differences which have lately harassed the public mind regard- ing this admirable institution. But it will never be necessary to apply corporal punishment in pauper colonies. If different colonies were started for the three different classes of persons above referred to — viz., the criminal, the incapable, and the willing un- employed — a system of transfer from one to the other would furnish a method of punishment in one direc- tion and of advancement in the other. Mistakes are certain to be made in commitments to these various 174 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. colonies. To the colonies for the willing unemployed many incapables are likely to find their way ; these will have to be sifted out, so that they may be sub- jected to the more rigorous discipline of the colony for incapables, and so as not to contaminate the will- ing workers to which these colonies should be con- fined. Again, when an inmate of the colony for incapables becomes refractory he ought to be trans- ferred to the criminal colony, the discipline of which would be still more rigorous. Under this system corporal punishment need only be applied, if at all, in the criminal colony. On the other hand, when a member of the criminal colony deserved advance- ment he could be transferred to the incapable colony ; from that again to the colony of the willing unem- ployed ; and so, eventually, when he has earned the right to it, to freedom. One last necessary provision in our new legisla- tion on this subject should not be omitted. After all efforts to reform have proved vain, the refractory sub- ject should be confined for life under conditions too unhappy to fail to act as a strong deterrent. If so- ciety owes shelter and food to those who will not Avork, it owes them nothing but the barest shelter and the least expensive food — military discipline, a board bed, bread and water, and no more. Nothing would deter more than the certainty that this awaited the refractory incapable. The above considerations seem to point to the following conclusions : THE PROBLEM OP PAUPERISM. 175 The indeterminate sentence should be substituted. for the fixed term. The methods now adopted at the Elmira Reform- atory should be extended to penal farm colonies, which should be kept strictly apart from pauper farm colonies. There should be two classes of pauper farm colo- nies, viz. : First, those to which magistrates should be authorised to commit all persons asking alms, male or female, all drunken or disorderly persons, and all persons convicted of habitual drunkenness; second, those to which are destined all paupers will- ing to work. These two classes of colonies — which may be called respectively unwilling j^auper colonies and vv'illing pauper colonies — should be kept strictly apart. In penal colonies and unwilling pauper colonies the sexes should be separated, so as to prevent in- crease of population during the period of commit- ment. There should be a system of graduation provided from the penal to the unwilling pauper colonies, and from the unwilling pauper colony to the willing pauper colony. Willing pauper colonists, when found capable of self-support, should be provided with farms in the West, a purchase-money mortgage being taken for cost of farm, buildings, stock, and equipment. Then and then onl}^, should families that have been separated by commitment be reconstituted. Military discij)line should prevail in both the 176 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. penal colony and the unwilling pauper colony, but corporal punishment should be tolerated, if at all, only in the purely penal colonies. Every colony should be constituted with the view of making it as self-supporting as possible. To this end every colony should give occupation to all the trades necessary to a complete colony, thus l^rofiting to the utmost by all skilled labour therein, and furnishing to the unskilled and to children the opportunity of acquiring a trade. It would be per- fectly possible so to control this part of the coloni- sation scheme that the work of these skilled labourers should never compete with labour outside the colony ; in other words, so much time only should be given to this work as would provide the colonics with the articles of each trade which they can use respec- tively. The time not required in the trade should be employed on the farm. Moreovei', there could be an exchange of products between the colonies and the penal institutions of the State that would greatly diminish any difficulty arising from this source. All the willing pauper colonies ought to be -near the city, on fertile ground, and devoted mainly to the production of vegetables for the city market under the Chinese system. Proximity is important in view of the character of the jiroduct, and the fact that the population of these colonies would be in part transient, and the expense of transporting paupers from the city to such a colony and back to the city ought to be rendered as small as possible. THE PROBLExAI OF PAUPERISM. 177 The unwilling pauper colonies miglit, on the other hand, be further removed from the city, all their inmates being necessarily committed for a term of some length. They might be employed upon poorer land and in the production of larger crops. Penal colonies could be still further removed from the city and put to the less grateful work of reclaiming bad land, more attention being paid to the methods used than to the results obtained. A system of profit-sharing might be introduced in the willing pauper colony. It is not claimed that the adoption of this plan is sure to deal successfully with the problem in- volved. The success of it will depend upon the administration of the colonies. But if some of those who are now spending days and nights in struggling with the insoluble problem of pauperism within the city will turn their attention, their zeal, and their intelligence to the administration of pauper colo- nies outside the city, and if, by the success of these colonies, our streets and tenement houses be rid of the drunkard, the unclean, the thriftless, the quasi- criminal, and the criminal himself, it is believed that a long step will have been taken towards relieving the misery which the presence of this class in our cities causes to the working man. The foregoing suggestions are made without attempting to discuss whether pauperism can be attacked in its source — viz., wasteful production and unequal distribution of commodities. This last 178 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. question, which will be treated in the chapter on Socialism, is one which we must reconcile ourselves to postpone. Even if we conclude that the socialist programme is one that can to any extent be carried out, it is perfectly clear that it cannot be carried out for many years, if not centuries. The glaring de- fects, however, in our method of dealing with pau- perism and crime are productive of too immediate evil not to demand urgent attention, especially in view of the fact that the remedy for the evil set forth in the preceding pages is one that could be apjolied without delay. But it would be useless to attempt the plan sug- gested unless it were possible to find men and women having the capacity, moral as well as intellectual, to carry it out in the spirit in which it is suggested. Any attempt to carry it out through the instru- mentality of officers elected or appointed under the conditions which prevail in our municipalities to-day must be doomed to failure.* The treatment of the incapable is one of extreme difficulty. Not only does it involve insight into character and consum- mate judgijient, but, what is more important, an unruffled temper. Such qualities as these are not likely to be fouiul united in appointees of our pres- ent political machines. So long, therefore, as these are in control of our municipal offices it is hopeless to endeavour to put such a plan in execution. How hopeless it is to think of getting good ad- * Written before November 6, 1894. THE PROBLEM OP PAUPERISM. 179 ministration nnder our present political system may be seen from an examination of the way in which paupers and criminals are treated in any one of our large cities. With the single exception of the Fire Department, which, though honeycombed with small abuses, is nevertheless efficient for the purpose for which it was organised, probably the best adminis- tered department in the city of New York is that of Charities and Correction. The law under which this department is organised is conceived in a large and philanthropic spirit.* Much is left — as it should be — to the discretion of the commissioners. They are given full and exclusive powers for the manage- ment, maintenance, and direction of all the prisons, penitentiaries, hospitals, almshouses, workhouses, nurseries, and lunatic asylums in the city. It is pro- vided that there should be two bureaus — one of charities and one of correction. The bureau of cor- rection should have charge of all matters relating to criminals ; that of charities should have charge of all matters relating to persons not criminals. The com- missioners are authorised to maintain an industrial school at Hart's Island, but this is left to the com- missioners. They are also authorised to maintain an asylum for inebriates, but this also is left to the com- missioners. Large discretion is also given to them as regards transfers from the city prison, peniten- tiary, or almshouse, to the workhouse, and as regards the employment of all persons whose age or health Consolidation Act, chap. x. 180 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. permits of their working. They are authorised to punish any convict or pauper who refuses to perform the work allotted to him by feeding him on bread and water only, and may " open an account with all paupers committed to the workhouse, charging them with the expenses incurred by the city for their board, and crediting them witli a reasonable com- pensation for the labour performed by them, so that at the expiration of the term of sentence any balance found due them shall be paid to them in cash." They are required to keep paupers and criminals separated, and so to classify the criminals that the " novices in crime may not be contaminated by the evil example or by association or contact with the more hardened or confirmed." They are required to give employment to children in the nurseries, and authorised to bind out children as apprentices. Last, but not least, no criminal or vagrant can be dis- charged without their approval. In the course of the investigation of the adminis- tration of the city departments by the Senate Com- mittee, under resolution adopted January 20, 1890, the President of the Board of Charities and Correc- tion was examined.* The department had not given rise to any special cause of complaint. The presi- dent of the board was considered to have been a good apj)ointment, made by a good mayor, at a time when the city had been temporarily rescued from Tammany Hall. Under these circumstances, there- * Report, vol. iv, pp. 3326-3451. THE PROBLEM OF PAUPERISM. 181 fore, the management of the department was likely to give rise to the least criticism, and yet these are some of the admissions that the president was obliged to make : The lawreqnires the commissioners to create two distinct bnreaus, one of charities and one of correc- tion, for the express purpose of preventing the pos- sibility of contact between paupers and criminals. Nor was this left to the discretion of the commis- sioners ; upon this point the law was mandatory. Nevertheless, the president was obliged reluctantly to admit that there had been persistent failure to comply with the law in this respect.* Moreover, no attempt had been made to classify criminals, so that " novices in crime might not be contaminated by as- sociation with the more hardened or confirmed " ; f on the contrary, from motives of economy, women of bad character were distributed for work among the hospital and other institutions,^ and inmates of the asylum Avere often assigned to the same work as those of the penitentiary.* Whenever the commis- sioners might have exercised their discretion in a hu- manitarian sense they had failed to do so. There was no industrial school at Hart's Island ; || there was no asylum for inebriates ; ^ no account had ever been opened with paupers with a view to furnishing them with a fund at the expiration of their term ; () there * Id., p. 3327. * P. 8842. P- 3881. t P. 8835. II Pp. 3364, 3367. t P. 3344. ^ P. 8369. 182 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. were no nurseries ; * and no children had ever been bound out as apprentices.! It was admitted that the accommodations were grossly defective, though it was explained that this was due to the refusal of the finan- cial board of the city to furnish the necessary funds for increasing the buildings proportionately to the increase of occupants.^ The president admitted that all the commissioners and employees owed their appointments — or, in the case of the president him- self, his maintenance in office — to political influence ; * and, although all applicants for employment Avere obliged to pass a civil-service examination, "a Demo- crat would be very apt to get there." Needless to say, Mr. Porter, the president, was a Democrat. It was also admitted that the discharges in the month of October — that is to say, the month immediately precediiig elections — were one hundred per cent more than in any other mouth of the year. The examination here is worth quoting at length : " Now, I find, by going over such statistics as I have, that the discharges usually are a hundred per cent more in the month of October than they are in any month of the year." " I guess you and I understand that." " We understand it, but I want the committee to understand it. Why is it, Mr. Porter?" " Well, I don't know. They discharge them." * Id, p. 3383. t P- 3385. | P. 3406. * P. 3400: "Well, I suppose we all do more or less get our appointment through political influence." THE PROBLEM OP PAUPERISM. 183 " Police justices discharge them ? " " Yes, sir." " And you do not exercise your prerogative of withholding your counter-signature ? " " No." Perhaps the defect of a system which puts the administration of city departments into the hands of politicians is best illustrated by the explanation given for the failure to institute an industrial school at Hart's Island. Mr. Porter testified that it was impossible to run an industrial school, " because you no more than get a boy fairly started than his dis- charge comes. . . . But if the terms were settled, if a boy who was noted for being a disorderly boy in his district were committed to the workhouse and was intended to stay there for his term and then to be sent to an industrial school, why, something might be accomplished; but so long as they are to be dis- charged, some of them a few days after their com- mittal, why, the school can effect but little." Mr. Porter entirely forgot, when he so testified, that no inmate of this institution could be discharged without his consent and that of the commissioners. All, therefore, that he had to do was to refuse his consent, and thus prevent the discharge of a boy who had not been long enough in the industrial school to reap advantage therefrom. But when Mr. Porter was asked whether he ever exercised his right to re- fuse his consent, he testified that he did not.* * Id., p. 3351. 13 184 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. " Have vou ever refused to make a discharge wliere a police justice has signed the discharge?" " No, I do not think I ever have, sir." In other words, this power of discharge is a power exercised by police justices for the purpose of secur- ing a political following among the criminal classes and for the purpose of securing votes prior to elec- tion. Mr. Porter would be injuring the opportuni- ties for patronage of his fellow-politicians if he re- fused to consent to a discharge, although under the law he has a right to do so. It is politics, there- fore, that prevents the commissioners from doing their duty. How little they are alive to the evils which they are supposed to handle in their department may also be judged from a toleration of the system by which habitual offenders, or " old rounders " as they are called,* are regularly committed for drunkenness and disorderly conduct only to be discharged again, and then recommitted and redischarged. Mr. Porter tes- tifies that, in his opinion, they ought to be obliged to serve the whole term of six months ; but in this case also he does not exercise the discretion allowed him by which he can refuse to consent to their discharge at a prior date. And so the workhouse is practically converted into a boarding house for drunkards ; it can hardly be considered a place of confinement. They are regularly set at liberty, and remain at liberty long enough for a debauch, and * Id., p. 3350. THE PROBLEM OF PAUPERISM. 185 are willingly enough committed after the debauch is over during the time necessary for making them fit and disposed for another. Mr. Porter is jDerfectly alive to the evil, and has apparently not lifted a finger to suppress it. It has been already stated that the financial au- thorities in the citv, called the Board of Estimate and Apportionment, do not provide the funds neces- sary for the working of the Department of Charities and Correction. The estimates made by the depart- ment are regularly and arbitrarily cut down by the board, and applications for funds necessary for addi- tional buildings are refused. The reason of this is not far to seek ; in the language of ward politics, there is no money in this department for Tammany Hall. The voluntary organisation known as the State Charities Aid Association has secured the right of visiting all the public institutions of an elee- mosynary nature in the State, and the vigilance of this society makes it difficult for Tammany to make anything out of this department. But nothing, per- haps, serves better to demonstrate the hopelessness of the effort to get good work out of public officials un- der a Tammany regime than the effect of this aid so- ciety upon our charitable institutions. It has un- doubtedly accomplished a great work, and is entitled to the gratitude of every citizen who has the inter- ests of the poor and wretched at heart ; but because of the very good it does, because of the very vigilance it exercises, Tammany can make nothing out of the department, and Tammany therefore cuts down the 186 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. ap2)roj)riations which otherwise would be lavished upon it. But it is not by peculation only that Tam- many ruins our public service, for President Porter testified that he did not do his duty in refusing dis- charges made for political purj^oses, and that he owed his position to political influences. It does not require much sagacity to make the connection. So long as political machines control our city offices, no efforts of the State Charities Aid Associa- tion, or tlie Charity Organisation Society, or the So- ciety for Improving the Condition of the Poor, or the hundreds of other societies in the city, will do more than dam the evils that flow from municipal misgovernment. The present administration of our municipal charities in New York is the very best that can be expected from such administration of municipal af- fairs as we now have ; it is a matter for congratula- tion that it is not infinitely worse. And yet it does not pretend to make an effort to deal with the real problems of pauperism. The commissioners seem to do the least possible in the performance of their duties. There is no idea of improving the condition of the men in these institutions, or otherwise grap- pling with the distressing questions to which the treatment of the pauper and criminal gives rise. The contrast shown in the preceding pages between what ought to be done for the criminal, the pauper, and the incapable, and what is done for them, taken in connection with the political conditions under which all our municipal dej)artments are adminis- THE PROBLEM OF PAUPERISM. 187 tered, ought to bring it home to the mind of every earnest man that he cannot better employ the time that he has to give to charitable work than in the correction of the political syntein which puts into office men Avho, however willing, are, in consequence of the political conditions by which they are sur- rounded, incapable of executing the law. It is a matter of record that over ten million dol- lars are annually spent in charity in the city of New York. This, of course, does not include the millions which are spent by individuals, of which no record is kept. The Board of Estimate and Apportionment, to whom is confided the distribution of the funds of the city amongst the various departments, have year after year refused to api:)ropriate the sum of less than a million asked for the completion of necessary build- ings, and the whole appropriation made for the sup- port of our prisoners, paupers, sick, and insane is about two million dollars a year. If the sums which are now willingly contributed by societies to the re- lief of distress in this city were added to that appor- tioned by the city for the same purpose, and both were intelligently applied to the treatment of this class, it is believed that, in the first place, more than half the fund would be found to be superfluous ; that, in the second place, pauperism would, in so far as it tends to degrade the icoi-Tcingman, practically disap- pear from the streets of the city; and, in the third place, a merciful but implacable severity to those who refuse to work would prevent all danger of at- tracting paupers from outside. CHAPTER' XL PROBLEM OF SOCIALISM. It has been pointed out in the preceding chapter that the workingman is materially injured by our neglect to intelligently handle the question of pau- perism and crime. He is injured by the return to the community of the criminal after imprisonment, without any guarantee that the criminal has been re- formed, but rather with the certitude that in conse- quence of the stigma of imprisonment he is com- mitted to a career of crime. He is injured by the reg- ular return to his neighbourhood of the "rounder," whose release affords opportunity for renewing the offences which regularly return him to the work- house. He is injured by the incapable man, who lowers wages by his willingness to accept alms; who drains the pockets of his neighbours by appeals to their charity; who renders wholesome dwellings un- Avholesome by his uncleanliness ; who increases the rental to his fellow-tenants by failing to pay rent himself, and who spreads contagion about him — the contagion of laziness, drunkenness, and vice. The workingman is more heavily handicapped in this matter than he himself at all appreciates. It 188 PROBLEM OF SOCIALISM. 