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OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS
BY
WILLIAM RALPH INGE, C.V.O., D.D.
DEAN OF ST. PAUL'S
FIFTH IMPRESSION
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO 39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON
FOURTH AVENUE & 30TH STREET, NEW YORK
BOMBAY, CALCUTTA, AND MADRAS
1920
PREFACE
All the Essays in this volume, except the first, have appeared in the
_Edinburgh Review_, the _Quarterly Review_, or the _Hibbert Journal_. I
have to thank the Publishers and Editors of those Reviews for their
courtesy in permitting me to reprint them. The articles on _The
Birth-Rate, The Future of the English Race, Bishop Gore and the Church
of England_, and _Cardinal Newman_ are from the _Edinburgh Review_;
those on _Patriotism, Catholic Modernism, St. Paul_, and _The Indictment
against Christianity_ are from the _Quarterly Review_; those on
_Institutionalism and Mysticism_ and _Survival and Immortality_ from the
_Hibbert Journal_. I have not attempted to remove all traces of
overlapping, which I hope may be pardoned in essays written
independently of each other; but a few repetitions have been excised.
CONTENTS
PAGE
I. OUR PRESENT DISCONTENTS 1
II. PATRIOTISM 35
III. THE BIRTH-RATE 59
IV. THE FUTURE OF THE ENGLISH RACE 82
V. BISHOP GORE AND THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 106
VI. ROMAN CATHOLIC MODERNISM 137
VII. CARDINAL NEWMAN 172
VIII. ST. PAUL 205
IX. INSTITUTIONALISM AND MYSTICISM 230
X. THE INDICTMENT AGAINST CHRISTIANITY 243
XI. SURVIVAL AND IMMORTALITY 266
Photera theleist soi malthaka pseydhê lhegô, hê sklhêr' alêthhê;
phrhaze, shê gar hê krhisist.
_Euripides_.
The case of historical writers is hard; for if they tell the truth
they provoke man, and if they write what is false they offend
God.--_Matthew Paris_.
Quattuor sunt maxime comprehendendae veritatis offendicula; videlicet,
fragilis et indignae auctoritatis exemplum, consuetudinis diuturnitas,
vulgi sensus imperiti, et propriae ignorantiae occultatio cum
ostentatione sapientiae superioris.--_Roger Bacon_.
Iudicio perpende; et si tibi vera videntur,
Dede manus; aut si falsum est, accingere contra.
_Lucretius_.
Eventu rerum stolidi didicere magistro.
_Claudian_.
'All' hê toi men tahyta thehôn en gohynasi kehitai.
_Homer_.
I
OUR PRESENT DISCONTENTS
(AUGUST, 1919)
The Essays in this volume were written at various times before and
during the Great War. In reading them through for republication, I have
to ask myself whether my opinions on social science and on the state of
religion, the two subjects which are mainly dealt with in this
collection, have been modified by the greatest calamity which has ever
befallen the civilised world, or by the issue of the struggle. I find
very little that I should now wish to alter. The war has caused events
to move faster, but in the same direction as before. The social
revolution has been hurried on; the inevitable counter-revolution has
equally been brought nearer. For if there is one safe generalisation in
human affairs, it is that revolutions always destroy themselves. How
often have fanatics proclaimed 'the year one'! But no revolutionary era
has yet reached 'year twenty-five.' As regards the national character,
there is no sign, I fear, that much wisdom has been learnt. We are more
wasteful and reckless than ever. The doctrinaire democrat still vapours
about democracy, though representative government has obviously lost
both its power and its prestige. The labour party still hugs its
comprehensive assortment of economic heresies. Organised religion
remains as impotent as it was before the war. But one fact has emerged
with startling clearness. Human nature has not been changed by
civilisation. It has neither been levelled up nor levelled down to an
average mediocrity. Beneath the dingy uniformity of international
fashions in dress, man remains what he has always been--a splendid
fighting animal, a self-sacrificing hero, and a bloodthirsty savage.
Human nature is at once sublime and horrible, holy and satanic. Apart
from the accumulation of knowledge and experience, which are external
and precarious acquisitions, there is no proof that we have changed much
since the first stone age.
The war itself, as we shall soon be compelled to recognise, had its
roots deep in the political and social structure of Europe. The growth
of wealth and population, and the law of diminishing returns, led to a
scramble for unappropriated lands producing the raw materials of
industry. It was, in a sense, a war of capital; but capitalism is no
accretion upon the body politic; it is the creator of the modern world
and an essential part of a living organism. The Germans unquestionably
made a deep-laid plot to capture all markets and cripple or ruin all
competitors. Their aims and methods were very like those of the Standard
Oil Trust on a still larger scale. The other nations had not followed
the logic of competition in the same ruthless manner; there were several
things which they were not willing to do. But war to the knife cannot be
confined to one of the combatants; the alternative, _Weltmacht oder
Niedergang_, was thrust by Germany upon the Allies when she chose that
motto for herself. If the modern man were as much dominated by economic
motives as is sometimes supposed, the suicidal results of such a
conflict would have been apparent to all; but the poetry and idealism of
human nature, no longer centred, as formerly, in religion, had gathered
round a romantic patriotism, for which the belligerents were willing to
sacrifice their all without counting the cost. Like other idealisms,
patriotism varies from a noble devotion to a moral lunacy.
