should invisibly rule a third something to which educator and pupil
are equally subject. This third something is the _right_,
the _best_, necessarily conditioned and expressed without
arbitrariness in the circumstances. The calm recognition, the clear
knowledge, and the serene, cheerful obedience to the rule of this third
something, is the particular feature that should be constantly and
clearly manifest in the bearing and the conduct of the educator and
teacher, and often firmly and sternly emphasized by him.”
Beneath this statement there lies a law of reaction. The human
organism responds in kind. Strike a man and he strikes, sneer and he
sneers, forget and he forgets. If you wish to convince him that you
are right, concede that from his point of view he is right, then move
the point and he follows. If you keep your temper in teaching a child,
you teach him to keep his temper, and this is more important than his
lesson.
The difficulty we find is to resist the reaction in ourselves to
some one else’s initiative. The affair is outside the province of
reason, and results from a transfer of force by means which we do not
understand. The command to “turn the other cheek” is a picturesque
figure for the attitude which will enable you to prevail the quickest
and by the highest means, and which Froebel enables us to see in its
scientific aspect.
But it is unnecessary to illustrate further what any one who comes in
contact with a kindergarten will, through all the mists of dogma and
ignorance which overspread the place, discover for himself. We have a
science founded upon human nature, applied to education. Mr. Hughes in
his closing paragraph uses the language of theology, but he makes no
overstatement:--
“When Froebel’s ethical teaching has wrought its perfect work in the
homes, the schools, and the churches, then his complete ideal, which
is the gospel ideal in practice, will be the greatest controlling and
uplifting force in the world.”
One word more about the relation between Froebel’s thought and current
science.
The view of man as an active animal, a struggler, alive and happy
only in activity, falls in naturally with what we know of the animal
kingdom. The philosophers are at war over science and religion,
over the origin of the non-self-regarding instincts. By an external
consideration of the animal hierarchy they have come to certain
conclusions which they strive to apply to the highest animal, man.
There is great boggling over him; because these non-self-regarding
instincts, which are not very apparent from the outside, seem to
conflict with certain generalizations relative to the conservation
of species. The scientists look into a drop of water and see animals
eating each other up. What they have not seen is that all this ferocity
goes forward, subject to customs as rigid as a military code, and
that it is this code which conserves the species. The “struggle for
existence” as it is commonly conceived would exterminate in short
order any species that indulged in it.
Meanwhile Froebel, beginning at the other end of the scale and studying
life from the inside, has established certain facts, certain laws,
which have as great a weight, and deserve as much to be carried
downward in the scale, as the generalizations of the naturalists (very
likely imperfect) have to be carried upward.
The animal man is unselfish. It is impossible to make his organism
vibrate as a unity except by some emotion which can be shown to be
non-self-regarding. At what point in the scale of nature does this
quality begin to manifest itself? Is the dog happy when he is selfish;
do the laws of psychology outlined by Froebel apply, and to what
extent do they apply, to the horse or the monkey? These things must be
patiently studied, and the corrections must be made. In the mean time,
in dealing with man himself, we are obliged to rely upon the latest
scientific report of him, however imperfect, and until Froebel’s laws
are destroyed, we need not attempt to adjust our ideas of man to the
dogmas developed by the study of the lower animals.
DEMOCRACY
IV
DEMOCRACY
The system of choosing public officials by popular vote is properly
enough called Democracy. The terms of tenure and nomenclature,
etc., are matters of detail. If we are to seek any test as to what
constitutes a Democracy, we may as well take as a test the formal
setting up at a particular time of some scheme of government by the
popular will. England has been a democracy since the Act of Settlement,
and if it be said that universal suffrage was not then known, the
answer is that it is not known now, and never can be known. The
exclusions of women and non-naturalized residents or even of criminals
and lunatics are matters of convenience. It is a question of degree.
Again, it is impossible that all the officials should be elected, and
the assignment to the elected officials of the power to appoint the
others is a matter of convenience. The very simple expedients adopted
by the framers of the United States Constitution were the result of
English experience and French theory. The intellect of France had,
during the eighteenth century, put into portable form the ideas that
had been at work in England’s institutions. The theoretical part of
it, the division of government into three departments, had been worked
out from European experience going back to Greek times. The written
constitution was a mere expansion of the Bill of Rights. Our Framers
were men who had had personal experience in governing under the
English system in force in the colonies, where the power of practical
self-government had been developed by isolation. They received from the
French a scientific view of that system. They had learned by experience
that a confederacy was not a government, and they proceeded to bind the
country together by the grant of that power which defines government,
the power to tax. The extension to a large territory of a system which
was in practical operation in all its parts, was in one sense a miracle
of intelligence, in another sense it was the only conceivable solution
of the problem of unity. Philosophers speak of Democracy as if it were
the outcome of choice. It has been the outcome of events. No other
system would have endured, and every formula of government that did not
embody an old usage would have been transformed in ten years by the
popular will into something that did.