189 is not likely, however, that he would recognise efforts made to handle this problem as in any way a benefit to himself; his mind is too resolutely turned in an opposite direction ; he has learned to expect and be- lieve in a more radical cure ; he has been taught by Carl Marx that the conflict between labour and capital is ineradicable; he has been tortured by unsuccess- ful strikes into hating his employer, and exhilarated by successful strikes into despising him ; he has ac- quired just enough knowledge of political economy to appreciate the injustice of his position as com- pared with that of the idle rich, and he is firmly convinced of the possibility of securing justice by the destruction of private property, and the vest- ing of the title to both land and commodities in the State. The demand of the People's party for the ownership by the Government of railroads, tele- graphs, and telephones ; the declaration that land is the heritage of the people ; the demand for free and unlimited coinage of silver at the ratio of sixteen to one; of the increase of circulatiug medium to fifty dollars 7^6?' capita ; of graduated income tax ; and of a system of loaning money to the farmers, known as the sub-treasury plan, at two per cent, per annum, and the fact that this party polled over a million votes in 1893, and actually carried Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, Nevada, and Xorth Dakota, indicate that this belief in socialistic measures not only widely prevails but is becoming organised. The demands of the Socialist Labour party are still more extensive ; they include the right of initia- 190 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. tive and referendum in the people, the abolition of the presidency, the vice-presidency, and Senate of the United States, and a large number of other con- stitutional changes of a radical character. This party polled nearly eighteen thousand in New York, which, if added to sixteen thousand five hundred polled by the Populists, make a total vote of thirty-four thou- sand in favour of Socialist measures in this State. The political attitude of the workingman in Xew York city is still more deserving of our consid- eration than appears from these figures; for in mu- nicipal matters he unhesitatingly states that he will continue to support Tammany Hall irrespective of its dishonesty and corruption, because it is the estab- lished policy of Tammany Hall to favour large public works, and because in the execution of these public works high rates of wages are paid to the labourer and union labourers are preferred. For example, a street sweeper receives two dollars a day from the city, whereas if the work were done by contract he would receive from a contractor not more than one dollar a day. When it is pointed out to the wage earner that it is folly to increase the scope of the Government as long as the Government is in such bad hands, he answers that it is the wealthy who pay for Tam- many's dishonesty — not the poor. The matter is to these last not one of more or less taxation ; it is one of life and death. And this is not an over-statement. During the winter of 1893-'94, had it not been for the vigorous efforts of the private charities, thousands would have PROBLEM OP SOCIALISM. 191 perished of starvation in the street. That the immi- nence of such a danger should have left a profound impression on the minds and hearts of the labouring man is hardly a matter for surprise. It may be claimed that the argument of hunger is not a permanent one, but resulted from the excep- tional industrial conditions which prevailed during that winter, and are not likely soon to prevail again. Though this is undoubtedly true to a certain extent, there are permanent forces at work tending towards socialism which we cannot fail to recognise. It is universally admitted that the industrial revolution which resulted from the inventions of the latter part of the last century, by removing labourers from their homes, where they supported themselves by individ- ual work, and collecting them in large factories where they earn their living by collective work, naturally directed the minds of the working people towards the possibility and simplicity of a social system which should replace the capitalist by the State. Under the old dispensation they owned their tools them- selves; under the new dispensation these tools had become transformed by mechanical inventions into huge and expensive machinery, and had become the property of factory owners. This machinery could only be purchased by large capitalists, who are thus put in a position to dictate terms to the workman, and to put him under rules and regulations that fall little short of military discipline. The very fact that large industries had, before their very eyes and in their own experience, become monopolised in a 192 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. few factories owned by private capital, naturally sug- gested to the minds of the workmen a more com- plete monopoly in the hands of the State, the profits of which should be returned to the wage earner, who seemed the most entitled to them. Again, while the tendency of industrial evolu- tion to-day is towards the massing of workingmen in large factory towns, and the creation of practical monopolies which seem to prepare them for expro- jjriation by the State, one important conservative force in the community which would tend to resist this movement towards socialism, is being daily weak- ened. The family, which is the basis of our civilisa- tion, is gradually breaking up. Marriage, which religion originally rendered indissoluble, has now, by the breaking down of religion, by the laxity of divorce legislation, and by the disappearance of the public condemnation of divorce, become too often a time contract. With the relaxation of the marriage tie comes naturally a disintegration of the family institution, of which marriage was, in the age of faith, an indissoluble cement. And not only is the family tending to break up and the marriage tie to become weakened, but factory work is tending more and more to separate men from women. Thus, some manufacturing towns in New England are popular- ly called " she-towns," because they consist mainly of women and children, whereas the men drift away to logging camps, mining camps, and the boarding tents of the iron region. In Paul Gohre's work entitled Three Months a Factory Hand he describes PROBLEM OF SOCIALISM. 193 the tendency of the family to disappear and to be replaced by boarding-houses, in which kinship be- comes subsidiary to convenience of locality. The moral effect of such a system is considerable. The children practically escape entirely from the control of their parents, who become to them nothing more than fellow-boarders. The feeling of responsibility which the head of a family entertains for the support of his wife and children tends to disappear, and with it the spirit of conservatism that generally ranks itself in favour of maintaining existing institutions. Education, too, especially in the homoeopathic doses furnished to the working class, is creating a spirit of discontent amongst the working people which is likely eventually to express itself in a de- mand for revolutionary changes. It is inconceivable that the labouring man can slowly increase in knowl- edge without at the same time increasing in the faculty which springs from knowledge. His pa- tience in bygone days resulted mainly from mental inactivity. The moment his brain becomes stimu- lated by education and a weapon is put into his hands by knowledge, there can be but one result — he will demand that his position be bettered. Nor is there any reason to expect that the de- mands of a workman for improvement of his condi- tion would be wise or moderate. The education he receives is sufficient to discontent, but not sufficient to instruct him. He often fails to distinguish be- tween the injustice of a greedy capitalist and the exigencies of a particular industrial condition. He 194 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. often strikes when he should not, and sometimes re- frains from striking when he should. Moreover, every strike, whether it succeeds or fails, tends to widen the breach between himself and his emj^loyer. Nothing tends more to create revolutionary changes than the opposition of two classes who are, or who believe themselves to be, irremediably antagonistic. It is when two electrically charged bodies are sepa- rated by a nonconducting material, across which opposing electricities can with difficulty travel, that the accumulation becomes dangerous. Make the material between them a better coiiductor, and what would otherwise have been an explosion will become an interchange. The upper middle class, wliich serves as a continual hyphen between the aristocracy and the lower middle class in England, has pre- vented the revolution which took place in France, owing to the absence of this very class. So, let the tension between the employer and the emjiloyee con- tinue to increase as it has increased in the joast, and nothing but a revolution can clear the air. But let there step in between these warring elements a body of their fellow-citizens willing to undertake a care- ful, earnest, and intelligent consideration of the problems which now divide them, and it is confi- dently believed that danger of revolutionary meas- ures can be avoided. And we cannot afford to disregard the dangers of such a revolution. The workingman is creating a wide sympathy in the community ; he is becoming organised, educated, and strong, and he is also be- PROBLEM OP SOCIALISM. 195 coining conscious of his strength. Under these con- ditions his demands are likely to be put forward in such a form as, by striking down capital, to destroy the very basis upon which all civilisation is found- ed ; whereas, if these demands are propounded with moderation and in such a form as to transfer the capital without destroying it, all danger arising from socialistic demands will disappear, and out of a gradual trial of socialistic measures which may re- sult in the permanent adoption of some and the permanent rejection of otliers, the community will emerge strengthened and improved. It must not be supposed that socialism is neces- sarily revolutionary. Upon no subject is there more widespread ignorance as well as indifference than socialism. Many would be astounded to learn that socialism and anarchism are absolutely opposed to one another. They would be surprised to learn that socialism involves no sudden transference of proj)- erty from the individual to the State. The major- ity of the County Council in London are practically socialists. The same is true of the Municipal Coun- cil in Paris and the principal towns of France, and the Social Democrats are to-day numerically the strongest party in the German Empire. The Lon- don County Council is now actually engaged in car- rying out a socialist programme, and this without the slightest dislocation or interruption of continu- ous municipal administration. Socialism is no more capable of definition than religion, for, like religion, it is an outgrowth of 196 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. conditions wliich, though they have some features in common all over the world, differ materially in other respects in different countries. Just as the God of the Greek has been already pointed out to have differed from the God of the Hebrew, in much the same manner as the needs of the Greek tem- perament differed from those of the Hebrew tem- perament, so the socialism of Germany differs from the socialism of England in much the same manner as the needs of the German differ from the needs of the English workingman. To the German the State is " an organised power for the maintenance of the actually existing social relations of property and class domination." An empire which grew out of a successful war under the tutelage of Von Moltke and Bismarck, and is now delivered over by heredi- tary accident to a young man who unites in himself the autocratic temperament of both ; arbitrai'y, bu- reaucratic, and military in its essential character- istics ; putting its concessions to socialism in the most offensive possible form, and then thrusting them down the throats of the people, as it were, with a sword, is not the form of government likely to endear itself to the German socialist. This last declines any longer to be treated as a child, for he believes himself to understand his needs as well as the young gentleman who now occupies the Prussian throne. Two facts peculiar to Germany, therefore, tend to stamp German socialism with peculiar char- acteristics. In the first place, Germany is a country in which compulsory education has been longest in PROBLEM OF SOCIALISM. 197 force. German socialism is tlierefore more highly educated tiiaii the socialism of any other country ; and not only is it more highly educated, but, in ac- cordance with the temperament of German thought, tends to be philosophical and abstract in its terms. In the second place, the Government being in the hands of a military aristocracy, it is hated by the socialist, who, though he wants education and in- surance, does not want either on the condition of its being compulsorily administered by the State. Hence the German is opposed to those measures which, inasmuch as they are imposed by an aristo- cratic State, have acquired the name of State socialism. In England, on the other hand, totally different conditions prevail. Compulsory education is com- paratively recent. The people are practical rather than pliilosophical, and the State, though still haunted with ghosts of the ancien regime, is prac- tically democratic. In other words, what socialist measures have been adopted, instead of being com- pulsorily imposed by a government essentially hos- tile to the workingman, are, as a matter of fact, ad- ministered by a democratic government of which the workingman forms a part and as regards the working of which he has a voice. For this reason socialists in England tend to be practical, and are in favour of the vei-y State socialism so obnoxious to socialists in Germany. After this preamble regarding the points on which socialism is likely to differ under different conditions, 198 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. let us now consider those jDoiuts in which it tends to be the same. Socialism is practically an effort to solve the prob- lem of economical j)i"oduction and just distribution. It is clear that under existing conditions the goods of this world are not only unevenly but unjustly dis- tributed. Moreover, they are not only unevenly but wastefully produced. Wastefulness of production under the competitive system is illustrated by the paralleling of railway lines and the duplication of gas and telegraph companies, creating momentary competition which eventually only tends to swell a monopoly at enormous unnecessary cost. It is further illustrated by the waste and expense of advertising and commercial travelling, which are both purely the product — and often the mendacious product — of com- petition ; by the inability of the producer to know beforehand in what quantities various commodities are to be produced ; by the inevitable waste conse- quent upon over-production of one article and under- production of others, hindsight being thus deliber- ately substituted for foresight in a matter concernino- Avhich foresight would seem to be indispensable. This condition of things results in industrial crises, the losses attending which are incalculable ; capital remains idle, labour unemployed, the production of work ceases, and want, starvation, and vice follow as necessary consequences. If production were in the hands of the State these difficulties would be elimi- nated. Railroads would be built where they were needed, and only where they were needed. The same PROBLEM OP SOCIALISM. 199 would be true of gas mains and telegraph wires. The amount of commodities needed would be known, and labour would be transferred from the production of one kind to another without the necessity of calam- itous crises to compel the transfer. The problem of distribution is a more difficult one. A system which gives a few men more millions a year than they can spend and keeps a tenth part of our population in misery and want cannot be wise or just. It is this glaring inequality in the distri- bution of products which commends the study of so- cialism most to the workiugman, and ought to com- mend it most to the man of morality and justice. On the other hand, it is the waste of production in our existing system which commends it most to the economist. It would be a profound mistake to suppose that, because the platforms of various socialist bodies are radical and even revolutionary, no measures pro- pounded by socialists are worthy of consideration. How much there is in the socialist programme which deserves study, if not adoption, at our hands may be gathered by a brief statement of wbat is termed the London Programme of the Fabian Society. The demands of the Fabian programme are eight in all : 1. The unearned increment : By this expression is meant the amount added to the selling value of land by the mere increase in the size of the commu- nity and in its productive power. In other words, it is the increase in the value of land through the 14 200 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. industry and intelligence of the working population, which piles up millions of increased value for the few who own the land, and who, if idle, contribute nothing thereto. In London this unearned incre- ment is generally admitted to amount to £110,000,- 000 in twenty years. It is contended that the per- sons entitled to this unearned increment are those whose labour and intelligence have created it, and not those who happen to be landowners. The sug- gestion of the Fabians is, that a municipal death duty of ten per cent be imposed for the purpose of transferring to the people that part of the increased value of land which fairly belongs to them. 2. City guilds : These enjoy an income of £868,- 986 a year. They were originally organised to pro- vide for the poor, but now fulfil practically no use- ful function. It is proposed that they be dissolved, and that the administration of this fund be trans- ferred to the London County Council. 3. Municipalisation of the gas supply : The gas supply of London is in the hands of three conijoanies, of which the largest pays a dividend of twelve per cent. It is proposed that the County Council pur- chase the works of these three companies at an equi- table price, or, in case of refusal of the companies to sell, obtain parliamentary powers to construct a com- peting system. Manchester, Birmingham, and Bi-ad- f ord are quoted as instances where municipal owner- ship of gas has resulted in great economy to the taxpayer. 4. Municipalisation of tramways : Tramways in PROBLEM OF SOCIALISM. 201 London are one hundred and twenty-six miles in extent, and in the hands of eleven different com- panies. They pay a dividend of between seven and ten per cent per annum. The concessions are for a term of twenty-one years, and the city therefore has a right to run the tramways on its own account as fast as the respective concessions expire. The ex- ploitation of tramways by the city has proved suc- cessful in Huddersfield ; it is therefore demanded that it be tried in London also. 5. London's water supply : London is now pro- vided with water by eight different companies, at a cost of about £700,000 a year. London, however, pays £1,700,000 for the water supply. Nor is the water supplied of good quality, five of the companies deriving it almost entirely from the Thames. It is proposed that the County Council should either pur- chase these water companies at a fair price, or ob- tain parliamentary powers to construct a competing supply. 6. London Docks : The London docks have by successive amalgamations fallen into the hands of four companies, which, however, do not succeed iu making more than between two and three per cent on their nominal capital. They would prob- ably not make expenses did they not adopt a plan in the employment of labour which, while it saves the companies from bankruptcy, is demoral- ising and injurious to the interests of the working- man. They only employ a comparatively small staff of regular employees; the bulk of the work is done 202 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. by what are termed casuals — that is to say, men who are employed for a day or fraction of a day as the demand for labour requires. This system brings to the docks daily about twenty thousand applicants for work, of which, on an average, seven to eight thousand apply in vain.* The evils of this system are twofold. In the language of Mr. Charles Booth: "The occasional employment of this class of labour by the docks, water-side, and other East-End industries is a gigantic system of outdoor relief. It creates a demoralised and vicious leisure class. "f Again, the prevailing notion amongst London work- men is, in their words, that " they can always get a job at the docks." The result of this is, that on the slightest occasion of discontent or temper, or on the slightest temptation to idleness, they abandon regular occupation in order to swell the mob at the dock gates. For the purpose of putting an end to this demor- alising influence, and notwithstanding the fact that as an investment the purchase of the docks would not pay, the Fabian programme asks for the munici- palisation of the docks also. The loss, if any, on the docks would be insignificant by the side of the profits that would result from a purchase of other municipal franchises. 7. The markets : Some of the London markets consist of private monopolies operated for the benefit * Mansion House Report, 1886, p. 7. f Labor in the Life of the People, vol. i, p. 203. PROBLEM OP SOCIALISM. 203 of the owner and not for that of the public. The municipalisatiou of these markets is demanded. 8. Labour policy : The following demands are made in the interest of labour : (a) A normal eight-hour day for all public em- ployees. {b) Payment of not less than trade-union wages for each occupation. (c) Full liberty of combination. (d) One day's rest in seven, and sufficient holi- days. (e) Prohibition of overtime except in unexpected emergencies. They also demand that the city should employ labour directly, and not work through contractors ; or, if in certain cases working through contractors cannot be avoided, that all contracts contain a clause imposing upon the contractor the payment of fair wages. The above programme is given in its entirety in order to demonstrate that even though some of the demands may be deemed by some excessive, they are on the whole within the range of practical politics ; they are not revolutionary, and cannot, even to a conservative eye, seem more unreasonable than any other measure of the Liberal party. It may be ob- jected that a municipal death duty of ten per cent is large, and that full liberty of combination amongst city employees would be dangerous. The recent railroad strikes in Chicago have suggested that steps should be taken to protect the public from the in- 204 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. terruiation of piiblic service by strikes. It is believed that a system could be devised not unsatisfactory to the workingmeu, under which employees in public and quasi-public service should make time contracts which they would not be at liberty to violate, thus giving employers an opportunity of preventing the interruption of service created by sudden refusal on the part of the employees to per- form duties on which the public ought to count.* But this very question is one which suggests the importance of socialistic questions being carefully studied by those who are least likely to do so in a hostile spirit. It is not reasonable to suppose that railroad directors can bring to such a question as this the dispassionate study which it deserves ; nor is it reasonable to suppose that the workingman will readily adopt the doctrine that the public must be protected from the suddenenss of the interruption upon which the workingman counts in order to secure his terms. The point which must be brought home to the workingman in this connection is that his strikes succeed when they are justified, and when because they are justified, they have the sympathy of the public ; that they do not succeed when they are * While these pages are going through the press the State Board of Mediation and Arbitration, in its report upon the trolley strike in Brooklyn, recommends that engagements for a definite period be rendered obligatory on transportation companies, and that resignations or dismissals be not per- mitted except upon due notice or under extraordinary cir- cumstances.