But there was another cause which led to the war. Germany was a curious
combination of seventeenth century theory and very modern practice. An
Emperor ruling by divine right was the head of the most scientific state
that the world has seen. In many ways Germany, with an intelligent,
economical, and uncorrupt Government, was a model to the rest of the
world. But the whole structure was menaced by that form of
individualistic materialism which calls itself social democracy, and
which in practice is at once the copy of organic materialism and the
reaction against it. The motives for drilling a whole nation in the
pursuit of purely national and purely materialistic aims are not strong
enough to prevent disintegration. The German _Kriegsstaat_ was falling
to pieces through internal fissures. A successful war might give the
empire a new lease of life; otherwise, the rising tide of revolution was
certain to sweep it away. As Sir Charles Walston has shown, it was for
some years doubtful whether the democratic movement would obtain control
before the bureaucracy and army chiefs succeeded in precipitating a war.
There was a kind of race between the two forces. This was the situation
which Lord Haldane found still existing in his famous visit to Germany.
In the event, the conservative powers were able to strike and to rush
public opinion. Perhaps the bureaucracy was carried along by its own
momentum. Two or three years before the war a German publicist, replying
to an eminent Englishman, who asked him who really directed the policy
of Germany, answered: 'It is a difficult question. Nominally, of course,
the Emperor is responsible; but he is a man of moods, not a strong man.
In reality, the machine runs itself. Whither it is carrying us we none
of us know; I fear towards some great disaster.' This seems to be the
truth of the matter. No doubt, a romantic imperialism, with dreams of
restoring the empire of Charlemagne, was a factor in the criminal
enterprise. No doubt the natural ambitions of officers, and the greed of
contractors and speculators, played their part in promoting it. But when
we consider that Germany held all the winning cards in a game of
peaceful penetration and economic competition, we should attribute to
the Imperial Government a strange recklessness if we did not conclude
that the political condition of Germany itself, and the automatic
working of the machine, were the main causes why the attack was made.
There is, in fact, abundant evidence that it was so. The scheme failed
only because Germany was foolish enough to threaten England before
settling accounts with Russia. But this, again, was the result of
internal pressure. Hamburg, and all the interests which the name stands
for, cared less for expansion in the East than for the capture of
markets overseas. For this important section of conservative Germany,
England was the enemy. So the gauntlet was thrown down to the whole
civilised world at once, and the odds against Germany were too great.
For the time being, the world has no example of a strong monarchy. The
three great European empires are, at the time of writing, in a state of
septic dissolution. The victors have sprung to the welcome conclusion
that democracy is everywhere triumphant, and that before long no other
type of civilised state will exist. The amazing provincialism of
American political thought accepts this conclusion without demur; and
our public men, some of whom doubtless know better, have served the
needs of the moment by effusions of political nonsense which almost
surpass the orations delivered every year on the Fourth of July. But no
historian can suppose that one of the most widespread and successful
forms of human association has been permanently extinguished because the
Central Empires were not quite strong enough to conquer Europe, an
attempt which has always failed, and probably will always fail. The
issue is not fully decided, even for our own generation. The ascendancy
will belong to that nation which is the best organised, the most
strenuous, the most intelligent, the most united. Before the war none
would have hesitated to name Germany as holding this position; and until
the downfall of the Empire the nation seemed to possess those qualities
unimpaired. The three Empires collapsed in hideous chaos as soon as they
deposed their monarchs. In the case of Russia, it is difficult to
imagine any recovery until the monarchy is restored; and Germany would
probably be well-advised to choose some member of the imperial family as
a constitutional sovereign. A monarch frequently represents his
subjects better than an elected assembly; and if he is a good judge of
character he is likely to have more capable and loyal advisers.