The reason the Constitution of the United States is the most remarkable
document in existence is that it contained so little of novelty. The
election of some officers and the appointment of the rest, that was
what the people were used to. That is democracy. There is of course no
such thing as a pure democracy, or a pure monarchy. Every government is
in practice the outcome of forces of which a very small fraction are
expressed in its constitution and laws.
A constitution is a profession of faith, a summary written on a
bulletin board, and so far good. The United States had this advantage
in starting upon her career, that the bulletin was a very accurate
summary of existing customs, and was in itself an inspiring proof of
the virtue of the people. We are driven into admiring the Colonists
as among the most enlightened of their kind. It is true that the
revolution was conducted, and the Constitution adopted by the activity
of a small minority. But this is true of all revolutions. The point is
that the leaders represented sense and virtue. The people followed.
The moment the scheme was launched it became the sport of the elements.
In the North a trading bourgeoisie grew up under it. In the South
a slave-holding oligarchy, a society so fantastically out of touch
with the modern world that it seems like something left over from the
times before Christ, found no difficulty in making use of the forms of
Democracy. During the half century that followed, these two societies
became so hostile to each other that conflict was inevitable, and there
ensued a death-grapple in four years of war, a war to extinction. At
the end of the war no trace of the oligarchy remained upon the face
of the earth. And yet these forms of government survived and began to
operate immediately, under new auspices of course, deflected by new
passions, showing new shapes of distortion, yet ideally the same. The
only common element between the north and the south was the reverence
for these forms of government.
Meanwhile civilization had been creeping westward in a margin of
frontier life, conducted under these forms. Behind this moved a belt of
farming and village life, at war with the backwoods ideals, but using
the same forms of government. Then arose the railroad era and tore
millions of money from the continent, heaped it in cities, obliterated
State lines, centralized everything, controlled everything, ruled
everybody--still under these forms.
Let us examine them.
The problem of government is to protect the individuals in a community
against each other, and to protect them all against the rest of the
world. The power to interfere and the power to represent must be
lodged somewhere, and the question is how to arrange it so that this
power shall not be turned against the people. Democracy solves it by
election. Let the people choose their rulers. Instantly every man is
turned into a custodian, a part of him is dedicated to the public.
He is prevented by fundamental theory of law from being absolutely
selfish. Corrupt him how you will, deflect him, play upon him, degrade,
deceive him, you cannot shut him off from this influence. The framework
of government makes continuous appeal to the highest within him. It
draws him as the moon draws the sea. This appeal is one to which
the organic nature of man responds, as we have seen. For man is an
unselfish animal. The law of his nature is expressed in the framework
of government. The arrangement shows a wisdom so profound that all
historical philosophy grows cheap before it.
If you jump from the study of psychology straight into the theory of
democracy, you see why it was that the allegiance to the ideas of
the United States Constitution endured through slavery, through the
carpetbag era, through the Tweed ring. It was not the letter, but the
spirit which was inextinguishable.
It has taken a century of pamphlets to break down the distinctions
between men based upon orders of nobility, property, creed, etc.
Fifteen minutes of psychology would have levelled men and set them upon
the same footing as that upon which they walk into a hospital.
The creature man is by this system dealt with so simply as he had not
been dealt with since the birth of Christ. It must be conceded that the
thing could not even have been tried, except with a people familiar
with the distinctions between legislative, executive, and judicial
power, criminal and civil law, etc. Altruistic impulse would not have
sufficed to execute itself. But the divisions and forms of thought
expressive of that altruism already existed, and were in operation, as
we have seen.
It is thought that the peculiar merit of Democracy lies in this: that
it gives to every man a chance to pursue his own ends. The reverse is
true. The merit lies in the assumption imposed upon every man that he
shall serve his fellow men. This is by the law of his being his only
chance for happiness. You cannot find a man who does not know this. If
you examine the consciousness of any typical minion of success, you
will find that his source of inward content lies in a belief that his
success has benefited somebody--his kindred, his townsfolk--mankind.