— 6>e New York Sun, February S, 1895. PROBLEM OF SOCIALISM. 205 not justified, and when they do not have the sym- pathy of the public. In other words, the workman forms part of a social system which he cannot afford to mass in opposition to himself. In his own in- terest, therefore, it is folly so to cripple the public service as to create indignation in the very quarter where he needs sympathy. Assuming that the rail- road employee is engaged for a term of not less than six months, and that both he and his employer must give one another a month's notice before the expira- tion of the term in case either of them desires to end the employment, is it not clear that notice given by five thousand railroad employees that they would one month ahead cease to work for the railroad, with a fair and dispassionate statement of the reasons of such a decision, would command from the public the support which they need, and be more likely to bring about a fair adjustment of their demands than violent interru2:)tion of the service, and the scenes of violence which it is impossible to prevent on such occasions? It is not contended that railroad em- ployees would readily understand this, but they are more likely to understand it if some disinterested person takes the trouble of bringing it home to them during periods of calm than if it is hurled at them by indignant employers in the heat of con- flict. It may also be urged by some against the Fabian programme that ten per cent is too large a death duty to exact ; but the figure has not been set down as an uJiimatiini, and it is reasonable to suppose 206 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. that a fair adjustment of the figure could be ar- rived at. In a word, the Fabian programme is compara- tively moderate; has certainly nothing in it that is outraareous ; nothing in it which does not deserve careful discussion ; and it is, perhaps, just because there are features in it which require amendment that it becomes the duty of all those who recognize their resj)onsibility as citizens to understand the problems involved. Such a study would enable the lar^e class of citizens who to-dav stand neutral be- tween the employer and the employee to exercise a wholesome influence that would lead to a proper ad- justment, and avoid the evils and misery that attend revolt and revolution. The same thing can be said of the programme of the People's party, to which reference has already been made. This platform demands the following : 1. Free and unlimited coinage of silver and gold at 16 to 1. 2. Increase of circulating medium to not less than fifty dollars joer cxqnta. 3. Graduated income-tax. 4. " That the money of the country be kept as much as possible in the hands of the people, and the limitation of national revenues to the necessary ex- penses of the Government." 5. Postal savings banks. 6. Xationalisation of railroads, telegraphs, and telephones. PROBLEM OF SOaALISM. 207 7. "The land, including all the natural sources of wealth, is the heritage of the people and should not be monopolised for speculative purposes, and alien ownership of land should be prohibited. All land now held by railroads and other corporations in excess of their actual needs, and all lands now owned by aliens, should be reclaimed by the Gov- ernment and held for actual settlers only." A discussion of the merits and demerits of this platform will not be undertaken : but the attention of all earnest men is directed to the fact that there is in this programme something that is practicable and much that is impracticable ; that the party which stands upon this platform is making rapid progress in the country ; that the task of educating the People's party so as to make it distinguish be- tween those parts of their programme which are sound from those parts of it which are unsound cannot be confided to the machines of the Eepub- lican and Democratic parties; that the duty of accomplishing this work must and always will re- main in those citizens who appreciate the respon- sibilities of their franchise; and that while the necessity of undertaking this work may not seem considerable to citizens of the Eastern States, they are of vital importance to those of the West. Xor can the country at large long remain indifferent to the issues which vitally concern any important frac- tion of the people. The passion for cheap money which prevails in some States is one of the most amazing political fallacies to which our fellow-citi- 208 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. zens are exposed. It is all the more amazing when we find it entertained by the very men who would suffer most from the folly of adopting it, for while the dollar would cheapen, wages would remain the same. It is the men who understand what money is who would be the first to modify their business ar- rangements accordingly. The large monopolists and bankers would take care to lose least, and possibly in some cases profit by the change ; whereas, those whose ignorance of the subject is evidenced by the very fact that they demand a depreciated coinage that would impoverish them, are the very ones Avho would be the last to know how to accommodate themselves to it. The most elementary exj^lanation that money represents purchasing power, and that its value to an individual depends upon its purchas- ing power and not uj^on the Government stamp which is 2"»ut upon it, ought to suffice to puncture the folly of this demand. But if this exjjlanation is offered by one who is ijolitically opposed to the members of the People's party, his arguments would be believed to be founded upon interest, and would never penetrate the prejudices in favour of cheap money, or reach that part of the brain which is capable of coming to an intelligent conclusion. The question of education will be more fully con- sidered in the following chapter. Meanwhile we are confronted with the fact that the working peo- ple of this land are gradually acquiring political convictions which contain much that is true and much that is not true. Every one of those milliona PROBLEM OF SOCIALISM. 209 has as much to say at the polls as the most skilful political economist in the country. He does not read from books of political economy ; he reads the newspapers. He does not read the newspapers that are politically opposed to him ; he reads the news- papers which mirror and exaggerate his own opin- ions. He wields a power which, when he learns how to exercise it, is great enough to wreck the entire social fabric, and put civilisation back where it was when the sands of the Sahara were allowed to bury the monuments of Egypt. On every man who has a head to understand these questions, and who has a heart to wish them solved for the benefit of his conn- try and to the diminution of the misery of his fel- low-creatures, lies the responsibility of taking tbe steps necessary to see that the great working force of the nation is directed to its advancement and not to its destruction. The question of socialism cannot be left with- out treating that aspect of it which brings it into contrast with what is called iudividualism. It is perfectly consistent with the whole of Herbert Spencer's philosophy that he should be an individ- ualist — that is to say, that he should believe that the present condition of competition is the best possible, and that through individual instinct and the strug- gle for existence it involves, is there likely to be the greatest chance of improvement for man. Mr. Spencer believes that our present conditions are the inevitable result of the implacable application of 210 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. cause and effect working through millions of years. He has also satisfied himself that the same principles of evolution that, working in the past, have brought man to where he is to-day, will, working in the future, bring him to an era of universal peace and unselfishness. The principle of determinism, which makes a man the mere pujopet of the greater inclina- tion, is a part of the theory that he has been and always will be the product of evolution, over which he has practically no control. So satisfied is Mr. Spencer with these conditions that he is averse to any human interference in the matter. With ex- traordinary skill and sagacity he has picked out the numerous occasions when legislative interference has produced effects diametrically the reverse of those which it was intended to produce, and has argued from these disappointments against legislative inter- ference in all matters save those referring to protec- tion from violence to life and property. Individual- ism demands the minimum of state interference ; so- cialism demands the maximum of state interference. In this respect, therefore, they stand diametrically opposed ; and it becomes necessary, when discussing the subject of socialism, to come to some conclusion regarding them. In an admirable essay on this subject Mr. D. G. Ritchie, quoting Sir J. Fitzjames Stephen,* pro- pounds three questions as applicable to all legisla- tion: * Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, 1854, 5th edition. PROBLEM OF SOCIALISM. 211 " 1. Is the object aimed at good ? that is to say, does it tend to advance the well-being of the corn- numity? " 2. Will the proposed means attain it ? " 3. Will they attain it at too great an expense, or not? that is to say, can the end be obtained with- out doing more harm than is compensated by the benefit of its attainment?" By applying these questions to state regulation of opinion, education, agriculture, and industry, he demonstrates very clearly that the question of state interference cannot be decided upon general philo- sophic grounds, but must be determined in very case upon the merits of the case itself. He points out that as regards the state regulation of opinion, whereas it is undoubtedly improper for the state to attempt to deal with religious opinions where those religious opinions are not such as to jeopardise the prosperity of the country, the state has an undoubt- ed right to regulate the conduct of the people in so far as it is determined by religious opinions that are dangerous to the community. He points out that there are certain people who sincerely believe vacci- nation to be a poison and a calamity, and who re- gard compulsory vaccination as persecution : " Now the difference between such cases and religious persecution is this : There are available statistics about the relation between vaccination and immunity from smallpox, and, if necessary, better statistics can be procured ; but theological experts can produce no similarly trustworthy statis- 212 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. tics — statistics of a kind that should satisfy a parliamentary comraission — about the relation be- tween orthodoxy (of any given species) and immu- nity from damnation. Therefore the state does well if it acts on the wise principle laid down — but, unfortunately, not always followed by Tiberius : — ■ ' Deorum injuriaj dis cura?' — Wrongs against God are God's affairs. Or let both state and society listen to Gamaliel : ' Eefrain from these men, and let them alone : for if this counsel or this work be of men, it will be overthrown ; but if it is of God, ye will not be able to overthrow them ; lest haply ye be found even to be fighting against God." Or let them listen to a greater than Gamaliel, who said, " Forbid him not, though he followeth not with us." It cannot therefore be laid down that there is any hard-and-fast rule as to whether the state should interfere with opinion or not. Whether it is wise and proper to do so must always remain a question of great difficulty, and can be answered only by the peculiar conditions which each case presents. Another illustration of this subject is furnished by the action of the French Eepublic in expelling Jesuits. This undoubtedly was an act which might be properly characterised as religious persecution, and yet it is probable that the republic would not have survived if it had failed to adopt this course. The Jesuits were daily engaged in inculcating into the youth of France a spirit of religious hostility to republican forms of government, and cultivating in them loyalty to those monarchical institutions from PROBLP]M OF SOCIALISM. 213 the destruction of which the Roman Church has itself so profoundly suffered. Although at a time when the republic was struggling for its very life against monarchical reaction it may be thought proper for it to have adopted a course which un- doubtedly trespassed severely upon principles of individual liberty precious to every republican heart, it was one upon which republicans themselves were at the time divided. Undoubtedly in America those who thought at all about the subject were disposed to censure the French Government for the course it then pursued ; and yet many who have followed the events of French politics closely during the last twenty years are satisfied that a failure on the part of the French Republic to protect itself by such a measure would probably have ended before this in the restoration of some reactionary form of govern- ment, and in the indefinite postponement of the en- joyment of that very personal liberty which these measures seemed so ruthlessly to attack. In the same connection Professor Huxley asks whether the English Government was wrong in sup- pressing Thuggee in India,* and adopts the dictum of Locke, that " the end of government is the good of mankind"; from which it follows as the night the day that wherever the state can wisely legislate so as to increase the good or diminish the evil in the world such legislation cannot be other than a bless- ing. In this conclusion Professor Huxley remains * Methods and Results ; Administrative Nihilism, p. 279, 214 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. consistent with his theory before explained, that man is engaged in a struggle with Nature and is not doomed to compliance with it. The foregoing considerations suflSce to indicate generally the character of the problem presented by socialism, the necessity of handling it, and the mistake that underlies the theory of individualism, wiiich would fain waive it to one side as unworthy of any consideration whatever. If the reader will imagine himself for one mo- ment the autocrat of the United States, he will not hesitate to recognise the imperative duty that would be incumbent upon him to study and come to a defi- nite conclusion uj^on labour questions which touch so nearly the lives of a large majority of his subjects. His throne, his life itself, would depend upon the wisdom of its solution. Now the task which he would undertake in order to save his throne and person, popular government imposes upon every voter in order to save his political freedom and keep whole the civilisation in which he lives. There is to-day among the well-to-do a growing concern in the municipal problem ; but the problem of social- ism is still left unconsidered, partly because it is not seen to concern them, and partly because it is be- lieved to have been disposed of by the sweeping generalisations of individualism and laissez-faire. As a matter of fact, socialism presents two very different aspects from different points of view : one is theoretical, the other practical. Theoretically PROBLEM OP SOCIALISM. 215 socialism represents the war between the collectivist and the individualist; practically it presents a series of demands for state interference. As regards its theoretical side, it is not because socialism indulges in hopes of a millennium that it is necessarily foolish or extreme. The heaven of Christianity is not less unattainable than the ultimate hopes of the socialist; and yet Christianity serves its purpose in the world. To a practical student the problem presented by so- cialism is one of state interference. Now it has been shown that the advisableness of state interfer- ence is a question which can only be decided for every issue that invokes it ; that the state interfer- ence demanded by socialists is not revolutionary ; that it is, perhaps, to some extent immediately prac- ticable. Surely, if this be so it deserves to be considered by us without prejudice or passion, if we would save the state from the explosiveness of popu- lar excitement too long pent up. Once the people get to believe that their wrongs spring from evils that can be cured by the state, and once they begin to organise with a view to political action, we can no longer oppose to them the opinions of the doctrinaire. This conviction of the people is a fact with which we have to deal; and the way to deal with it is not to smile at it with derision, but to study it with conscience and care, yielding all we wisely can, and, by conceding to just demands, strengthen ourselves to meet those demands that are foolish or unjust. Now this task is one of education. 15 CHAPTER XII. THE PEOBLEM OF EDUCATIOlSr* No one cau travel tlirongliout the West without being profoundh' impressed by the fact that in every village, though its stores, hotels, national banks, and town hall itself, are relegated to structures of wood, there is one conspicuous building of sub- stantial brick, and this building is the school- house. There is no doubt but that the coun- try we live in is, relatively to its space and popu- lation, as well provided with schools for primary education as any country in the world. Every city has, of course, its local problem of education to solve. One is vexed by the religious question ; another is hampered by insufficient appropriations ; a third, by appointment made for political service instead of educational qualifications ; a fourth, by a system of administration that is needlessly com- plicated. New York would not live up to its primacy in misgovernment if it lacked any one of these four. But into the abuses and evils that arise from these sources it is not proposed to enter ; for this w^ork is not so much engaged in the study of political abuses themselves as in the relation of these 216 THE PROBLEM OF EDUCATION. 217 abuses to the citizen ; in the source and reason of them ; and particularly in the role that religious effort can play in diminishing them. The defects in the municipal administration of our charities have been studied in some detail because it is in our chari- ties that religious men are particularly interested, be- cause private charity can never do more than merely supplement state charity, and in state charity, therefore, must always remain the lion's share of the work ; and, lastly, because the deficiencies in the working of this department in New York illustrate the impossibility of securing good administration of a good law so long as the administration is confided to a corrupt political machine. The examination of the other departments of municipal government would only reveal still more startling abuses, all tending towards the same conclusion. It would be waste of time for the purposes of this work to enumerate them. But there is a wider view of the question of edu- cation which demands the serious consideration of every earnest citizen. No one will dispute the con- tention that a knowledge of reading, writing, and arithmetic, such as is given in primary schools, is not sufficient to equip a man for the solution of the political and economical problems which on every election day he is called upon to solve ; and yet we have to confront the undoubted fact that the large majority of our citizens are expected to solve these problems without any more equipment than this, and are armed with a vote which puts every one of 218 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. them on every election day on a par with the most distinguished authority on jDolitical economy in the country. The fact is, that the primary education, which is all that the majority of our fellow-citizens enjoy, does no more than fit them for reading the newspapers ; and that the great educator in the country is not the primary school, is not the board of education, is not the Church — it is the press. Indeed, one may go further, and say that the press is the great instrument of education not only for our uneducated but for our educated classes ; for it is from the newspaper alone that the busy man derives his knowledge of the events of the day, and it is practically impossible for him to get information from any other source. It therefore becomes of ex- traordinary importance to consider carefully just what is the education which our fellow-citizens are receiving therefrom. It is the fashion to abuse the newspapers. One of them, which is the recognised organ in Xew York of Tammany Hall, is described as making vice at- tractive ; another, which ranks amongst the first for holding up a high standard in politics, is described as making virtue repulsive; so that whether the tendency of a newspaper is to degrade or to improve the community, both come in for universal censure. As a matter of fact, the press of Xew York, with the single exception already referred to, has for years been unanimously hostile to Tammany Hall. Col- ums have been devoted every day to the revelation of abuses in Tammany Hall and to appeals to the THE PROBLEM OF EDUCATION. 219 citizens for united action against it. If the citizens of the city of New York were as active in their op- position to Tammany Hall as its newspapers, Tam- many Hall would have long since been wiped out of existence. The same thing is true in other cities. It is undoubtedly true in Chicago, where the public spirit of the newspapers seems to far exceed that of the voting population. Fairness obliges us to admit that the press of this country, taken as a whole, is financially uncorrupted and incorruptible. So far, then, it would seem as though the press could be relied upon to hold up a high standard of political virtue to the citizen. Unfortunately, however, there are elements which enter into the publication of newspapers which disqualify them as educators, and make them all the more dangerous as such because, as a matter of fact, most of them are generally be- lieved to be, and probably are, unpurchasable in the commonly accepted use of the word. These two elements are competition and partisanship. Let us consider, first, the effect of competition on the educational qualifications of the press. News- papers are not run for educational purposes ; they are run for commercial purposes; they are money- making enterprises, in no way differing in this re- spect from a bank or an insurance or other trading company. There are, of course, exceptional editors who take a sufficient personal pride in their papers to prefer morality to commercial returns. It is doubtless some such sentiment as this that main- tains the high standard of the press in England. It 220 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. is probably also this that tends to keep the standard high in America ; but, unfortunately, the majority of editors are driven by the struggle for life to sacrifice everything to the commercial feature ; and the presence in the community of a single paper suc- cessfully run on these lines is sufficient to render the task of holding up a high standard in the press dithcult, if not impossible. Margaret Fuller has said that " while one man remains base no man can be altogether great." This is particularly true in journalism. So long as an editor has to meet ex- penses he has to meet the methods employed by the most successful of his competitors. If the most successful of his competitors keeps the standard low, the latter has an easier task in breaking down the standard than the former in elevating it, for there are more readers in a city who love scandal — espe- cially when the scandal is illustrated — than there are men who want trustworthy information on questions involving political economy and the gen- eral good. The editor, therefore, who succeeds in capturing the apjiroval of the mass and securing a large circulation controls the largest amount of advertisements and the highest prices therefor; for the advertiser seeks to reach the largest pub- lic, and therefore advertises most advantageously in the papers having the largest circulation. In this way the successful editor cuts into the business of his rivals in their two most vulnerable points : he cuts into their sales by withdrawing from them their readers, and he cuts into the proceeds i 1 THE PROBLExM OF EDUCATION. 