President Wilson's declaration that 'a steadfast concert for peace can
never be maintained except by a partnership of democratic nations; for
no autocratic government could ever be trusted to keep faith within it,'
is one of the most childish exhibitions of doctrinaire _naïveté_ which
ever proceeded from the mouth of a public man. History gives no
countenance to the theory that popular governments are either more moral
or more pacific than strong monarchies. The late Lord Salisbury, in one
of his articles in the _Quarterly Review_, spoke the truth on this
subject. 'Moderation, especially in the matter of territory, has never
been a characteristic of democracy. Wherever it has had free play, in
the ancient world or the modern, in the old hemisphere or the new, a
thirst for empire and a readiness for aggressive war has always marked
it. Though governments may have an appearance and even a reality of
pacific intent, their action is always liable to be superseded by the
violent and vehement operations of mere ignorance.' The United States
are no exception to this rule. They have extended their dominion by much
the same means as the empire of the Tsars or our own. Texas and Upper
California, the Philippines and Porto Rico, were annexed forcibly; New
Mexico, Alaska, and Louisiana were bought; Florida was acquired by
treaty; Maine filched from Canada. In no case were the wishes of the
inhabitants consulted. Our own experience of republicanism is the same.
It was during the short period when Great Britain had no king that
Cromwell's court-poet, Andrew Marvell, urged him to complete his
glorious career by demolishing our present allies:
A Cæsar he, ere long, to Gaul,
To Italy an Hannibal.
On the other hand, none of the 'autocrats' wanted this war. The Kaiser
was certainly pushed into it.
Democracy is a form of government which may be rationally defended, not
as being good, but as being less bad than any other. Its strongest
merits seem to be: first, that the citizens of a democracy have a sense
of proprietorship and responsibility in public affairs, which in times
of crisis may add to their tenacity and endurance. The determination of
the Federals in the American Civil War, and of the French and British in
the four years' struggle against Germany, may be legitimately adduced as
arguments for democracy. When De Tocqueville says that 'it is hard for a
democracy to begin or to end a war,' the second is truer than the first.
And, secondly, the educational value of democracy is so great that it
may be held to counterbalance many defects. Mill decides in favour of
democracy mainly on the ground that 'it promotes a better and higher
form of national character than any other polity,' since government by
authority stunts the intellect, narrows the sympathies, and destroys the
power of initiative. 'The perfect commonwealth,' says Mr. Zimmern,' is a
society of free men and women, each at once ruling and being ruled,' It
is also fair to argue that monarchies do not escape the worst evils of
democracies. An autocracy is often obliged to oppress the educated
classes and to propitiate the mob. Domitian massacred senators with
impunity, and only fell '_postquam cerdonibus esse timendus coeperat_.'
If an autocracy does not rest on the army, which leads to the chaos of
praetorianism, it must rely on '_panem et circenses_.' Hence it has some
of the worst faults of democracy, without its advantages. As Mr. Graham
Wallas says: 'When a Tsar or a bureaucracy finds itself forced to govern
in opposition to a vague national feeling which may at any moment create
an overwhelming national purpose, the autocrat becomes the most
unscrupulous of demagogues, and stirs up racial or religious or social
hatred, or the lust for foreign war, with less scruple than a newspaper
proprietor under a democracy,' The autocrat, in fact, is often a slave,
as the demagogue is often a tyrant. Lastly, the democrat may urge that
one of the commonest accusations against democracy--that the populace
chooses its rulers badly--is not true in times of great national danger.
On the contrary, it often shows a sound instinct in finding the
strongest man to carry it through a crisis. At such times the parrots
and monkeys are discarded, and a Napoleon or a Kitchener is given a
free hand, though he may have despised all the demagogic arts. In other
words, a democracy sometimes knows when to abdicate. The excesses of
revolutionists are not an argument against democracy, since revolutions
are anything rather than democratic.
Nevertheless, the indictment against democracy is a very heavy one, and
it is worth while to state the main items in the charge.
1. Whatever may be truly said about the good sense of a democracy during
a great crisis, at ordinary times it does not bring the best men to the
top. Professor Hearnshaw, in his admirable 'Democracy at the
Crossroads,' collects a number of weighty opinions confirming this
judgment. Carlyle, who proclaimed the merits of silence in some thirty
volumes, blames democracy for ignoring the 'noble, silent men' who could
serve it best, and placing power in the hands of windbags. Ruskin,
Matthew Arnold, Sir James Stephen, Sir Henry Maine, and Lecky, all agree
that 'the people have for the most part neither the will nor the power
to find out the best men to lead them.' In France the denunciations of
democratic politicians are so general that it would be tedious to
enumerate the writers who have uttered them. One example will suffice;
the words are the words of Anatole Beaulieu in 1885:
The wider the circle from which politicians and
state-functionaries are recruited, the lower seems their
intellectual level to have sunk. This deterioration in the
personnel of government has been yet more striking from the
moral point of view. Politics have tended to become more
corrupt, more debased, and to soil the hands of those who
take part in them and the men who get their living by them.
Political battles have become too bitter and too vulgar not
to have inspired aversion in the noblest and most upright
natures by their violence and their intrigues. The élite of
the nation in more than one country are showing a tendency
to have nothing to do with them. Politics is an industry in
which a man, to prosper, requires less intelligence and
knowledge than boldness and capacity for intrigue. It has
already become in some states the most ignominious of
careers. Parties are syndicates for exploitation, and its
forms become ever more shameless.