The concentration of every man on his own interests has been the danger
and not the safety of Democracy; for Democracy contemplates that every
man shall think first of the State and next of himself. This is its
only justification. In so far as it is operated by men who are thinking
first of their own interests and then of the State, its operation is
distorted.
Democracy assumes perfection in human nature. In so far as an official
or a voter is corrupt, you will have bad government. Or to put the
same thing in another way, all corruption is shown up as a loss of
the power of self-government. The framework of government lies there
exposed in all its parts like a vast and complex dial, recording with
the nicety of a scientific instrument every departure from virtue of
the human beings whose lives, whose standards, whose very thoughts are
registered against it. When selfishness reaches a certain point, the
machine stops. Government by force comes in. We have had railroad riots
and iron foundry riots. In Denver not many months ago thirty thousand
people, or about one-fifth of the population, engaged in a carnival of
destruction and raided a picnic given by the Cattle Association. These
ebullitions, which look like mania, are nothing but an acute form of
blind selfishness, due to the education of a period in which everything
has been settled by an appeal to the self-interest of the individual.
The Bryanism, with which we must all sympathize, is nothing but a
revolt on the part of the poorer classes against the exploitation of
the country by the capitalist, due to pension laws, tariffs, trusts,
etc. “Something must now be done for me,” says the laboring man, and
the mine owner says “Silver.” The appeal is by a little manipulation
worked up into a craze, with the result that property is unsafe.
The craze is a craze of mistaken selfishness. One of the weapons
with which the richer classes fought it was corruption. They fed the
element which was devouring them. There is talk of bayonets, and it is
true that either bayonets or public spirit must in such cases be the
issue. We cannot have property at the mercy of a mob, and if any single
state like Colorado were separated from the rest, and the spirit of
unreason should possess it utterly, government by force would ensue.
Elections would be superseded, and property would improvise some mode
of practical government which every intelligent man would back. The
danger of an episode of this sort is that it interrupts the course of
things. It is revolution. It is the breakdown of democracy, and tends
to perpetuate the conditions of incompetence out of which the crisis
arises. Fortunately the country is so large that one State holds up the
next. No community would tolerate a state of siege for more than six
months, and the State would return to educational methods, weaker but
alive.
A military imposition of order is then the extreme case. But the Boss
system is the halfway house in the breakdown of free government.
In the Boss system we have seen a lack of virtue in the people show
itself in the shape of a government, in fact autocratic, but in form
republican. Here again the loss in the power of self-government is
apparent.
But there is no departure from civic virtue which can get by unnoticed.
Take the case of a voter who submits to having his street kept
dirty because he fears that a protest would make him disagreeably
conspicuous. Here also the loss of power of self-government is
traceably recorded. So much selfishness--so much filth.
If we now recur for a moment to the state of things described in the
essay on politics, we see that our government in all its branches
has reflected the occupation and spiritual state of the people very
perfectly. But outside of the recurrent and regular political activity
of the country, there has grown up during the past few years a sort of
guerilla warfare of reform. This represents the conservative morality
of the community, the instinct of right government which resents the
treason to our institutions seen in their operation for private gain.
The reformers’ methods of work are necessarily democratic, and it is
here that the most delicate tests of self-seeking are to be found.
These reformers desire to increase the unselfishness in the world,
yet the moment they attempt a practical reform they are told that any
appeal to an unselfish motive in politics means sure failure. They
accordingly make every variety of endeavor to use the selfishness of
some one as a lever to increase the unselfishness of somebody else.
The thing is worked out in daylight time after time, year after year,
and the results are recorded in millegrams. No obscurity is possible
because every man stands on the same footing. Our minds are not
obscured by thinking that A must be sincere because he is a bishop, or
need not be sincere because he is a lord.
There is no landlord class with prejudices, no socialist class with
theories. There are no interests except money interests, and against
money the fight is made. If a man is a traitor it is because he has
been bought. The results, stated in terms of ethical theory, are simply
startling.
A reform movement employs a paid secretary. In so far as he gets
the place because of his reform principles he represents an appeal
to selfishness. This is instantly reflected in his associates, it
colors the movement. He himself is attracted partly by the pay. By
an operation as impossible to avoid as the law of gravity he enlists
others who are also partially self-seeking.