221 from advertisements by the reputation of a large circulation. The methods of the successful American editor of to-day consist chiefly in furnishing the public with perpetual subjects of excitement ; and, unfortu- nately, the public seems more interested in a divorce in high life than in the effect of legislation upon our finances. The result is, that more and more attention is given to scandal, and less and less to those matters which it is most imijortant that the citizen should learn. This perpetual feast of scandal reacts upon the public, which becomes more and more exacting of this sort of pabulum. The ordinary events of the day do not furnish sufficient interest for the satis- faction of the ever-increasing demand of the public. Scandals have therefore to be created, and news- papers now devote themselves to the preparation of "stories" which are of a character to interest and excite the public mind. Now, of the stories so pre- pared and written up, some of them occasionally strike an abuse of great interest to the public, and in so far as they do, the public is interested in being fully informed regarding the same ; but if one news- paper has started an investigation into a particular abuse, no other newspaper will give the matter any attention. All the other newspapei's wage against it a war of silence. The evil consequence of this system is obvious. A man would have to read all the newspapers in a city in order to be sure that he was being informed of all the events which are of interest to him therein. Quite recently one of the 222 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. prominent papers in the city of N^ew York started an investigation into one of our large public institu- tions. The investigation turned out to be of the greatest interest; it unearthed abuses of the most serious character ; yet such was the silence of the other papers on the subject that none but the readers of the paper which started the investigation were ever informed regarding it except in the most cursory and insufficient manner. On the other hand, if a newspaper starts a cry against any of our institutions which turns out not to be justified, it considers its reputation at stake in the matter and endeavours to make good its charges. If it has a large enough circulation it secures investigation by legislative committees, and has been known to ob- tain a report in its favour in spite of the fact that the original charges were quite unfounded. This is being demonstrated now regarding one of the most meritorious institutions in all the United States of America, and perhaps of its kind in the world. There is a maxim among newspaper men that no newspaper can ever afford to admit that it has been in the wrong. As to the morality of this maxim little need be said ; as to its application there can- not possibly be any doubt ; and some excuse must be made for editors, in view of the fact that many of them are engaged in a veritable struggle for exist- ence. Now, if a manufacturer were asked to admit that his wares were inferior to those of a competitor, it is not likely that he would be induced to do so. This is what an editor is called upon to do when he THE PROBLEM OF EDLX'ATION. 223 is asked to correct a mistake, and that mistake has been pointed out by one of his " esteemed contem- poraries." The fact is that newspapers are not run for the purpose of education ; they are run for the purpose of profit ; and although an editor may be willing to * adopt an unpopular course when it is a mere ques- tion of lessening rather than increasing profits, he cannot be expected to adopt a course that will not only destroy profits altogether but incur loss. A newspaper therefore cannot adopt a truly inde- pendent policy unless it enjoys a degree of financial prosperity which is extremely rare, and, under ex- isting conditions, can hardly be obtained except by methods totally inconsistent with a high standard. It is not competition only, however, which has disqualified the press for the task of education which it has unconsciously assumed. In one sense of the word competition tends to keep newspapers iip to the mark in the furnishing of accurate news. Parti- sanship, on the other hand, is habitually engaged in furnishing the public with inaccurate news, or with news so garbled in passing through the spectacles of partisanship that by the time an editor turns it over to the public it no longer presents the facts as they are. It would be impossible to take up any collection of morning papers published in one city without finding illustrations of this. Thus, on the day on which these lines are written,* one promi- * November 16, 1894. 224 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. nent ISTew York paper publishes the following head- lines : " The World was right : Democrats may dispute the validity of all laws passed next winter." And another, on the same day, publishes with reference to the same incident the following : " Constitutionality of the Legislature after Janu- ary 1st. Lawyers of both parties agree with substan- tial unanimity that the validity of its acts cannot successfully be attacked." The inconsistency between these two statements can hardly be greater. When account is taken of the fact that most men have only time to read one paper in the day, and that men generally read the paper which represents the political party to which they belong, the extent of the evil attending a par- tisan press can be appreciated. One who reads a Republican newspaper never knows the arguments that can be made in favour of free trade ; and one Avho reads a Democratic paper never knows the arguments that can be made in favour of protec- tion. The members of each jjarty are therefore more and more confirmed in their views, and more and more separated from one another. To those who are thoroughly grounded in political economy this evil is somewhat attenuated, provided the education has been sufficiently thorough to resist the daily dose of theoretical doctrine, and the man himself is suf- ficiently strong to distinguish between what is sound and what is unsound in the partisan arguments pre- sented. But to a man who has had no education in THE PROBLEM OF EDUCATION. 225 political economy, and who derives his principles as well as his facts from the same prejudiced source, there is practically no opportunity for a change or modification of opinion. This is the explanation of the amazing success of some economic fallacies in the country— as, for example, the demand for cheap money which ex- pressed itself some years ago as the greenback fal- lacy, and which is expressed now in the demand for an unlimited issue of depreciated coin. Again, the Democratic press is engaged in endeavouring to per- suade the people that all commercial and industrial depression comes from the mistakes of the Repub- licans ; and the Republicans are engaged in endeav- ouring to persuade the people that all commercial and industrial depression comes through the mistakes of the Democrats. The principal issue between these two parties is that of the tariff, and thus the mind of the people is directed away from financial legisla- tion, which is perhaps the chief culprit. If to-mor- row the Populists were to have their way, and were to obtain legislation of a character to give them the cheap money they ask for, when they began to suf- fer from the consequence of this legislation, the aim of one party would be to attribute the trouble to protection, the aim of the other party would be to attribute the trouble to free trade, and the real cause of the trouble would stand a good chance of escaping detection altogether. But this is by no means the worst side of the subject. Under every representative form of gov- 226 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. ernment the vote is cast rather for men than for measures. The mass, under existing conditions of education, does not feel itself competent to vote on comjDlicated questions of finance and economics, but it does understand, or thinks it understands, the merits of individual candidates. On this subject, however, as well as upon questions of political and economic principles, it is the political duty of the partisan press to persistently mislead its readers. The basest motives are regularly ascribed to every public man for every important vote he casts, so that it is impossible for any one in public life to command the respect of more than those of the party to which he belongs, with the exception, of course, of the com^jaratively few who have the leisure to read the organs of more than one political party. Calumny has become so general that the iDublic can no longer distinguish between that which is founded and that which is unfounded ; and so, while every public man is rendered contemptible by the press, the evil done by those who deserve censure is over- looked because the charge of having done evil is generally believed to be prompted by the animosity of partisanship. The result of this is that the public do not know what to believe, and end by be- lieving nothing ; so that when a man wants to con- vey the fact that a rumour is false, he says that he read it in some newspaper. And yet nothing can be more unfair to news- papers than this, for, with the exception of such matter as comes within the range of partisan politics THE PROBLEM OP EDUCATION. 227 and the errors that come from imskilful reporting upon events of secondary importance, nothing can exceed the enterprise and general accuracy with which American newspapers collect and publish news. The public, however, is characteristically unfair, and, by an unintelligent application of the ipriuciple, falsus in unofalsits in omnibus, it readily looks with suspicion on all it reads ; whereas with an unconscious discrimination it knows very well how to separate that matter which can be believed from that which must be taken cum grano salis. The point, however, which must be kept carefully in mind is, that the very matters concerning which it is most important that the public should be well in- formed are those regarding which the newspapers are least to be trusted. The exact hour of the Czar's death, the squab- bles of the doctors about his bedside, the arrange- ments of his funeral, are all reported with astonish- ing detail and accuracy, although they are matters of no importance to the American citizen in re- spect to his political duties ; whereas an event as important as the great strike in Chicago is de- scribed with such partiality towards the strikers in one set of newspapers, and such partiality towards the companies in another set, that one class in the community believes each, and the other believes neither — ignorance, prejudice, or confusion being the net result for all. And if this be the case as regards a subject which involves no party question, how much more 228 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. is it the case when such questions are involved. Shortly after the McKinley tariff was enacted a war arose amongst the papers as regards the question whether there had arisen in »the country since the enactment any factories of tin plate. One Xew York paper asserted positively that there had, gave the names of the owners, the names of the places, and the amount of the output. Another New York paper, on the other hand, stated with vehemence that there were no such factories, and that the out- 13ut was a pure fiction of the brain. As regards this question the public is still uninformed. This is, of course, only offered as an example. Such examples could be multiplied ad nauseajn. Now it is submitted that the merits of such an event as the Chicago strike are of capital impor- tance to a true understanding of the labour question ; and yet to-day the public is so divided on the sub- ject that one half of the community regards its leader. Debs, as a prophet and martyr, whereas the other half regard him as a wicked dipsomaniac. Nor could there be a more necessary factor in the practical decision of the merits of protection and free trade respectively than a true answer to the question, Does protection protect ? — and yet the readers of one paper are persuaded that in the case of the tin-plate industry a high tariff did create an otherwise impossible industry, whereas the readers of the oj)position sheet are taught that no industry can be created even by a prohibitively protective tariff under any circumstances whatever. THE PROBLEM OP EDUCATION. 229 That the press should argue from facts to con- clusions is altogether right and proper ; but that it should garble facts to bolster theories is — so long as the press is our principal educator — nothing less than a national calamity ; for such a course not only deprives the public of the facts which are indispensable to tlie framing of a conclusion, but actually drives it to an erroneous conclusion by what is nothing short of a betrayal of confi-. deuce. And here we touch the ethical question involved in this question of education. The work of the journalist is not a purely money-making business ; it includes a great trust, and one which citizens can no longer afford to leave to the accidents of com- petition and ijartisanship. We do not leave the education of our children to unchecked private en- terprise. We have recognised the importance to the State of having our children all know how to read and write, and we have therefore adopted the socialist plan of providing State education for them. Nor is higher education left to the accidents of private competition ; citizens have been found gen- erous enough to found universities and scholarships, so that an intelligent youth can to-day in America secure an education of the highest order at a prac- tically nominal figure compared with what it really costs, and some few can obtain it free of all charge whatever. The principle that education must be endowed is conceded both as regards primary and higher education : that it should be endowed as re- 230 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. gards the daily education of our sovereign citizens is only a further ste]) in the same direction. It is a hopeful sign of the advance of moral ideas which Mr. Kidd has lately so well described, that what was of old regarded as private property is more and more getting to be regarded as a public trust. Before 1789 office was regarded in France as the appanage of the king and nobles ; certain fam- ilies owned certain offices, with a tenure as recog- nised as that of their castles and their coats of arms. The idea that the people had any interest in the wise, economical, and public-spirited adminis- tration of public office would at that time have seemed far more grotesque and impractical than to- day that the public had any interest in the wise and public-spirited administration by a .Vauderbilt or Astor of the wealth which the accumulation of several generations has handed down to him. It has taken several revolutions to break down in France this aristocratic notion of property in public office, and from these revol'utions the whole world has profited. Public office a public trust, has be- come in America a maxim, the truth of which no man would dare publicly to deny, however contemp- tuously it may be privately derided by the practical politician. Nor is the idea that private wealth can in any sense constitute a public trust more foreign to the present generation than was the trust theory of public office to that which preceded the French Eevolution. The theory has been openly advocated, not only by socialists and positivists but by a literary THE PROBLEM OF EDUCATION. 231 millionaire himself. The recognition that journal- ism also constitutes a public trust is along the same line of moral advancement. The great difficulty in the way of applying this principle to the journalism of to-day consists in the two obstacles to faithful journalism which have been already pointed out — namely, partisanship and com- mercial competition. Of the former, more will be said in the next chapter; of the latter, little more need be added than that it can only be met in one way — endowment. If a great newspaper were started in any of the large cities in this country under the same condi- tions as its principal universities, there is some chance that the public would be provided with in- formation regarding the subjects of the day, upon the accuracy of which they could depend. This sugfo-estion must not be understood as a contention that endowment would solve all the problems pre- sented by the existing defects in our press. An en- dowed press would be as likely to fall into evil hands as an endowed religion, and far more likely to fall into evil hands than an endowed university. A weapon against evil such as an endowed press would be, as long as it remained in the hands of those whose public spirit had endowed it, cannot be disparaged by the argument that this weapon might fall into the hands of the enemy. Such an argu- ment applied to national defences would prevent us from ever building a fort or a man-of-war. As long as evil exists it will have to be fought, and it 16 232 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. will have to be fought with weapons that are com- mensurate with it. If our hands are too weak to hold the weapons we forge in order to defeat it, we must trust that in a new generation stronger hands will be found to wield still more perfect weapons. It is the history of almost every organization consti- tuted for the purpose of warring against evil that it tends ultimately to take the side of evil against those who constituted, it. It would therefore be a mistake to imagine that because an endowed press might ultimately join the ranks of the enemy we must not endow a press at all. We find ourselves to-day confronted with an evil which is open, fla- grant, and unchecked. It is difficult to conceive how, so long as commercial competition determines the character of our j)ress, it can rise much above the level which it now occupies. The only remedy, therefore, seems to be to lift it out of the necessities of competition by endowment. One of the dangers to which an endowed press would be most exposed is that of becoming doctri- naire. This danger can be avoided by adopting the plan of publishing articles on both sides of every important subject. It should not be forgotten that the great function of such a press ought to be to furnish facts; these facts should be furnished un- colored by bias, whether religious or partisan ; from, these facts the exponents of the different factions or parties ought to be allowed freely to argue in a column of the paper devoted to that purpose. Such a paper would be divided into two strongly THE PROBLEM OP EDUCATION. 233 differentiated parts : one part would be devoted to the collection of news, and the facts given therein would be collected with the care and dispassionate- ness that mark the lecture hall of a university ; the other part would consist of signed articles by recog- nised authorities and representatives of existing parties, each drawing his conclusion from the facts, and, if necessary, challenging the facts themselves. The editorial column would be sparingly used, and devoted mainly to the task of summing up. It might not be necessary or prudent to publish such a newspaper daily ; it would probably better serve the purpose for which it was published if it only appeared once a week, and in such a shape that it could be bound, so as to serve as a continuous record of current events. Such a publication need not be extremely costly. The collection of foreign news, which constitutes a large part of the expense of daily papers, could with safety be left to the ex- isting members of the press, the principal object of endowment being to educate the citizen regard- ing those matters which concern him at home. The existence of so admirable a weekly as The Nation is not an argument against the publication of such a paper as the one proposed ; for the proposed weekly woiild make a point of containing the local information which is conspicuously absent from the columns of The Nation. It is doubtful whether The Nation, the circulation of which is derived from the whole country, could be made to pay were a large part of its space devoted to local information re- 234 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. garding the operations of city departments. And yet this is the information which it is the duty of every 'New York citizen to procure, and which to- day he is without the means of procuring save at the cost of more time than he can afford to spare from his business occupations. The university of every large city coukl un- doubtedly be enlisted in support of such endow- ment, and the public be thereby kept informed re- garding every important item of interest, whether in science, in sociology, in political economy, in medicine, or in law. Were it known that such in- formation emanated from the pen of a university professor and was published under the responsibility of the universitv to which he belonored, value would be attached to it which cannot be allowed to matter of the same kind now published in Sunday editions. It must not be supposed that it is advised to confide the editing of such a paper to a university or to the faculty of a university. Its editors must be men as thoroughly equipped for journalism as those Avho now edit the great papers of the country ; but as regards those subjects which can best be dealt with by men whose special duty it is to keep in- formed regarding them through the business of lecturing upon them to which they devote their lives, it is submitted that the university faculty could render signal service. Nor must the above suggestion be supposed to imply that an endowed paper would immediately secure the confidence of the community ; it would have to win its way just THE PROBLEM OF EDUCATION. 