A later account of French politics, drawn from inside knowledge and
experience, is the remarkable novel, 'Les Morts qui parlent,' by the
Vicomte Le Vogué. Readers of this book will not forget the description
of the _bain de haine_ in which a new deputy at once finds himself
plunged, and the canker of corruption which eats into the whole system.
It is no wonder that the majority of Frenchmen do not care to record
their votes. In 1906, 5,209,606 votes were given, 6,383,852 electors did
not go to the poll. The record of democracy in the new countries is no
better. We must regretfully admit that Louis Simond was right when he
said, 'Few people take the trouble to persuade the people, except those
who see their interest in deceiving them.'
2. The democracy is a ready victim to shibboleths and catchwords, as all
demagogues know too well. 'The abstract idea,' as Schérer says, 'is the
national aliment of popular rhetoric, the fatal form of thought which,
for want of solid knowledge, operates in a vacuum.' The politician has
only to find a fascinating formula; facts and arguments are powerless
against it. The art of the demagogue is the art of the parrot; he must
utter some senseless catchword again and again, working on the
suggestibility of the crowd. Archbishop Trench, 'On the Study of Words,'
notices this fact of psychology and the use which is commonly made of
it.
If I wanted any further evidence of the moral atmosphere
which words diffuse, I would ask you to observe how the
first thing men do, when engaged in controversy with others,
is ever to assume some honourable name to themselves, such
as, if possible, shall beg the whole subject in dispute, and
at the same time to affix on their adversaries a name which
shall place them in a ridiculous or contemptible or odious
light. A deep instinct, deeper perhaps than men give any
account of to themselves, tells them how far this will go;
that multitudes, utterly unable to weigh the arguments on
one side or the other, will yet be receptive of the
influences which these words are evermore, however
imperceptibly, diffusing. By argument they might hope to
gain over the reason of a few, but by help of these
nicknames the prejudices and passions of the many.
The chief instrument of this base art is no longer the public speech
but the newspaper.
The psychology of the crowd has been much studied lately, by Le Bon and
other writers in France, by Mr. Graham Wallas in England. I think that
Le Bon is in danger of making The Crowd a mystical, superhuman entity.
Of course, a crowd is made up of individuals, who remain individuals
still. We must not accept the stuffed idol of Rousseau and the
socialists, 'The General Will,' and turn it into an evil spirit. There
is no General Will. All we have a right to say is that individuals are
occasionally guided by reason, crowds never.
3. Several critics of democracy have accused it not only of rash
iconoclasm, but of obstinate conservatism and obstructiveness. It seems
unreasonable to charge the same persons with two opposite faults; but it
is true that where the popular emotions are not touched, the masses will
cling to old abuses from mere force of habit. As Maine says, universal
suffrage would have prohibited the spinning-jenny and the power-loom,
the threshing-machine and the Gregorian calendar; and it would have
restored the Stuarts. The theory of democracy--_vox populi vox dei_--is
a pure superstition, a belief in a divine or natural sanction which does
not exist. And superstition is usually obstructive. 'We erect the
temporary watchwords of evanescent politics into eternal truths; and
having accepted as platitudes the paradoxes of our fathers, we
perpetuate them as obstacles to the progress of our children.'[1]
4. A more serious danger is that of vexatious and inquisitive tyranny.
This is exercised partly through public opinion, a vulgar, impertinent,
anonymous tyrant who deliberately makes life unpleasant for anyone who
is not content to be the average man. But partly it is seen in constant
interference with the legislature and the executive. No one can govern
who cannot afford to be unpopular, and no democratic official can afford
to be unpopular. Sometimes he has to wink at flagrant injustice and
oppression; at other times a fanatical agitation compels him to pass
laws which forbid the citizen to indulge perfectly harmless tastes, or
tax him to contribute to the pleasures of the majority. In many ways a
Russian under the Tsars was far less interfered with than an Englishman
or American or Australian.
5. But the two diseases which are likely to be fatal to democracy are
anarchy and corruption. A democratic government is almost necessarily
weak and timid. A democracy cannot tolerate a strong executive for fear
of seeing the control pass out of the hands of the mob. The executive
must be unarmed and defenceless. The result is that it is at the mercy
of any violent and anti-social faction. No civilised government has ever
given a more ludicrous and humiliating object-lesson than the Cabinet
and House of Commons in the years before the war, in face of the
outrages committed by a small gang of female anarchists. The
legalisation of terrorism by the trade-unions was too tragic a surrender
to be ludicrous, but it was even more disgraceful. None could be
surprised when, during the war, the Government shrank from dealing with
treasonable conspiracy in the same quarter.