A Good Government Club is formed by X, and every member is called upon
for dues and work. It thrives. Another is founded by Y and supported
by him because of his belief that reform cannot support itself but
must be subsidized. Inside of three weeks the existence of X’s Club
is threatened, because its members hear that Y’s Club is charitably
supported and they themselves wish relief. They are turned from workers
into strikers by the mere report that there is money somewhere.
Spend $100 on the Club, and Tammany will be able to buy it when the
need arises. So frightfully accurate is the record of an appeal to
self-interest made in the course of reform, that no one who watches
such an attempt can ever thereafter hope to do evil that good may come.
The system lays bare the operation of forces hitherto merely suspected.
Democracy makes the bold cut across every man and divides him into a
public man and a private man. It is a man-ometer. You could by means of
it stand up in line every man in New York, grading them according to
the ratio of principle and self-interest in each.
In England a man takes office as the pay for services to the
government. In America he does the same. It is part of their system,
part of our corruption. This may seem a small point, but it will work
out large. An absolute standard is imposed. That our most pronounced
reformers are far from understanding their duties gives proof of the
degradation of the times, but it exalts the plan of government. These
men will lead a reform for four weeks, as a great favor, a great
sacrifice, under protest, apologizing to business. They say public
duties come first only in war time. They give, out of conscience and
with the left hand, what remains after a feast for themselves. And
these are the saints. Tell one of them that he has not set an honorable
standard of living for his contemporaries unless, having his wants
supplied, he makes public activity his first aim in life, and he will
reply he wishes he could do so. He hopes later to devote himself to
such things. He will give you a subscription. This man lives in a
Democracy but he denies its claims. He too is recorded.
The English, who gave us all we know of freedom, have been the first
to understand its meaning. They too have suffered during the last
century from the ravages of plutocracy, from the disease of commerce.
But they had behind them the intellectual heritage of the world. They
had bulwarks of education, philanthropy, thought, training, ambition,
enthusiasm, the ideals of man. It was these things, this reservoir of
spiritual power, that turned the tide of commercialism in England, and
not as we so cheaply imagine her “leisure class.” The men and women who
in the last ten years have taken hold of the Municipality of London,
and now work like beavers in its reform, are not rich. Some of them may
be rich, but the force that makes them toil comes neither out of riches
nor out of poverty, but out of a discovery as to the use of life. These
Englishmen have outlived the illusions of business. As towards them we
are like children. If it were a matter of mere riches we have wealth
enough to make their “leisure class” ridiculous. If there must be some
term in the heaping of money before the energies of our better burghers
are to be diverted toward public ends, we may wait till doomsday. But
the reaction is of another sort, and is very simple. Let us be just
to the conscience-givers. They dare not give more. The American is
ashamed to lose a dollar. He does not want the dollar half the time,
but he will lose caste if he foregoes it. Our merchant princes go on
special commissions for rapid transit, and receive $5000 apiece. They
must be paid. Out of custom they must receive pay because “their time
is valuable,” and thus the virtue and meaning of their office receives
a soil: they do not work. All this is, even at the present moment,
against the private instincts of many of them. It is apparent that they
stand without, shame-faced. It needs only example to give them courage.
A few more reform movements in which they see each other as citizens,
will knock the shackles from their imagination and make men of them.
And then we shall have reform in earnest. For with this enfranchisement
will come their great awakening to the fact that not they only but all
men are really unselfish. It is the obscure disbelief in this salvation
which has made reform so hard where it might be so easy. As soon as the
reformers shall have reformed themselves, they will avoid making any
appeal to self-interest as so much lost time, so much corruption, and
will walk boldly upon the waves of idealism which will hold them up.
If commerce has been our ruin, our form of government is our
salvation. Imagine a hereditary aristocracy, a State church, a
limited monarchy to have existed here during the last thirty years.
By this time it would have been owned hand and foot, tied up and
anchored in every abuse, engaged day and night in devising new yokes
for the people. The interests now dominant know the ropes and do
their best, but they cannot corrupt the sea. They cannot stop the
continual ferment of popular election and reform candidate. The whole
apparatus of government is a great educational machine which no one
can stop. The power of light is enlisted on the side of order. A
property qualification would have been an anchor to windward for the
unrighteous. At the bottom of the peculiarly hopeless condition of
Philadelphia lie the small house and lot of the laboring man. They
can be taxed. They can be cajoled and conjured with. Corruption is
entrenched.
* * * * *
We find then in democracy a frame of government by which private
selfishness, the bane and terror of all government, is thrust brutally
to the front and kept there, staring in hideous openness.