235 as any other paper, though it would have in its favour the fact of financial independence and the co-operation of a staff such as no other newspaper in the country could command. Such a paper would not in any sensible degree affect the circula- tion of existing papers, for it would furnish its in- formation only once a week, and it would seek to be free from that partisanship which makes the sale of most of those now on the market. Moreover, it would undertake to publish matter that would not commercially pay, and abstain from publishing mat- ter which is cheap and popular. At any rate, were such a paper in existence it ought to be possible for a citizen to know the facts upon which he is called upon to express his opinion ; it ought to be pos- sible for him to understand the working of the city departments without having to sift this informa- tion out of the unintelligible columns of the city records ; and he ought at any rate to be left with- out excuse if he failed to know the issues upon which he is required to vote. By such an endow- ment, education would not stop short at a moment when for the purposes of good citizenship it is most needed, but would extend through adolescence to every day of a busy man's life. That it would serve to greatly facilitate and shorten the labour of getting information of current events, will be ad- mitted by those who now laboriously sift it out of the columns of many newspapers; and all whose occupations make it impossible for them to read more than one paper a day cannot but recognise 236 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. that it would serve as an admirable antidote to the dose of j)rejndice which they now daily consume. Nor can it be believed that it would fail to have a beneficent influence upon its contemporaries. While commercial competition is acting to drag down the general standard, such a paper could not but do something to hold that standard up ; it would, at all events, serve to inculcate the great moral lesson that journalism, like public office and inherited wealth, cannot any longer be regarded as private property, but must be recognised to involve a solemn trust. CHAPTER XIII. PAKTY GOVERNMENT. Partisanship is at once the mainspring of popular government and its bane. Xo great issue has ever been pushed to a conchision until it has either created a party or been adopted by one al- ready in existence ; but just in the same way as the human institution to which religion gives rise and through which it operates, by falling into the hands of designing men, tends to defeat the very object for which it was organised, so the machinery neces- sary to the propagation of a political idea, however sound, tends to outlive the issue for which it was constructed, in order to serve private ends at the expense of the common weal. It has beea already pointed out that the Republican party, organised for the purpose of suppressing slavery and resisting the exorbitant demands of the subsequently seced- ing States, perpetuated itself in power by keeping alive sectional animosity ; and after it was defeated upon this issue, restored itself to power by promis- ing the labourer high wages under a protective tariff, thereby substituting an entirely new issue for the original one which brought it into existence. 237 238 EVOLUTION AND EFFOKT. AVhether or not the Republican party was justified, in continuing to appeal to Northern sentiment against the South long after the South had, to all appearances, laid down its arms, it is clear that the temptation to do so would be irresistible if un- scrupulous party managers thought that they could thereby maintain themselves in power ; and al- though there undoubtedly is a remote connection between protective tariff and strong central govern- ment, it is difficult to believe that the party created for pushing the issue concluded by the war was in any sense obliged by its convictions to take up the cause of protection. It is much easier to believe that the cause of protection was taken up by those in control of the Eepublican machine because it was an issue likely to furnish them with the funds and popularity indispensable to their maintenance in power. And so the machinery of party organi- sation constructed for the purpose of advocating the cause of liberty and patriotism was made to serve the private purposes of a few political leaders. This estimate of the course pursued by the Eepub- lican party may seem unfair to those who believe as sincerely in protection as they did before in the abolition of slavery and the maintenance of the Union; to these, however, it is respectfully submitted that it is quite possible for others of their fellow- citizens to have been as earnest as themselves in their desire for the abolition of slavery and for the maintenance of the Union, and yet to be equally sincere in their belief in free trade. These have a PARTY GOVERNMENT. 239 right to protest against the glorious successes of the Republican party upon the field of battle, upon the field of politics, and upon the field of finance being now converted to the use of those who desire to advocate a theory that has no necessary connection with the real issues of the war. But whatever may be the evils attending partisan- ship, the idea of abolishing it must be definitely abandoned. Man is born with an instinct of par- tisanship which he has acquired from gregarious ancestors ; it is a part of the herding faculty, and consists of tv/o very opposite dispositions : one, the disposition to obey a recognised leader, and the other, a willingness to sacrifice one's own opinions for the common good. Both are called into play in every political emergency, and both appeal to the most servile as well as the most independent of our fellow-citizens. There is, however, a very marked difference be- tween party government as it is understood in Europe and party government as it is understood in America. In the former, partisanship is deter- mined by a temperamental difference which finds its roots deep down in the character of man; where- as, in America, party lines have arisen irrespective of temperament, and for the purpose of meeting a particular emergency. Thus an Englishman or a Frenchman is born a Conservative or he is born a Liberal ; or, if he is not born with partisan convic- tions, he acquires them under conditions which make them colour his view of all political questions. 240 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. It is impossible to conceive of a Conservative taking anything but a conservative view of the subject of the -abolition of the House of Lords; it is impos- sible to conceive of a Liberal taking anything but a liberal view on the subject of the education of the working classes ; and conversion from the ranks of one party to those of the other only takes place when the parties respectively force views on their partisans more extreme than the whole body is will- ing to accept. Conservatism and liberalism are rendered possible in Europe because Europe has a history, and because it has institutions which have grown slowly up under the sanction of that history. The desire to cling to existing institutions and the existing order of things is the characteristic of the Conservative; the desire to innovate and reform is the characteristic of the Liberal. This profound difference of temperament will prompt an opposite view of almost every political question that can be imagined ; for every issue suggests a change, and those who are temperamentally disposed to inno- vate tend to favour the change, while those who are temperamentally disposed to maintain the status quo will oppose the change. Here, therefore, the line is drawn deep down in human character: the distinction between the two parties is one that exists whether there be party government or not, and one which will determine the existence of parties in Europe whatever be the form of government. The comparative youth of the United States of America takes away the very foundation upon which PARTY GOVERNMENT. 241 the distinction between conservatism and liberalism rests. The only thing which we have to preserve is our Constitution, and this no one to speak of desires to attack. Attempt has been made to maintain that all opposing parties in the United States have divided along the same line, those on one side of the line favouring a strict construction of the Constitution, and those on tlie other side of the line favouring a liberal construction of the Constitution. If such a contention could be justified it would support the theory that in America, as well as in England, party lines are drawn along lines of temperament; the strict constructionist would be the Tory, the liberal constructionist would be the Radical; but the con- tention cannot be maintained. Whenever the strict constructionists have got into power and have found it necessary to justify their use of power by a liberal construction of the Constitution, they have become liberal constructionists; whenever, on the other hand, the liberal constructionists have been thrown out of power they have, in their desire to condemn the administration, become strict constructionists. Examples of this are familiar to every student of American history. Jefferson, who was the leader of the strict constructionists before he was elected to the presidency, strained the Constitution more than any other President that had preceded or has fol- lowed him, in order to justify the purchase of Lou- isiana ; and those who had preceded him in power, and whose liberal construction he had himself ve- 242 EVOI.UTION AND EFFORT. hemently attacked, became the strictest of construc- tionists when opposition forced them into an atti- tude of criticism. The fact is that the party in power is always the liberal constructionist, and the party in opposition always the strict constructionist. There is another fundamental difference between party government on different sides of the Atlantic. In England and France party government is recog- nised by the Constitution ; the permanent Execu- tive is a nomiual office ; the real Executive is in the ministry and shifts with the majority in the Legis- lature. In England, the Queen does little more than register the decisions of her parliament ; in France, the Executive is never at liberty to sign an executive document without the countersignature of a min- ister responsible to the Chamber ; * in both cases the real Executive is the ministry; in both cases the real Executive depends for its existence upon the party which is supported by a majority in the Lower House. In the United States a totally different princi- ple prevails. Instead of allowing the Executive to shift with every vote in Congress, we have adopted the j)lan of electing our Executive for a definite term of four years ; and this permanent Executive exercises an influence upon legislation such as is unknown in England and in France. In France, the Executive has practically no veto ; he can do no * Loi Constitutionnelle du 35 Fev., 1875, art. 4. PARTY GOVERNMENT. 24:3 more than ask the Legislature to recousider its de- cision ;* in England, though the Queen has in the- ory a right of veto she has for many years refrained from exercising it. The veto power which the Exec- utive exercises in the United States converts it into a third chamber, and the effect of electing a Presi- dent with this power for four years is practically to determine the policy of the country during those four years, by subjecting that policy to the veto of the President elected. Under this system there is no change of government every time the majority shifts in the Legislature. The existence of a party and party leader necessitated by the English and French plan does not exist, and therefore the ex- istence of parties is not recognised in the Constitu- tion. Under these conditions the question may well be asked, "What necessity is there for the existence of parties in the United States at all ? And this question is one which deserves the attention of all those interested in the survival of popular govern- ment. A brief reference to party history in the begin- ning of the century will serve to answer it. At the risk of wearying those who are already familiar ■with this subject, it may be well to recapitulate the historv of the rise and fall of the Federal, Whiff, and Republican parties, if only to call attention to the practical possibility of governing the country * Loi Constitutionnelle du 25 Fev., 1873, art. 7. 24:4: EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. without any party, in the absence of an issue im- portant enough to render a party necessary. Everybody is familiar with the two elements of opinion which existed at the time the Constitution was adopted, and which found their advocates re- spectively in Hamilton on the one side and Jeffer- son on tlie other. The one favoured strong central Government, the other favoured. State rights ; the one derived, his political convictions from England, then under the rule of a strong permanent Execu- tive, and the other from Fi'ance, then engaged, in a deadly battle with the throne. Jefferson's party were called Republicans, Hamilton's were called Federalists. Washington, desiring to ignore the ex- istence of these two hostile factions, constructed his Cabinet equally of both, and hoped in that way to prevent the predominance of either. In this last he was mistaken : the Federalists kejit the upper hand until the election of Jefferson, during whose adminis- tration the original issues were practically forgotten in the more burning immediate question whether the country should side with France or England in the war then raging between them. As has been already said, Jefferson, in his desire to maintain strong local government against strong central government, had inveighed bitterly against every attempt of the Federalists to extend their power, but as soon as he was elected to the presidential chair he interpreted his own powers far more large- ly than ever had Washington, Madison, or Adams ; it cannot therefore be conscientiously said that the PARTY GOVERNMENT. 245 question either of a strong central government or a strict protective tariff constituted an issue during Jefferson's administration ; but Jefferson and his advocates were in favour of war with England in consequence of their partiality for France, and the Federalists were in favour of peace with England in consequence of their hostility to France. The ma- jority in the country, however, were in favour of Jefferson's Administration, and the Federalists com- mitted harikari by holding a secret convention at Hartford, in which they were believed to have recom- mended the secession of the 'New England States, which had principally suffered from the war, Jef- ferson's party, therefore, was left in undisputed con- trol of the field, and was enabled by the absence of any opposition to close its war with England with- out settling the only question at controversy between the two nations. The absence of any issue at the close of this war made the existence of any party un- necessary ; the result of it was that all political or- ganisations disappeared, and Monroe was elected by acclamation. This period is called in American history " the era of good feeling." The absence of conflicting parties, however, did not prevent the period of Monroe's administration from being full of important legislation. The slavery question was temporarily disposed of by the famous Missouri Compromise, the question of protection was fully ventilated, the constitutional right to levy protective duties discussed, and the famous Monroe doctrine promulgated. 246 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. After Monroe had served two terms and was un- der the unwritten rule ineligible for a third term, the election of his successor jDractically became a personal question. Jackson had made himself con- spicuous and popular by the way in which he had handled the Seminole War ; Adams had long been be- fore the country as a man of spotless integrity and personal character ; Henry Clay was well known for his ability in debate and for the service he had rendered in passing the Missouri Compromise. The question of the presidency was determined solely upon the personal qualifications of these three men. After the election of Adams the present Democratic party came into existence through the animosity of Jackson to Adams and Clay, and grew out of a fac- tion which originally was characterised by no more ambitious name than " Jackson men." No one can read the history of the country dur- ing this period without being forced to recognise the possibility of dispensing with party government in the United States, so long as no great issue exists requiring the machinery of party organisation for its solution. The first great issue which lifted the Jackson men to the dignity of a national party arose, not in the presidential election which closed Adams's term of office and put Jackson in the White House, but later, when the attempt to enforce the tariff set the South in open and violent opposition to the North. From that time Democracy became identified with the interests of the South as opposed to the Whig party, which was identified with the interests PARTY GOVERNMENT. 247 of the North. This sectional conflict was not settled until the Republican party was found courageous enough to recognise that the real issue was the issue of slavery and to fight it out upon the battlefield. The conclusion to be drawn from this brief re- view is that, while party government is not neces- sary to the administration of our national affairs, it is necessary to the pushing of any great issue such as the abolition of slavery and the preservation of the Union ; that, in other words, parties should arise for dealing with an emergency, and not be main- tained, as in Europe, for the mere purpose of admin- istration. This doctrine may seem unfamiliar and heretical to those who have accepted the comments of Mr. Bryce upon our institutions ; but it may be well in this connection to recall the fact that while Mr. Bryce on one page criticises our Federal Government because there is not enough in it of party govern- ment, on another page he lays to partisanship the whole responsibility for municipal misgovernment, and municipal misgovernment he characterises as the one conspicuous failure of our institutions. It is not unnatural that Mr. Bryce should have criticised a system which dispenses entirely with the element of personal leadership, so peculiarly characteristic of England's Parliament ; but there is something a little ingenuous about the arguments which Mr. Bryce invokes in favour of the English system. To him the conflict between the Prime Minister on the one hand and the leader of the Opposition on the 17 248 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. other has a picturesque and homeric interest which he cannot willingly dissociate from political life. He does not believe that the people can be induced to take a sufficient interest in the action of the legis- lature to follow the events of political life unless it is put upon a stage, as it were, with the dramatic incidents of perpetual personal conflict; and this necessity for a mise en scene is to his mind of suf- ficient importance to put out of sight the evils at- tending this personal conflict, to which he does not seem to have ever had his eyes fully opened. These evils have been so admirably summarised by Albert Htickney,* that it is not 2^i'oposed to repeat them here ; but no one who has at ail considered the question can fail to recognise the defects of a system which puts at the head of its departments not the men most qualified to manage these departments, but men who by their eloquence and position have secured a certain following in Parliament; which excludes men from the office for which they are pe- culiarly fitted, out of considerations quite foreign to the question of efficiency ; which subordinates the management of the various departments of Govern- ment to questions of a majority or minority vote of confidence in the House ; which calls upon men who have upon them the burden of executive office to perform also the onerous duties of the Legislature ; which ignores the fact that a man who has to choose between the detail of executive work and the excite- * A True Republic, by Albert Stickney. PARTY GOVERNMENT. 249 ment of parliamentary debate cannot but sacrifice the one to the other ; which abandons measures of national importance in favour of those which are most calculated to strengthen and keep up party spirit, even on occasion creating fictitious issues to this end ; and decides as to what measures should be taken up, not because of the merits of the measures but because of their efficiency in keeping the party in power. That the Conservatives should have thrown out a reform bill, as they did in 18G6, not out of opposition to this bill, but simply for the pur- pose of throwing the Liberal party out of jDOwer and stepping into power themselves; that they should have j)ut the country to the turmoil a'ud expense of a new election, have secured a majority from the country on the ground of their opposition to this bill and then themselves have passed the very bill which they had previously, with deliberate hypocrisy, opposed, is a scandal due directly to a system of party government which forgets principles in its passion for the display of personal animosity. This is the system which confided the Crimean war to such a bungler as Newcastle, almost succeeded in eliminating so necessary a man as Palmerston, and occasioned a resignation of the ministry at the most inopportune moment of the whole campaign ; which in the middle of another war left the country with- out an administration for over two months; and which obliged the country to dispense with the serv- ices of such a man as Peel on such a question as the removal of the ladies of the royal bedchamber ! 250 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. Illustrations of the evils of this system of gov- ernment could be multiplied ad nauseam. It might be described as one that tends to discourage " swap- ping horses " on the level and compels it when ford- ing a dangerous stream. The toleration of it can be explained only by the historic fact that the coun- try escaped the authority of obstinate kings by re- fusing supplies to the king's ministers and thus forced the king to change his ministers if he wanted supplies ; and that it has never undertaken to elimi- nate the anomalies of its Government, because those anomalies, however great their cost, continue to serve a purpose. The fact that the system exists in the first place, and that it serves to rivet popular atten- tion on the Government in the second, seems to fur- nish sufficient reason not only for its maintenance in England but for its adoption in almost every other country in Europe. Indeed, Mr. Bryce is so accustomed to regard it as the best conceivable sys- tem, that in criticising our institutions he does not think it worth while to vindicate its merits. They are assumed and unconsciously adopted as furnish- ing the standard by which our institutions are to be judged. In dealing, however, with municipal misgovern- ment he does not hesitate to attribute it mainly to the unwarrantable intrusion of national parties into purely local affairs. As has been already joointed out, these parties have the nominating machinery in their hands, and, except on rare occasions of great popular indignation, no candidate is presented to the PARTY GOVERNMENT. 