The _Times_ for May 24, 1917, contained a noteworthy example
of justice influenced by pressure, and therefore applied
with flagrant inequality. In parallel columns appeared
reports of 'sugar-sellers fined' and 'strike leaders
released.' The former paid the full penalty of their
misdeeds because no body of outside opinion maintained them.
The latter, who were stated to have committed offences for
which the maximum penalty was penal servitude for life, got
off scot-free because they were members of a powerful
organisation which was able to bring immense weight to bear
on the Government.[2]
The 'immense weight' was, of course, the threat of virtually betraying
the country to the Germans. The country is at this moment at the mercy
of any lawless faction which may choose either to hold the community to
ransom by paralysing our trade and channels of supply, or by organised
violence against life and property. Democracy is powerless against
sectional anarchism; and when such movements break out there is no
remedy except by substituting for democracy a government of a very
different type.
Democracy is, in fact, a disintegrating force. It is strong in
destruction, and tends to fall to pieces when the work of demolition
(which may of course be a necessary task) is over. Democracy dissolves
communities into individuals and collects them again into mobs. It pulls
up by the roots the social order which civilisation has gradually
evolved, and leaves men _déracinés_, as Bourget says in one of his best
novels, homeless and friendless, with no place ready for them to fill.
It is the opposite extreme to the caste system of India, which, with all
its faults, does not seem to breed the European type of _enragé_, the
enemy of society as such.
6. The corruption of democracies proceeds directly from the fact that
one class imposes the taxes and another class pays them. The
constitutional principle, 'No taxation without representation,' is
utterly set at nought under a system which leaves certain classes
without any effective representation at all. At the present time it is
said that one-tenth of the population pays five-sixths of the taxes. The
class which imposes the taxes has refused to touch the burden of the war
with one of its fingers; and every month new doles at the public expense
are distributed under the camouflage of 'social reform.' At every
election the worldly goods of the minority are put up to auction. This
is far more immoral than the old-fashioned election bribery, which was a
comparatively honest deal between two persons; and in its effects it is
far more ruinous. Democracy is likely to perish, like the monarchy of
Louis XVI, through national bankruptcy.
Besides these defects, the democracy has ethical standards of its own,
which differ widely from those of the educated classes. Among the poor,
'generosity ranks far before justice, sympathy before truth, love before
chastity, a pliant and obliging disposition before a rigidly honest one.
In brief, the less admixture of intellect required for the practice of
any virtue, the higher it stands in popular estimation.[3] In this
country, at any rate, democracy means a victory of sentiment over
reason. Some may prefer the softer type of character, and may hope that
it will make civilisation more humane and compassionate than it has been
in the past. Unfortunately, experience shows that none is so cruel as
the disillusioned sentimentalist. He thinks that he can break or ignore
nature's laws with impunity; and then, when he finds that nature has no
sentiment, he rages like a mad dog, and combines with his theoretical
objection to capital punishment a lust to murder all who disagree with
him. This is the genesis of Jacobinism and Bolshevism.
But whether we think that the bad in democracy predominates over the
good, or the good over the bad, a question which I shall not attempt to
decide, the popular balderdash about it corresponds to no real
conviction. The upper class has never believed in it; the middle class
has the strongest reasons to hate and fear it. But how about the lower
class, in whose interests the whole machine is supposed to have been set
going? The working man has no respect for either democracy or liberty.
His whole interest is in transferring the wealth of the minority to his
own pocket. There was a time when he thought that universal suffrage
would get for him what he desires; but he has lost all faith in
constitutional methods. To levy blackmail on the community, under
threats of civil war, seems to him a more expeditious way of gaining his
object. Monopolies are to be established by pitiless coercion of those
who wish to keep their freedom. The trade unions are large capitalists;
they are well able to start factories for themselves and work them for
their own exclusive profit. But they find it more profitable to hold the
nation to ransom by blockading the supply of the necessaries of life.
The new labourer despises productivity for the same reason that the old
robber barons did: it is less trouble to take money than to make it. The
most outspoken popular leaders no longer conceal their contempt for and
rejection of democracy. The socialists perceive the irreconcilable
contradiction between the two ideas,[4] and they are right. Democracy
postulates community of interest or loyal patriotism. When these are
absent it cannot long exist. Syndicalism, which seems to be growing, is
the antipodes of socialism, but, like socialism, it can make no terms
with democracy. 'If syndicalism triumphs,' says its chief prophet Sorel,
'the parliamentary régime, so dear to the intellectuals, will be at an
end.' 'The syndicalist has a contempt for the vulgar idea of democracy;
the vast unconscious mass is not to be taken into account when the
minority wishes to act so as to benefit it.'[5] 'The effect of political
majorities,' says Mr. Levine, 'is to hinder advance,' Accordingly,
political methods are rejected with contempt. The anarchists go one step
further. Bakunin proclaims that 'we reject all legislation, all
authority, and all influence, even when it has proceeded from universal
suffrage.' These powerful movements, opposed as they are to each other,
agree in spurning the very idea of democracy, which Lord Morley defines
as government by public opinion, and which may be defined with more
precision as direct government by the votes of the majority among the
adult members of a nation. Even a political philosopher like Mr. Lowes
Dickinson says, 'For my part, I am no democrat.'
Who then are the friends of this _curieux fétiche_, as Quinet called
democracy? It appears to have none, though it has been the subject of
fatuous laudation ever since the time of Rousseau. The Americans burn
incense before it, but they are themselves ruled by the Boss and the
Trust.
The attempt to justify the labour movement as a legitimate development
of the old democratic Liberalism is futile. Freedom to form
combinations is no doubt a logical application of _laisser faire_; and
the anarchic possibilities latent in _laisser faire_ have been made
plain in the anti-democratic movements of labour. But Liberalism rested
on a too favourable estimate of human nature and on a belief in the law
of progress. As there is no law of progress, and as civilised society is
being destroyed by the evil passions of men, Liberalism is, for the
time, quite discredited. It would also be true to say that there is a
fundamental contradiction between the two dogmas of Liberalism. These
were, that unlimited competition is stimulating to the competitors and
good for the country, and that every individual is an end, not a means.
Both are anarchical; but the first logically issues in individualistic
anarchy, the last in communistic anarchy. The economic and the ethical
theory of Liberalism cannot be harmonised. The result--cruel competition
tempered by an artificial process of counter-selection in favour of the
unfittest--was by no means satisfactory. But it was better than what we
are now threatened with.
That the labour movement is economically rotten it is easy to prove. In
the words of Professor Hearnshaw, 'the government has ceased to govern
in the world of labour, and has been compelled, instead of governing, to
bribe, to cajole, to beg, to grovel. It has purchased brief truces at
the cost of increasing levies of Danegeld drawn from the diminishing
resources of the patient community. It has embarked on a course of
payment of blackmail which must end either in national bankruptcy or in
the social revolution which the anarchists seek.' The powerful
trade-unions are now plundering both the owners of their 'plant,' and
the general public. It is easy to show that their members already get
much more than their share of the national wealth. Professor Bowley[6]
has estimated that an equal division of the national income would give
about £160 a year to each family, free of taxes. But even this estimate,
discouraging as it is, seems not to allow sufficiently for the fact that
under the present system much of the income of the richer classes is
counted twice or three times over. Abolish large incomes, and jewels,
pictures, wines, furs, special and rare skill like that of the operating
surgeon and fashionable portrait painter, lose all or most of their
money value. All the large professional incomes, except those of the low
comedian and his like, are made out of the rich, and are counted at
least twice for income-tax. It is certain that a large part of the
national income could not be 'redistributed,' and that in the attempt to
do so credit would be destroyed and wealth would melt like a snow man.
The miners, therefore, are not seeking justice; they are blackmailing
rich and poor alike by their monopoly of one of the necessaries of life.
And now they strike against paying income-tax!
It is not necessary or just to bring railing accusations against any
class as a body. Power is always abused, and in this case there is much
honest ignorance, stimulated by agitators who are seldom honest. In a
recent number of the _Edinburgh Review_ Sir Lynden Macassey speaks of
the widespread, almost universal, fallacies to which the hand-worker has
fallen a victim. They believe that all their aspirations can be
satisfied out of present-day profits and production. They believe that
in restricting output they are performing a moral duty to their class.
They do not believe that the prosperity of the country depends upon its
production, and are opposed to all labour-saving devices. They refuse
co-operation because they desire the continuance of the class-war. Such
perversity would seem hardly credible if it were not attested by
overwhelming evidence. The Government remedy is first to create
unemployment and then to endow it--the shortest and maddest road to ruin
since the downfall of the Roman Empire.
We may have a faint hope that some of these fallacies will be abandoned
by the workmen when their destructive results can no longer be
concealed. But sentimentalism seems to be incurable. It erects
irrationality into an act of religious faith, gives free rein to the
emotion of pity, and thinks that it is imitating the Good Samaritan by
robbing the Priest and Levite for the benefit of the man by the
road-side. The sentimentalist shows a bitter hatred against those who
wish to cure an evil by removing its causes. A good example is the
language of writers like Mr. Chesterton about eugenics and population.
If social maladies were treated scientifically, the trade of the
emotional rhetorician would be gone.