251 suffrages of the people but tliose selected by party leaders. They have become national institutions, with organisations in each State, in each county, in each assembly district, and in each election dis- trict. Each organisation is manned by professional politicians, most of whom are in the enjoyment or expectation of public office. The money required to run these parties is obtained in part by assess- ment of public officers and contractors, in part by contributions from corporations and business men wielding large interests, and in some of our larger cities by blackmail levied on all classes of citizens, but particularly those who violate the law. It has been shown that these national parties are apt to di- vide spoils by iniquitous agreements, and to put up candidates who will distribute patronage as ordered, and will administer their office for the purpose of strengthening the party rather than with a view to the public welfare. So prejudicial is the interven- tion of national parties in municipal government recognised to be, that all through the country to-day the demand for municipal reform practically takes the shape of a demand for the separation of munici- pal government from national politics. The popu- lar demand for good administration which drove the rascals out of office in Brooklyn in 1893, and out of New York in 1894, has so extended that a belief in the possibility of separating municipal government from national politics is spreading far and wide. The question, however, whether the separation of municipal government from national politics can be 252 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. in fact effected is one that still remains open to grave doubt. In many cities the elections for na- tional and State offices take place at the same time as the elections for municipal offices, and the diffi- culty of eliminating party considerations from such elections has been already pointed out. But even in those cities where the municipal elections are held at a different time from national and State elections there is still one serious drawback to a comjilete di- vorce of city from national politics. Our cities are integral and essential parts of our State government, and although they are now demanding, and are likely to obtain, from the State Legislatures a very much larger share of home rule than they at present enjoy, it is idle to hope that the cities can ever be governed entirely by themselves; they can never legislate except on purely local matters. In all mat- ters which pertain to the State, the State Legislature must remain supreme. Because, therefore, the State Legislature must always continue to make general laws for the city as well as the State, every citizen who has the interest of his city at heart is as nearly concerned in the character of the State Legislature as he is in that of his board of aldermen ; indeed, it may be said that he is more concerned in the Legis- lature than in the board, for the Legislature has, and always must have, far larger powers. L^nfortunately, however, it is the State Legislature that elects the Senators to the United States Senate, and the com- position therefore of the Legislature is a matter of crucial imjDortance to the national parties. Few PARTY GOVERNMENT. 253 men have a larger share in the legislation of the country than the two Senators from the State of New York. These two Senators are elected by the Legislature, and the same Legislature which elects these Senators makes laws for the city of New York. How, under these circumstances, municipal govern- ment can ever be completely divorced from national politics it seems difficult to understand ; for, while the citizens of New York will want to eliminate na- tional politics from the election of members of the Legislature which is to make laws for the city, na- tional parties will insist upon nominating candidates for the Legislature pledged to vote for their party in elections to the L^nited States Senate. At times of such popular agitation as have recently prevailed in New York and Brooklyn the local issue becomes of such transcendent importance that national issues are forgotten or put into the background ; but the moment the wave of popular indignation has passed, permanent political machines reassert themselves, and partisansliip inevitably resumes its sway. While, therefore, the cry for the separation of municipal government from national politics has served and may still serve an admirable purpose in ridding our municipalities of the rings which have grown up under partisan rule, it is impossible to close our eyes to the fact that there is a radical de- fect in the issue, and that no permanent municipal party or permanent municiiDal sentiment can be maintained upon this principle. This question is of such importance that it may be well to pause for a 254 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. moment in order to review the effort to separate municipal government from national politics in the city of New York. The City Club and the Good Government clubs which have largely contributed to the overthrow of Tammany Hall in 'New York, were constituted mainly to propagate the doctrine that municipal government can and should be separated from na- tional politics. They are driven, however, at every election to confront the question as to what attitude they are to take regarding candidates for the As- sembly, which are annually nominated by the na- tional parties in the districts for which these clubs are respectively formed. In every district there has been the regular Tammany nomination, Tammany claiming to be the Democratic organisation in the city. Under these circumstances, the party to which the Good Government clubs would naturally look for a good candidate is the Republican. It so hap- pens, however, that the Republican party cannot be always counted upon for a good candidate. In 1893, in the Twenty-first Assembly District, the candidate of the Republican party was so unfit that Good Government Club A was unable to endorse him '■> indeed, before he was nominated, Club A informed the Republican leaders that it would be obliged to withhold its endorsement and run an independent candidate unless they consented to nominate a less objectionable man. The protest of Club A was un- availing ; the result was a three-cornered fight in the district between the Tammany candidate, the PARTY GOVERNMENT. 255 Eepublican candidate, and the Independent candi- date of Club A ; and by a division of the anti-Tam- many vote, owing to the nomination of separate candidates by the Eepublicans and the Good Gov- ernment Ckib, tlie Tammany man was elected. This case is only cited as a single illustration of the quandary in which these Good Government Clubs are likely to find themselves placed regularly every year. Nor is it the only difficulty that confronts them. When, in 1894, the same Good Government Club found itself called upon to confront the ques- tion of nominations to the Assembly and the Board of Aldermen, it secured from the Republican party the nomination of two men whom it was able to support both on the ground of personal character and on that of political conviction. It turned out, however, that most of the Democrats in the club were bitterly opposed to the nomination of two Re- publicans from the same district, and nothing but the overwhelming importance of the local issue pre- vented a large defection of Democrats from the club in consequence. In other years, when the local issue is not so im- portant, it is difficult to believe that these excellent clubs will not suffer largely from the effort to disre- gard national politics in elections to the Legislature. This difficulty can be eliminated by an amendment of the United States Constitution, by which the elections of the United States Senate will be taken out of the State Legislature and given to the people. But an amendment to the L^nited States Constitu- 256 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. tion is so difficult a thing to bring about under any circumstances, and the opposition to this particular amendment would be so considerable, owing to many reasons upon which it is not necessary here to en- large, that the prospect of any relief from this source must be put out of consideration for the present. Under these circumstances the question very natu- rally presents itself : If municipal reformers are wrong in believing that they can ever separate municipal government from national politics, and if municipal misgovernment arises from the intervention of na- tional politics into municipal affairs, where is the remedy ? Before attempting to suggest a remedy, it is ad- visable to recall the fact that parties have not in America the permanence that they have in Europe ; on the contrary, they come into existence ujion great issues, and should of right disappear when these issues are disposed of. That they do not disappear is due to the tendency of the institution to survive the principle, as the Church tends to survive the religious idea, and the dinner-giving guilds have sur- vived in London the charitable purpose for which they were originally constituted. The political situation, then, which confronts us is one of singular interest : Two powerful national parties, solidly intrenched in public office, each of them controlled by a few crafty and ambitious lead- ers, are engaged in keeping alive fictitious issues for the sake of keeping power in themselves. The issue PARTY GOVERNMENT. 257 between Free Trade and Protection may in itself be a real one, but in the hands of the existing national parties it is a fictitious one, because neither of these parties is engaged in a sincere and dispassionate study of the commercial problems involved, but both, on the contrary, are pledged to a passionate and ex- treme view, not because such an extreme view is best for the country, but because it is necessary to their existence. As a matter of fact, the country Avill prosper under the present Wilson Tariff bill ; it would prosper under absolute Free Trade ; it would even have prospered under the McKinley tariff ; but no country with less unlimited resources than the United States could continue to live at all under the desperate condition of suspense and lack of confi- dence which has prevailed since Mr. Cleveland's tar- iff reform message to Congress of December, 1887. In other words, the country can do without Free Trade, and Protection cannot very much injure it ; but repeated changes from one to the other jeopard- ise the welfare of even so resourceful a country as ours. Not only has experience demonstrated this to be the fact, but the most ordinary commercial com- mon sense might have anticipated it. How is it possible for a merchant to put iu a sufficient stock of European goods if he has reason to believe that before he can sell these goods a change in the tariff will involve him in incalculable loss? Or, how can a manufacturer proceed with any sort of confidence when a change in the tariff may at any time flood the market with a foreign article admitted by a 258 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. lower tariff to disastrous competition with his ? And the same causes which make it impossible for either the merchant or the manufacturer to keep his business up to the normal demands of the country, serve to create an unwillingness on the part of the banker to give facilities of credit under conditions likely to prove disastrous to those to whom credit is given. The result is that even those merchants and manufacturers who, disregarding the dangers of the situation, are willing to extend their business, find themselves crippled by a limitation of credit insjiired by the very same want of confidence which already serves to restrict commercial enterprise in other directions ; and as the banker will not furnish funds to the merchant and manufacturer under such dangerous conditions, money becomes plentiful, in- terest goes down, incomes diminish, and diminishing incomes necessitate diminished expenditures. There is no loiiger, therefore, a normal demand for goods, and the anxieties of the merchant and manufacturer are further increased by the failui'e to sell even the narrow line of goods which they respectively manu- facture or import. And so what with the check on business arising from fear of changes in the tariff, and what with the check on business arising from a diminished ability on the part of the public to buy, we have a condition of depression which no country less wealthy than the United States could have borne so long. And this regrettable condition of things is not due to any cause which is beyond our control : it is PARTY GOVERNMENT. 259 due to the existence of two national parties that nse the issue of Free Trade and Protection as a chib against one anotlier, regardless of the consequences to the nation whose interests they each with more or less unconscious hypocrisy pretend respectively to promote. What the commercial community in America needs to-day is rest, and this is what neither party is able to give it. The blessings with which the respec- tive parties dower us at present are commercial de- pression, municipal misgovernment, and a depraved public conscience. The fact is, our existing national parties have fallen into the hands of a few political leaders who have no regard for anything save their own ambition and interest ; and so long as the machinery for nomi- nating candidates is left in their hands the citizen can expect no permanent political improvement ; all he can do is to change one bad master for another. It may be contended that the existing political situ- ation in New York to-day does not maintain this contention. The sweeping overthrow of Tammany Hall at the recent elections seems to indicate that good administration can be secured even under the existing system of party government. Such a con- clusion, however, is entirely without foundation. The overthrow of Tammany Hall was a conquest not only over a corrupt political organisation but over both political parties. The indignation of the people occasioned the appointment of a Committee 260 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. of Seventy, whose express object Avas to put np a ticket irrespective of either party, and to which both parties would be compelled by an overwhelming public opinion to consent. The special task of the Committee of Seventy was to eliminate party ques- tions from the municipal campaign, and to find can- didates of such personal worth that neither party could presume to put up an indejiendent ticket against them. This the Committee of Seventy suc- ceeded in doing, not, however, without immense difficulty. It may seem, now that the result has been attained, as though the task accomplished by the Committee of Seventy has been an easy one ; but those who watched the progress of the committee step by step know not only how difficult the task was, but how very nearly it entirely failed of accom- plishment, owing to the narrow spirit of partisan- ship which still so widely jirevails. There is no doubt but that Tammany would to-day be in power in this city had the Committee of Seventy failed in this task, for in that case the anti-Tammany forces would have been divided, the Republicans would have put up one ticket, the State Democrats another, and the Committee of Seventy or Good Government Club a third ; and there is little doubt but that in such a four-cornered fight Tammany would have se- cured a majority. The conclusion to be drawn from recent efforts is not that good government can be obtained under the present party system, but that it can only be obtained when local issues are suffi- ciently overwhelming to temporarily set aside the PARTY GOVERNxMEXT. 261 party system. Keither can it be said that the ticket put up by the Committee of Seventy was one entirely beyond criticism. The selection of some of the can- didates was admittedly above reproach ; that of others, on the contrary, was inspired not by consid- erations of fitness for office but by the necessities of placating warring factions. It is very natural that there should prevail to-day a feeling of satisfaction that pojDular government had Justified itself, and a consequent relapse into inactivity ; but the security now enjoyed by most of our fellow-citizens as regards the future is without foundation. Evil remains organised in the halls of Tammany ; the national parties are ready now as ever to divide the forces which can successfully op- pose Tammany ; and when the shameful disclosures of the Lexow Committee have been forgotten, the city will doubtless return to its normal servility to Tammany Hall, unless, indeed, more has been learned during the lust quarter of a century than during that which preceded the previous triumph and over- throw of the same pernicious organisation. It can- not be contended that a system of government which keeps us twenty-five years at a time under the heel of such a gang of ruffians as those that gathered around Tweed of old, or around Croker in later years, and gives us only a few months of good gov- ernment under the explosive action of a citizens' committee, is one which reflects credit upon popular institutions. Unless, therefore, some force can be found in the community that will substitute for 262 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. these periodic convulsions a constant watch and check upon the administration of our aSairs, there is little chance of securing in any of our cities sta- bility as well as efficiency of administration. Such a force has to be developed through the evolution of political character in a manner altogether similar to that in which the courage of calm became evolved out of the courage of ferocity, the peace of love out of the fury of passion, and the justice of man out of the injustice of Nature. The process is the same, and the result may be the same ; indeed, the jirocess has gone already so far that the result no longer seems unattainable. We have already traced the transfer of sovereignty from the crown to the peo- ple ; we have seen into what impotent hands the sovereignty then fell, and have derived courage from the slow but sure increase in strength and wisdom which the people have evinced. It was inevitable that the people which had been accustomed to be loyal to a person rather than to a principle should remain disposed to blindly follow leaders, rather than to laboriously work out the theories of government for themselves and persistently adhere to them. It was only through the disapjjointments that personal leadership must bring, that the people could at last learn that self-government means not servile obedi- ence to a chief, but independent and consistent ad- herence to a principle. As has already been pointed out, it has been the good fortune of our country to have been at certain periods in a position to dis- pense with party government altogether, as when PARTY GOVERNMENT. 2G3 the issue of centralisation disappeared by the death of the Federal party shortly before 1820, or as when the issues of the war disappeared after the recon- struction of the Southern States. In 1820 there re- sulted a total eclipse of national parties; at the later period national parties did not dissolve, but there sprang up a small though growing tendency towards independence in politics. This independence has given rise to what has been contemptuously termed by partisans the mugwump. The mugwump became recognised in politics upon the moral issue raised by the question whether a man against whom charges of political corruption had been consistently made and not successfully re- sisted should be elected to the highest office in the land. The disaffection which defeated Blaine and elected Cleveland was the first notice to national parties of the survival in the country of the moral sentiment which had lifted the abolitionists from contempt and insignificance in the fifties to undis- puted possession of the entire country in 18G5. The mugwump was overwhelmed by the craze for pro- tection in 1888; but in 1892, after the country had tasted the consequences of putting the Eepublican party back in power, the question arose as to who was to lead what was likely to be the triumphant democracy, and the issue between the practical poli- tician and the mugwump was once more raised in the conflicting personalities of David B. Hill and Grover Cleveland. The crushing defeat of Hill at the Chicago convention and the nomination of 18 264 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. Cleveland was a sure indication of the strensfth of moral sentiment in the country ; but this did not serve as any notice to the practical politician. David B. Hill pursued his devious methods as though he had not been defeated by moral sentiment at Chi- cago. He found a pliant tool in Isaac H. Maynard, whose tampering with official documents wrested the Senate of the State of New York from the Re- publican party to which it belonged and gave it to the Democrats. AY hen Hill sought to reward Ma}^- nard by the nomination to the Court of Appeals, the mugwumps once more demonstrated their strength by defeating Maynard with an overwhelming major- ity. In the same election the same spirit of political independence destroyed the machine in Brooklyn, and the following election has achieved a still more signal triumph in New York. All this goes to show that the spirit of partisan- ship, which Mr. Bryce thinks so essential to secur- ing public attention to public affairs, is gradually giving way to a spirit of independence which is as pregnant with blessings for the State as was the protest of Martin Luther for the Christian Church. How large is the number of citizens capable of independent political action in New York city can be measured by the difference between the vote for the Tammany candidate for mayor in 1892 and that for the Tammany mayor in 1894. In 1892 Thomas F. Gilroy, the Tammany candidate, received 173,510 votes, the opposing candidate, 97,923. The major- ity of Tammany Hall, therefore, was 75,000. In 1894 PARTY GOVERNMENT. 265 the anti-Tammany candidate, William L. Strong, received 154,094, and H. J. Grant, the Tammany candidate, 108,907. The anti-Tammany candidate, therefore, had a majority of over 45,000 votes. The difference, therefore, consists of the snm of 45,000 and 75,000, or 120,000. Out of a total vote, therefore, of about 270,000 there was a displacement of about 120,000 votes within a period of two years. This indicates the actual existence in New York of a large body of voters capable of being influenced by moral considerations, and of defeating political fac- tions however systematically organised. When al- lowance is made for the fact that there is no per- manent organisation of the better element, except such as has been begun by the organisation of social clubs to this end, the result of this last election can- not but give great hope to those who believe in popular institutions. And now we are in a position to make a partial answer to the question. What is the real remedy for misgoveriiment, whether in our municipalities or elsewhere? The error of the belief that munic- ipal government can only be good on condition of separation from national politics has already been pointed out. So long as the same Legislature which makes laws for the city, elects United States Senators, it is impossible to effect the separation so much to be desired. National parties must and will interfere. It is not therefore upon the narrow basis of this single issue that the disinterested element in the 2G6 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. community must be organised for political pur- poses; it is rather uj^on the broader principle that self-government in politics differs in no essential qualit}' from self-government in our individual lives. Both require the perpetual exercise of in- telligence and self-restraint ; neither is possible unless it is guided by that order of sentiment which has been heretofore dehned as religious. To expect that religion, even in the large sense in which this word is used in these pages, can within any reasonable time consciously exert an influence in our politics, would be as unreasonable as to expect any single effort of a single mind or pen to induce sensual men to give up the satisfaction of their senses, or to enable irascible men for ever after to control their temper. All that has been attempted here is to give additional reason to those whose lives are more or less influenced by the religious senti- ment for extending to the political field the moral efforts which have, till to-day, been so generally con- fined to individual conduct. Partisanship is as essential a factor in political life as hunger, thirst, aversion, to pain, and sexual desire are necessary factors in the private lives of every one of us. It cannot be disregarded; it cannot be destroyed; it must be recognised and handled. The larger the number of persons in the community, whether men or women, who have a clear apprehension and ap- preciation of this, the larger the hope that this great experiment of popular government which our coun- try is now making will succeed, and will not, by fail- PARTY GOVERNMENT. 