We have seen that democracy--the rule of majorities--has been
discredited and abandoned in action, though officially we all bow down
before it. Another popular delusion is that the chief change in the last
fifty years has been a conversion of the world from individualism to
socialism. In the language of the Christian socialists, who wish to
combine the militant spirit and organisation of medieval Catholicism
with a bid for the popular vote, we have 'rediscovered the Corporate
Idea.' But if we take socialism, not in the narrower sense of
collectivism, which would be an economic experiment, but in the wider
sense of a keen consciousness of the solidarity of the community as an
organic whole, there is very little truth in the commonly held notion
that we have become more socialistic. It is easy to see how the idea has
arisen. It became necessary to find some theoretical justification for
raising taxes, no longer for national needs, but for the benefit of the
class which imposed them; and this justification was found in the theory
that all wealth belongs to 'the State,' and may be justly divided up as
'the State'--that is to say, the majority of the voters--may determine.
Whenever the question arises of voting new doles to the dominant section
of the people at the expense of the minority, our new political
philosophers profess themselves fervent socialists. But true socialism,
which is almost synonymous with patriotism, is as conspicuously absent
in those who call themselves socialists as it is strong in those who
repudiate the title. This paradox can be easily proved. The most
socialistic enterprise in which a nation ever engages is a great war. A
nation at war is conscious of its corporate unity and its common
interests, as it is at no other time. The nation then calls upon every
citizen to surrender all his personal rights and to offer his life and
limbs in the service of the community. And what has been the record of
the 'socialists' in the struggle for national existence in which we have
been engaged? In the years preceding the war they ridiculed the idea
that the country was in danger of being attacked, and used all their
power to prevent us from preparing against attack. They steadily opposed
the teaching of patriotism in the schools. When the war began, they
prevented the Government from introducing compulsory service until our
French Allies, who were left to bear the brunt, were on the point of
collapse; they, in very many cases, refused to serve themselves, thereby
avowing that, as far as they were concerned, they were willing to see
their country conquered by a horde of cruel barbarians; and they nearly
handed over our armies to destruction by fomenting strikes at the most
critical periods of the war. This attitude cannot be accounted for by
any conscientious objection to violence, which is in fact their
favourite weapon, except against the enemies of their country. Their
socialism is, in truth, individualism run mad; it is the very antithesis
to the consciousness of organic unity in a nation, which is the
spiritual basis of socialism. In this sense, the nation as a whole has
shown a fine socialistic temper; but the disgraceful exception has been
the socialist party. The intense and perverted individualism of the
so-called socialist is shown in another way. Whatever liberties a State
may permit to its citizens, it is certain that no nation can be in a
healthy condition unless the government keeps in its own hands the keys
of birth and of death. The State has the right of the farmer to decide
how many cows should be allowed to graze upon ten acres of grass; the
right of the forester to decide how many square feet are required for
each tree in a wood. It has also the right and the duty of the gardener
to pull up noxious weeds in his flower-beds. But the socialist
vehemently repudiates both these rights. Being an ultra-individualist,
he is in favour of _laisser faire_, where _laisser faire_ is most
indefensible and most disastrous.
It would be easy to maintain that the organic idea was more potent, both
under medieval feudalism and under nineteenth-century industrialism,
than it is now. In former days, economic and social equality were not
even aimed at, because it was thought inevitable that in a social
organism there must be subordination and a hierarchy of functions.
Essentially, and in the sight of God, all are equal, or, rather, the
essential differences between man and man are absolutely independent of
social status. In a few years Lazarus may be in heaven and Dives in
hell. Beside this equality of moral opportunity and tremendous
inequality in self-chosen destiny, the status of master and servant
seemed of small importance; it was a temporary and trivial accident.
Accordingly, in feudal times, as to-day in really Catholic communities,
feelings of injustice and social bitterness were seldom aroused and
class differences take on a more genial colour. In spite of the
lawlessness and brutality of the Middle Ages it is probable that men
were happier then than they are now.
The French Revolution, which was a disintegrating solvent, pulverised
society, and was impotent to reconstruct it. Yet under the industrial
régime which followed it in this country, the nation was conscious of
its unity. The system was the best that could have been devised for
increasing the population and aggregate wealth of the country; and even
those who suffered most under it were not without pride in its results.
The ill-paid workman of the last century would have thought it a poor
thing to do a deliberately bad day's work.
I am not praising either the age of feudalism or the 'hungry forties' of
the nineteenth century. In the latter case especially the sacrifice
exacted from the poor was too great for the rather vulgar success of
which it was the condition. But to call that age the period of
individualism, and our own generation the period of socialism, is in my
opinion a profound mistake. In Germany, too, the real socialists are not
the 'Spartacist' scoundrels who have betrayed and ruined their country,
but the bureaucracy with their _Deutschland über Alles_. If I were a
little more of a socialist, I could almost admire them, in spite of all
their crimes.
The landed gentry (and in honesty I must add the endowed clergy) are a
survival of feudalism, as the capitalist is a survival of industrialism.
Both have to a large extent survived their functions. The mailclad
baron, round whose fortified castle the peasants and others gathered for
protection, has become the country gentleman, against whom the
indictment is not so much that his only pursuit is pleasure, as that his
only pleasure is pursuit. 'The rich man in his castle, the poor man at
his gate' were intelligible while the rich man protected the poor man
from being plundered and killed by marauders; but in our times nobody
wants a castle or to live under the shadow of a castle. The clerical
profession was a necessity when most people could neither read nor
write. But to-day our best prophets and preachers are laymen. As at
ancient Athens, in the time of Aristophanes, 'the young learn from the
schoolmaster, the mature from the poets.' Similarly, the captain of
industry cannot hold the same autocratic position as formerly, in view
of the growing intelligence and capacity of the workmen; and the
capitalist who is not a captain of industry is a debtor to the community
to an extent which he does not always realise. This class is becoming
painfully conscious of its vulnerability.
There are, therefore, irrational survivals in our social order; and
though it may be proved that they are not a severe burden on the
community, it is natural that popular bitterness and discontent should
fasten upon them and exaggerate their evil results. It cannot be
disputed that this bitterness and discontent were becoming very acute in
the years before the war. An increasing number of persons saw no meaning
and no value in our civilisation. This feeling was common in all
classes, including the so-called leisured class; and was so strong that
many welcomed with joy the clear call to a plain duty, though it was the
duty of facing all the horrors of war. What is the cause of this
discontent? There are few more important questions for us to answer.
Those who find the cause in the existence of the survivals which we have
mentioned are certainly mistaken. It is no new thing that there should
be a small class more or less parasitic on the community. The whole
number of persons who pay income-tax on £5000 a year and upwards is
only 13,000 out of 46 millions, and their wealth, if it could be divided
up, would make no appreciable difference to the working man. The
wage-earners are better off than they have ever been before in our
history, and the danger of revolution comes not from the poor, but from
the privileged artisans who already have incomes above the family
average. We must look elsewhere for an explanation of social unrest. If
we consider what are the chief centres of discontent throughout the
civilised world, we shall find that they are the great aggregations of
population in wealthy industrial countries. Social unrest is a disease
of town-life. Wherever the conditions which create the great modern city
exist, we find revolutionary agitation. It has spread to Barcelona, to
Buenos Ayres, and to Osaka, in the wake of the factory. The inhabitants
of the large town do not envy the countryman and would not change with
him. But, unknown to themselves, they are leading an unnatural life, cut
off from the kindly and wholesome influences of nature, surrounded by
vulgarity and ugliness, with no traditions, no loyalties, no culture,
and no religion. We seldom reflect on the strangeness of the fact that
the modern working-man has few or no superstitions. At other times the
masses have evolved for themselves some picturesque nature-religion,
some pious ancestor-worship, some cult of saints or heroes, some stories
of fairies, ghosts, or demons, and a mass of quaint superstitions,
genial or frightening. The modern town-dweller has no God and no Devil;
he lives without awe, without admiration, without fear. Whatever we may
think about these beliefs, it is not natural for men and women to be
without them. The life of the town artisan who works in a factory is a
life to which the human organism has not adapted itself; it is an
unwholesome and unnatural condition. Hence, probably, comes the
_malaise_ which makes him think that any radical change must be for the
better.
Whatever the cause of the disease may be (and I do not pretend that the
conditions of urban life are an adequate explanation) the malady is
there, and will probably prove fatal to our civilisation. I have given
my views on this subject in the essay called _The Future of the English
Race._ And yet there is a remedy within the reach of all if we would
only try it.
The essence of the Christian revelation is the proclamation of a
standard of absolute values, which contradicts at every point the
estimates of good and evil current in 'the world.' It is not necessary,
in such an essay as this, to write out the Beatitudes, or the very
numerous passages in the Gospels and Epistles in which the same lessons
are enforced. It is not necessary to remind the reader that in
Christianity all the paraphernalia of life are valued very lightly; that
all the good and all the evil which exalt or defile a man have their
seat within him, in his own character; that we are sent into the world
to suffer and to conquer suffering; that it is more blessed to give than
to receive; that love is the great revealer of the mysteries of life;
that we have here no continuing city, and must therefore set our
affections and lay up our treasures in heaven; that the things that are
seen are temporal, and the things that are not seen are eternal. This is
the Christian religion. It is a form of idealism; and idealism means a
belief in absolute or spiritual values.
When applied to human life, it introduces, as it were, a new currency,
which demonetises the old; or gives us a new scale of prices, in which
the cheapest things are the dearest, and the dearest the cheapest. The
world's standards are quantitative; those of Christianity are
qualitative. And being qualitative, spiritual goods are unlimited in
amount; they are increased by being shared; and we rob nobody by taking
them.