267 ure, put humanity back to where it was before the middle ages. It is not enough, however, to say that the problem of partisanship must be dealt with ; the matter of essential importance to us is, How? It would be unwise, if not impossible, to lay down any programme for disposing of this difficulty, which, because it takes its roots in defects of human temperament, must always be more or less with us. As a matter of fact, it is now being dealt with by the organisation of manifold groups brought together with some common purpose, as, for example, for the purpose of securing civil service reform, excise reform, municipal reform, educational reform, all of which have a general tendency to keep watch over the action of national parties in the adminis- tration of our affairs. There is hardly a large town in the country which has not to-day some form of society engaged in the task of endeavouring to secure good municipal government. In the city of New York there are now actually at work to this end the City Club, the Good Government clubs, the City Yio-ilance League, and the Committee of Seventy. These four organisations tend to overlap and some- times to conflict with one another ; they will doubt- less be driven eventually to find some form of co- operation ; circumstances will force upon them the conviction that good government can never be per- manently secured until the machinery for nomi- natiuor candidates is taken out of the hands in Avhich it now is; or until there exists some associa- tion powerful enough either to hold primaries of its 268 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. own or to make an organised effort to control the primaries of the national parties. When they have effected this they will be exjDosed to a new danger — that is to say, capture by ambitious or interested men who will utilize their activity for personal ends. So long as ambition and temper are the main factors in bringing about movements towards good govern- ment it cannot be expected that they will long re- main true to their original principles. There must be a higher motive at the helm — the motive that prompts men to self-improvement in domestic life. The conflict with evil in the political arena is no other in kind than the conflict with evil which every religious man is more or less waging in his own heart. We are led by these considerations to the final question, What direct part, if any, can religion play in the political field ? The discussion of this matter we postpone to the final chapter. CHAPTER XIV. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION". Before attempting to draw a conclusion from the various considerations contained in the forego- ing chapters it will be a convenience briefly to sum up those to which we have already arrived, in an order somewhat different, but for our present pur- pose more direct, than that employed in the con- text. The history of Evolution divides itself into two epochs : The first, in which the principle of natural selection had its own way unchecked in the world ; the second, throughout which the principle of natu- ral selection has been in a great measure defeated by the more or less conscious efforts of man. During the first epoch the principle of the sur- vival of the fittest put man at the head of the pred- atory system. This system tended to divide ani- mals into those who hunted and those who were hunted. The former tended automatically to im- prove their weapons of attack ; the latter continued automatically to improve their weapons of defence or flight. Ferocity was the quality developed in the 2G9 270 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. one, and fear that developed in the other. But the ferocity that served to put the great carnivora at the head of the predatory system served also to ren- der individuals of the same species unfit for social life. The great carnivora, therefore, are solitary animals. On the other hand, the intelligence which enabled man by the use of tools to make himself more dreaded than the strongest of the carnivora made it also possible for man to accommodate him- self to social life. The exactions of social life put upon him the necessity of self-restraint, and through self-restraint gradually develo^jed qualities that tend- ed to differentiate him from other animals more characteristically than any mere increase in cere- bral development. In other words, man became different from the lower animals more by virtue of his moral than by virtue of his intellectual qualities. Gradually the pleasure that attends the exercise of any self-improving faculty converted the arduous exercise of self-restraint under the compulsion of fear, into a willing exercise of self-restraint under the stimulus of love of approbation. Meanwhile there gradually developed in man's mind a faculty of attaining abstract ideas, and out of that faculty sprang speculation regarding his origin and mission. These and other kindred questions have been de- fined as religious. Eeligion created a new set of motives which, acting in co-operation with the ex- actions of social life, gradually converted the quali- ties which man derived from his savage ancestors into virtues which are characteristically opposed to SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION. 271 those from which they are derived. Thus passion became converted into love, which has been shown to be so different from passion as almost to exclude it. Fear became converted into reverence, feroci- ty into courage ; reverence being respect without fear, and courage nerve without ferocity. A study of the development of passion and ferocity into love and courage demonstrates the large part which liuman effort has played in the transforma- tion. Now this human effort has been directed against the animal instincts — that is to say, against those qualities which, through the process of Evolu- tion, had put man at the head of the predatory sys- tem. One of the tendencies, therefore, of man's effort has been to diminish his ability to hold his own in the struggle for existence ; for love in the advance of civilisation tends to degenerate, through luxury, into lasciviousness, and courage to disappear with the disuse of ferocity. But man did not confine his efforts against Na- ture to moral qualities alone. As his knowledge of Nature increased he became more and more able to distinguish between those forces of Nature which contributed to his advancement and those which threatened his survival. He learned how to utilise the very forces of Nature which tended to destroy him, and has succeeded in violating some of the fundamental principles of Evolution without as yet exhibiting any fatal symptom of degeneration. On the contrary, not only does he still maintain his place at the head of the animal kingdom, carnivo- 272 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. rous and other, but liis supremacy seems to be more and more finally and absolutely determined. To- day man's whole existence is a tribute to what hu- man effort can do in its battle with Nature. This battle is admirably compared by Prof. Huxley to the struggle of man with adverse conditions in the familiar process of horticulture.* The essential fact to be kept in mind in studying the progress of man in relation to the principles of Evolution is that the principles of Evolution, as observable in the development of the lower animals, can in no way be applied to the development of man ; for man is capable of counteracting Nature in two ways : First, by his intelligence, and, second, by his faculty of choice. By his intelligence he utilises the very forces which prove deadly to the lower animals. By his faculty of choice, or by his faculty for creating the greater inclination, he is able, by efforts of his own, to encourage in himself the development of motives diametrically opposed to those which are the pro- duct of the struggle for existence ; and if we are to believe the testimoiiy of our consciousness, he is developing a faculty which can deliberately refuse to follow the more attractive inclination in order to obey the dictates of a sentiment, obedience to which is attended by disappointment, without any prospect of thereby avoiding future pain or enjoying future pleasure. * Huxley's Essays, Prolegomena to Evolution and Ethics. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION. 2t3 Whether this so-called faculty of choice exists is questioued by those who regard man as the slave of the greater iuclinatiou. This theory would make the Creator himself the slave of his greater incli- nation, and proceeds upon the assumption that every effect is caused. In assuming that every effect must be caused, it fails to take into account the fact that we have no explanation to give for the creation of force or matter, for the creation of life, for the creation of consciousness, and that these great appearances were, so far as we know, uncaused. If the faculty of consciousness came into the world uncaused, why not the faculty of choice ? But even if it be impossible to maintain the ex- istence of a facnlty of choice in man, it cannot be disputed that man has a faculty by effort of his own to contribute to the making of his greater inclina- tion. If, then, he can make his greater inclination, he is the master of that very determining factor of which the determiuists endeavour to make him the slave. To say of man that he is the slave of an inclination of which he is master, is to juggle with words. If man is master of his greater inclina- tion, he can, by his own efforts, gradually so develop the religious inclination as to make it continuously superior to the animal. When he attains this he has attained perfection. The word religious just used requires explana- tion. Religions have differed not only in their ori- gin but in their nature. It is difficult to find 274 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. anvthinoj in common between the Greek and the Hebrew religion. The Greek religion seems to spring from ancestral pride and to be unconcerned with ethics. In the Hebrew religion, on the con- trary, there is no trace of ancestral pride, and it is essentially a code of ethics. The Greek religion, if it is to be compared at all to that of Israel, India, or China, must be made to include philosophy, from which, however, it was characteristically distinguished. Religion in these later years is mainly occupied with two things : First, theology — that is to say, spec- ulation as regards matters not included in the domain of science ; and, second, ethics — that is to say, the de- termination of rules of conduct. Theoloijfv tends to be confounded with philosophy and ethics with law. In both theology and ethics, the dominant problem is that of pain. In theology au effort is made to square the existence of pain with justice. In ethics an effort is made, by laying down rules of conduct to be obeyed by all, to diminish the total of pain to be endured by all. Science has demonstrated that in the process of Evolution pleasure gradually tends to attend the exercise of faculties which conduce to per- petuating the life of the individual and of the race, whereas pain attends acts which conduce to the de- struction of the individual or race. Science also teaches that an evolution of conduct has attended the evolution of function, and that an extension of sympathy has attended both. The conclusion has been drawn from this fact that the processes of Evo- SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION. 275 lution are sufficient in themselves to complete the evolution of conduct and the extension of sympathy so as to bring man to a state of perfection. But this theory neglects to take into account many im- portant facts. In the first place, the principle of natural selection and the survival of the fittest through which Evolution took place in its first epoch have in great part ceased. The conclusions, there- fore, that have been drawn from operations in the past cannot be made to apply without great dis- crimination to the future. In the second place, man is no longer conforming himself to the principles of Evolution; he is fighting them. Hence can be drawn the same conclusion as before. In the third place, owing to this conflict between man and Na- ture, pleasure and pain are no longer guides to con- duct. On the contrary, man has now to endure pain and to forego pleasure, sometimes in order to escape a greater future pain or enjoy a greater future pleasure, sometimes in obedience to what has been called religious sentiment, because it is in opposition to the instinct of the lower nature. The special characteristic of the second epoch of Evolution is that in it man plays an independent role ; he is no longer being automatically devel- oped by blind processes of Evolution, but is himself directing the forces of Evolution, and sometimes opposing them. In so far as man is consciously and by the exer- cise of effort overcoming brutal instincts and replac- 276 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. ing them by si^iritual virtues he is approaching per- fection, not through the process of evolution but in spite of it. How far man will proceed on the road to perfection depends chiefly upon himself. It is impossible to estimate how large a part re- ligion has played in making man able and willing to exercise the effort indispensable to progress on the road to perfection. This is due to the fact that dif- ferent men are differently constituted, one man being almost without religious sentiment, and there- fore little, if at all, subject to religious impulse. Such a man may nevertheless be guided by intelli- gent apprehension of his duty to his neighbour, which will guide his conduct so that it will hardly be distinguishable from that of a religious life. Another man, on the contrary, is so constituted that, although deficient in intelligence and sense of duty, he is keenly alive to religious sentiment and re- ligious impulse, and is by this religious impulse rendered capable of the self-restraint which is essen- tial to peace and prosperity in social life. These two types of men will necessarily estimate the part played by religion in the progress of man in an entirely opposite manner. The recognition, how- ever, of the fact that these two types of men exist makes it impossible for the irreligious man not to admit that so long as the religious type exists re- ligion has an essential role to play in the world. Religion must not be confounded with the insti- tutions that have grown up out of it. Religion fighting Christian civilisation wdth the sword of SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION. 277 Mahomet was a scourge ; religion fighting the ad- vancement of knowledge with a papal bull was equally a scourge; but neither of these attacks upon the progress of man is to be attributed to religion ; both are to be attributed to the human institutions which grew up in the name of religion and in spite of it. The superstitious that survive to-day must not be put to the account of religion, but to the ac- count of liuman imperfection, from which religion always has suffered and must always suffer. But while it is essential to the progress of man that re- ligion, in the sense of the word in which it has been used in these pages, should continue to be the domi- nant influence in determining human conduct, it must also be recognised that the Church, in which religion has made its sanctuary — whether the Church be Roman or Greek, Catholic or Protestant, Jew or Gentile — has acquired a control over the hearts of men which is too intimately associated with the re- ligious influence itself to be lightly set aside. To a large part of civilised humanity the Church is re- ligion ; and so long as this is the case the Church must not only be tolerated, but respected and main- tained even by those who denounce its superstitions and deplore its error. There has grown, however, and is growing daily, a conviction that the Church is not doing the work which it should do in the world ; and nowhere is the failure to do its work more con- spicuous than in those countries where monarchical or aristocratic institutions have given way to popu- lar government. The inherent evils of party gov- 278 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. ernment in England and France, and the total de- pravity of municipal administration in America, all tend to discredit popular government. The neutral attitude of the Church in England and America, and its positive hostility to the republican form of gov- ernment in France, have given rise to loud denun- ciation, aad the Church has been called upon by some to assert control over the public as well as the private lives of its parishioners. But the history of Church and State clearly indicates the unwisdom of such a course. Again, a careful study of Christian ethics brings out forcibly the fact that they have got out of touch with the needs of humanity in more than one par- ticular. Christianity aims at perfection, whereas a code of ethics which does not recognise the weak- ness of humanity is incapable of determining its conduct. Moreover, Christ was an ascetic ; he taught not only disregard of the body but its mortification. Asceticism is now repudiated by the sincerest religious thought of the day, and a due regard for the body is recognised as essential to a wholesome spiritual life. Last, but not least, Christ preached to the in- habitants of a conquered province. Obedience was the cardinal virtue of public life not only at the time of Christ but for fifteen centuries after him. The gospels, therefore, both in their aims at perfec- tion, in their teaching of asceticism, and in the absence of instruction as regards the relation of man to the State under a form of government in which his pub- lic duty to the State is as important as his private SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION. 279 duties to his family, are, it must be admitted, in- complete and inadequate. As a matter of fact, that part of Christ's teaching which is impracticable to- day has been silently dropped, or been, by a pious fraud, treated as allegory. Thus modified it still re- mains the greatest spiritual message that has ever come to the world. As a guide, therefore, to indi- vidual conduct it is a potent factor for good ; as a guide to public conduct it is entirely Avithout force or effect. And it has been shown that the Church had best keep strictly away from all intervention in matters of State. From every point of view, therefore, it does not seem as though the Church, qua Church, could directly attack the political difficulties with which civilisation is now confronted. An examination of the political difficulties just referred to brings out the undoubted fact that prac- tically every great problem which now faces human- ity is a political one. The problems of pauperism and socialism, of education and crime, can only be handled by the State. Pity, acting through the in- strumentality of the Church, cannot be prevented from invading the province of the State in all these matters, but it is an invasion which, if unintelligently indulged in, tends to debilitate the Church, to serve as an excuse for inefficacy on the part of the State, and to keep alive the very difficulties it seeks to sup- press. The State, owing to the failure of religious men to discern the religious character of their polit- 19 280 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. ical duties, has fallen into the hands of professional politicians, who do not pretend, in America, to be actuated by any but mercenary motives, and who, even in England and France, would smile at the thought of introducing the ethics of Christianity into the workings of their Foreign Office. Ambi- tion is the best motive that animates politicians in all three countries ; but the motive which prevails in America is undoubtedly the desire for political plunder, and the invasion of politics by this spirit in France and England cannot long be postponed. This is the situation that concerns us. What, if any, is the remedy ? It is with reluctance that a remedy for so pro- found an evil is suggested. Especially is this the case in view of the fact that no single panacea for such evils as infest politics can be propounded. But many such panaceas in which religion and science are more or less involved have been proposed, some of them containing elements of utility that should not be neglected, some of them containing also sug- gestions that indicate confusion as regards the rela- tion of religion and science to one another and to the State. These relations have been considered at some length, because it is believed that if they are properly understood the remedies proposed would possibly be modified. If the conclusions which have been arrived at are sound, it is clear that the Church, as such, cannot undertake the work for which, in many resjDects, it seems so admirably fitted. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION. 281 But though the Church may not be an instrument throuo-h which the work can be effected, it seems clear, beyond the possibility of refutation, that it is through religion only that the work of regeneration can effectually be accomplished. And it is because in this statement so much depends upon the mean- ing attributed to the word religion that Just what religion is has carefully been studied and as nearly as possible defined. That the religious spirit has been conspicuous by its absence in modern politics is beyond dispute. That its interference in matters political was by no means an unmixed good in the middle ages would hardly to-day be questioned ; and yet, that it is the only motive which can make self- government possible, seems the necessary conclusion to be drawn from the failure of popular institutions when left to ambition and self-interest as contrasted with the general advance in popular morality under the stimulus of an intelligent effort at self-restraint. In other words, what the Church in its errors and abuses is to religion, the political machine is to true political priucij)les. The religious spirit — remember- ing always that by religious spirit is meant the desire and resolution to fight animal instinct in so far as it clashes against spiritual instincts essential to social life — pervades the people. It has built up the Church and tends to correct the encroachment of the machine ; but the struggle between the religious spirit and natural instinct is a perpetual one, and in politics at the present day there is no doubt but that the machine, except in isolated places and un- 282 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. der exceptional circumstances, is supreme. It has been pointed out, however, that the supremacy of the machine is due to the abdication of the people, and that this again is the natural consequence of a change from monarchical to democratic institutions. The sceptre passed from the king to the people, but the people remained uninstructed as to the duties of the government which they assumed. The Church failed in its duty to instruct them because the Church was itself averse to the change, and because there was nothing in the ethics of the Church that concerned the public duties of the citizen. And so religious people, both within the pale of the Church and without it, have learned to regard politics as a matter of concern to politicians only and not as a matter of responsibility for themselves. So recon- ciled have they become to this theory that many of them have given up the effort at securing good gov- ernment altogether, and entertain and preach the doctrine that more can be done by co-operating with spoilsmen than by opposing them. The problem presented by crime and pauperism has been careful- ly studied with a view to pointing out how utterly present methods fail to deal with it, and how much of the failure is due to the political machines to which the handling of this problem has been in- trusted. The religious spirit, working through private channels, has not been found to be able either to check or to co-operate usefully with mu- nicipal authorities selected upon the principle of spoils. Nothing but an overturn of the spoils sys- SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION. 283 tern itself, and the selection of good municipal offi- cers, liberated by a sound civil service system from the tyranny of partisanship, offers any chance of an intelligent solution of this great problem. Again, earnest people have not awakened to the importance of educating their partners in the diffi- cult work of government. The mistake of confiding this task to a press which, exposed as it is to com- mercial competition, perpetually tends to descend to the level of that newspaper which appeals most suc- cessfully to the lowest tastes in the community, has been pointed out. Education upon a commercial basis has never succeeded. All our recognised edu- cational institutions are heavily endowed, and are to that extent, therefore, eleemosynary in their char- acter. The greatest educational work of all is that of the press, because it operates on a man during by far the longest part of his life, and because the lessons it teaches are drawn from the events which immediately surround him, and are immediately translated into action, through which the whole country must either suffer or succeed. Appeal must be made to the spirit which founds hospitals, uni- versities, and asylums, to endow an organ which can afford to state facts as they are, free from financial, commercial, or partisan bias. Again, the tremendous power of the workingman, gradually informing himself and awakening to his strength, can no longer be overlooked by those who desire to see our present civilisation maintained. This power, if educated, can be ranged on the side 284 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. of order, whereas if allowed to run riot it is likely, in its war upon capital, to destroy the very founda- tions upon which our civilisation is built. All these considerations, taken in connection with the gospel of effort which has been preached since the days of Buddha, but which the doctrines of determinism and laissez faire, drawing false de- ductions from the principles of Evolution in the past, have done so much to depreciate, jooint to the inevitable conclusion that the time has come for earnest men to recognize that they can no longer allow politics to take care of themselves. But it has been already pointed out that the Church qtid Church cannot interfere in matters of State. What, then, is the alternative? What the Churches cannot do churchmen can do ; and in this one matter they can co-operate with others as earnest as they, who are prevented by dif- ferences of creed from communion with them with- in the limits of their special beliefs. In other words, the study of social and political problems and the effort to solve them, is a work in which all earnest men can join irrespective of those differences of creed which now separate them. Indeed, there is in the present condition of things an o])portunity for compensation of no ordinary kind. Those men who are fitted by the disinterestedness of their motives, by intelligence and education, to grapple with the problems of the day, have heretofore been excluded from the advantages of co-operation as churchmen SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION. 2S5 by differences of creed, and as politicians by differ- ences of partisanship. They have been kept asunder by barriers which are to a large extent imaginary ; for although the differences of temperament which characterise the Methodist and. the Roman Catholic are likely eternally to keep them apart in matters of creed and theology, there is, as a matter of fact, no reason which should prevent their co-operation in the effort to solve the problems of pauperism, of socialism, and of self-government ; and although the differences of interest and education that separate free traders from protectionists are not likely to dis- appear, there is no fundamental reason why Eepub- licans and Democrats should not join in the same effort. The preceding chapters have been written for the pnrpose of demonstrating the necessity and possibility of such co-operation ; all that remains now to suggest is the practical steps by which this co-operation can be effected. And, in the first place, what can the Church do in this direction? If the clergy were persuaded that the duty of a citizen to study social problems and organise for the purpose of solving them was as paramount as that of charity and unselfishness, it is difficult to conceive how priests and ministers could fail to urge this duty upon their parishioners. Xor should their words consist of vague exhortations to public spirit. The clergy do not confine them- selves to vague exhortations when the life of some charity or mission is at stake. They organife socie- ties, they raise subscriptions, they appoint times and 286 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. places for meetings, they select committees, and they take all the steps that are necessary to put the ma- chinery in operation necessary to obtain tangible results. An effort has been made in these pages to demonstrate that the most powerful engine for grap- pling with the problem of pauperism is the city department that deals with the subject of charity and correction. If this be true, the spirit and enthusiasm which has heretofore been employed in organising private charities should now be em- ployed in organising effort to achieve more fruitful results through the more powerful operation of pub- lic office. Tlie first objection that will be made to this sug- gestion is that the clergy cannot interfere in politics. This argument proceeds upon a profound miscon- ception of the facts. It is not because political machines have chosen to invade, capture, and cor- rupt the administration of our municipal affairs that, for that reason, city administration must necessarily be admitted to form a part of politics, in the sense in which this word is generally used. Politics have their limitations as well as religion. It is as great an outrage on our liberties for the Democratic party in the State of Xew York, for its own advan- tage, to seize upon the remunerative offices of our Department of Charities and Correction, as it would be for the Roman Catholic Church to do so. The real confusion in the matter consists in the fact that people generally confound politics with partisanship. This is what a clergyman does when he refuses to SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION. 287 interest himself in public charity because of its sup- posed political complexion. Nevertheless, it must be admitted that, as a matter of fact, the administra- tion of our public charities is political in the largest and truest sense of the word ; so is the question of public education; so is the question of the press; so is the question of an incorruptible police, of gam- bling, of prostitution. Is it conceivable that the clergy will maintain that they have a right to exhort their congregation as to the iniquity of indecency at home, but must remain silent when that indecency stalks unblushing through the streets? — that they have a right to instruct on the question of education when the parishioner is wealthy enough to educate his children by private tuition, but must remain silent however great the abuse in the public instruc- tion of that vast majority of children who must look for their education to the State ? Is it conceivable that the clergy, once persuaded that our present sys- tem of dealing with the pauper is one that manufac- tures paupers faster than any private charity can relieve, will continue to consume its own energy and the energy of its parishioners in keeping alive the very evil which it is its intention to suppress? It w^ould be impossible to find a better illustration of the evil effect of the incorrect use of words upon the minds and actions of men than is contained in the misuse of this word politics. The true defini- tion of the word is that it is the science or art of government; that it is that part of ethics which consists in the knowledge or practice of conducting 288 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. the various forces of a State or nation ; but because the administration of tlie affairs of a State or nation has fallen into the hands of parties, the word politics has incidentally got to include also the contests of parties for power. These contests have in all time developed so much that is bad and treacherous in human nature, that the word politics has at last become discredited, and the great battle which has been fought between the Church and State in Eu- rope has filled Americans with a very justifiable horror of anything like interference on the part of the clergy with matters political. And so there is in this question how far, if at all, the clergy may with propriety interest themselves in public affairs, a con- fusion between three very distinct ideas and preju- dices. In the first place, because the administration of the affairs of a State is essentially political in the truest sense of the word, any interest in municipal matters cannot be conscientiously called by any other name than politics ; but, in the second place, politics has become confounded with partisanship, or the struggle of j)arties for power ; and, in the third place, the idea of the Church becoming involved in any such struggle for political power is rightly abhorrent to the American mind. If, however, the real mean- ing of the word politics be kept carefully separate from its derived meaning, it will be readily seen that whereas it is a crime for the Church to become in- volved in the one, it is also a crime for the Church to abstain from interest in the other. But even this statement must be made with an SUxMMARY AND CONCLUSION. 289 important excejjtiou, for much will depend upon the kind of interest that the clergy take in the mat- ter. For the clergy itself to undertake sectarian or- ganisation with a view to political action would be unwise and impracticable. However great the mu- nicipal evil be, if every Presbyterian church in the city were to undertake to convert its Presbyterian parishes into political organisations, so that the move- ment could be understood or misunderstood to be a Presbyterian movement, it would tend to crystallise against it other sects which would very justly dej^re- cate the political power which any one sect could obtain by such political action. The Church, then, must abstain from anything that can involve it in a struggle for political power, and must refrain from any organisation which could put on a semblance of sectarianism ; but it is a duty imposed upon the Church by the new condition of things which obtained when government passed from the hands of a class into those of the people, boldly to preach the public duties which have thereby been assumed ; and not only to preach but to see that those steps are taken which will lead to organised study and fruitful action. These three conclusions serve to indicate pretty clearly just what is the scope and what are the limits of action permitted to the Church. In the first place, the area or unit of organisation must not be the parish but the political district. In the second place, the organisation must not be secta- rian, but must result from the preaching of political action in churches of every denomination in the dis- 290 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. trict. In the third place, it must be strictly non- partisan. The first two of these conclusions suggest that the proper means of organisation would be some- what as follows : Assuming that in one political dis- trict the wisdom of organising for the improvement of the condition of the people should make itself manifest to any one clergyman therein, he should proceed in exactly the same manner as if he desired to interest his congregation in a new charity or mis- sion. He would consult a few of the most intelli- gent and influential of his parishioners. If they responded to his suggestion, the laymen selected by them would begin an organisation within the dis- trict. Before the organisation was completed com- munication would be opened with every other parish church in the district. An effort would be made to secure the co-operation of all the clergy therein, with the purpose of securing through the clergy that of the leading vestrymen, elders, deacons, etc., connected with the respective churches. When a name for the organisation had been found and its purposes defined, the prosperity of the association could be assured by the efforts of the clergy, even though it should be deemed best that the clergy itself be excluded from membership in its govern- ing board. And as has been already intimated, tlic clergy can do more than vainly denounce and ap- peal. The clergy can collect subscriptions, can fur- nish places of meeting, and last, but not least, can set apart an hour every Sunday for the transaction of political business. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION. 291 The success of every such organisation would depend upon the skill and zeal of those interested in it, but it would also depend largely upon a few questions of detail which must not be overlooked ; and there probably is no matter of detail more im- portant than what may seem at first sight a trivial question — whether an hour on Sunday should or should not be devoted to this work. There are those who would object to the use of Sunday for political purposes. No attempt will be made in these pages to convert those Sabbatarians who insist upon maintaining the Jewish theory of the day in opposition to the express teaching of Christ ; but to those who are willing to listen to him who said that the Son of Man is Lord also of the Sabbath, all that seems needful in order to justify this course is to recall the fact that the work of such an association would be no less religious or fruitful than that of the priest who sanctifies the Sabbath by officiating thereon. And the very fact that the work was done on a Sunday would contribute to keep alive in such associations the religious note, without which they are likely to go the way of all other political bodies. Again, one of the principal difficulties attending the organisation of such a body as the one suggested is lack of time. The men best fitted for this task are already overworked during the week. To ask them to set aside another week-day hour for a new effort to improve municipal conditions would be asking them sometimes to do a thing which was materially impossible. If, however, Sunday evening 292 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. were devoted to this work, and the usual Sunday service were abandoned for the express purpose of enabling the congregation to attend to its political duties, two objects would be accomplished. In the first place, an hour would be found which might otherwise be wanting ; in the second place, it would be brought home to the congregation that tlie clergy was in earnest in advocating the cause, and considered the cause sufficiently imperative to advise the sacrifice of a service thereto. As regards the general j^urposes of such an association there are but few suggestions that re- main to be made. The preceding chajaters have shown clearly enough what is the work to Avhich it is the duty of a citizen to attend. The only point left to which attention need now be directed is as to the principal jDolitical object of such an associa- tion. It has been already sufficiently pointed out in preceding chapters that municipal misgovernment is due to the invasion of partisanship. It has also beeji pointed out that the clergy can have nothing to do with any movement for improving the condi- tion of the people unless such a movement be free from partisanship. For these two reasons, there- fore, it is essential that any such association should recognise the necessity of divorcing purely munici- pal administration from national politics ; and inas- much as it is impossible to secure good government from rascally officials, the great purpose of such an association ought to be to see to the nomination, elec- SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION. 293 tion, and appointment of city officials on the ground of fitness alone and without regard for partisan- ship. Such a platform would inevitably carry in its wake an extension of the Civil Service rules, to the importance of which our fellow-citizens do not seem to be as yet sufficiently alive ; a larger measure of home rule for cities ; separation of municipal from national elections ; a revision of our criminal law that would permit of an indeterminate sentence ; a radical change in our treatment of the criminal and pauper which would restore him to society only when he had proved himself fit for it, and make him as nearly as possible self-supiDorting dur- ing his reformation ; a study of the questions raised by socialism in co-operation with the workingraan and not in opposition to him ; an organisation of charity that would leave behind a spirit of gratitude rather than one of distrust ; that would seek to find employment for the workman rather than to give him alms ; that would defend him in court, and teach him to resist political abuses to which he has of late shown himself so willing to succumb. Such an association once organised successfully in one district would gradually spring up in adjoin- ing districts, until at last, by a confederation of these associations, a body would be formed of formidable strength, capable of almost any practicable achieve- ment. Such a confederation could at no late date endow a weekly paper which would handle public questions in the spirit of the university rather than in that of the partisan, and could at any rate fur- 294 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. nish facts to the public unbiased by financial need or political considerations. It will doubtless be found that in every place where such an organisa- tion is needed there already exist some societies or clubs constituted for the same purpose. This is notably the case in tlie city of ISI^ew York. The plain duty of religious men would in such case be, not to organise something new, but to enter into the organisations already in existence, and by intro- ducing among them the principles of concord and forbearance, so conspicuous by their absence in most political combinations, contribute to perseverance, permanence, and success. The impulsive and some- times discordant action of many associations it would be the role of churchmen of all creeds and denominations to combine into a confederation to which every separate body would. lend its strength without losing its individuality. It would be idle to indulge in the ho^oe that any such organisation could permanently dispose of the problem of misgovernment. The very power which such an organisation, if successful, would obtain could not fail eventually to corrupt it ; but the argument of the spirit that doubts, which would advise against all organisation because every organ- isation must eventually die either through inactivity or corruption, is one which is equally applicable to every effort. We make effort to live, yet we must all eventually die. We make effort to be virti'ious, and yet few can expect to attain perfection. It is extremely probable that such an organisation would SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION. 295 ultimately fall into the hands of the very enemy against wliom it is directed, but to say that for that reason we should abstain from organisation is as illogical as to advise against buildinoj fortifications lest the fortifications be captured, or against put- ting weapons in the hands of our soldiers lest those weapons be wrested from their hands. If such an or- ganisation came into existence and acquired strength, it would do good while it was strong and while it remained steadfast to its purpose ; and when, in subsequent years, it became either inactive or cor- rupt, it would be the duty of future generations to solve the new problem then presented to them. It has been the aim of these pages to deal wdth the evils that concern us in this life, and not with those that may hereafter concern us in some other state of existence ; to deal with the present rather than with the future, the actual rather than the pos- sible. There is one terrible fact in existence with which we all must reckon : this fact is pain. So far as we can see, it is unevenly and unjustly distributed. To some there seem to have been given all the good things in this world, and if any shadow falls over their lives it is mainly the shadow of themselves. To others, on the contrary, all the good things in this world have been denied ; they have been de- prived of those qualities that make them objects of lov^ or even pity ; they are set by hideous instincts upon injuring rather than benefiting their fellow- creatures; they make the lives of all about them 296 EVOLUTION AND EFFORT. wretched, until, after having inflicted nntold nn- happiness upon those about them, they gravitate to the workhouse or to the penitentiary. Others, while free from those aggressive qualities which make them hateful to their fellow-creatures, are without the moral or mental qualities necessary to enable them to make their way in the world. These, be- cause they excite our sympathy, very often create the more unhappiness. Death, disease, and insanity do havoc enough amongst those we hold most dear in the world, to set some of us upon the conquest of that large part of the kingdom of pain from which by effort and intelligence our fellow-creatures can still be rescued. This book will have accomplished its purpose if it persuades a single reader that pain can be diminished by the exercise of these faculties ; that no human being is so circumstanced but that he can contribute to make life less hard for those m about him ; that it is to religious sentiment, and to religious sentiment alone, whether within the pale of the Church or without, that humanity can look for the exercise of the self-restraint necessary to this end ; that human suffering can be dealt with most efficaciously by the action of the State ; that the commonwealth can by religious sentiment be lifted out of the mire, where it now is, into an atmos- phere instinct with courage and hope ; that it can become an altar to which every aspiration may turn, before which every creed may worship, and from which every blessing may flow, so that the humblest worker may ultimately feel that in devoting himself SUMxMARY AND CONCLUSION. 297 to the gospel of effort, whether in private life or in the field of politics, he is developing within himself that Godhead which centuries ago uttered those words of promise and consolation : " Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." THE END. j giof nlf\y vJ^ SrAlhwuM.lAiSCilOOi; UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY Los Angeles This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. jiMNtSO Form Ij9-Series 444 t PLEASP DO NOT REMOVE THIS BOOK card"" ■ en III Hi mill W^tllBRARYQ^ :x3 iiiii mil ■III1 University Research Library < o ■o -4 o o c o ■•■■■ .■ :t. :-^r^-::^S^/k-1i.ii'' - . : >. ■:. . X--. .•.■■f>:i-.-;»;^ ■■ >'«oS<«i^V ■^■-:>,•^-.-'■.-^■-■•■-:-rt■'X^.-. ? ' S>^', .*:*>^-S i:?^i -ftS«>ii:':-^^y '^^^' :-■■:■ ■■ -''>'''■ -V'^'j^.^.i^i^:- '^'^flr ;;>'>;Vi::;y.:v-.