simple towards the complex. The notion that the egoism of man gradually
expanded so as to include the whole human race in a love which was in
reality a love of himself, assumes that this large love is the sum of
lesser loves. It fixes the attention on the objects of human feeling,
and not upon the character of the feeling itself. This character is
the thing to be studied. When we contrast the religious and social
feelings of the civilized man with those of the savage we see the same
specialization and complexity in the emotions themselves which is
traceable in any higher development. The forms, arguments, theories,
customs by which the feeling is expressed, show an ever-increasing
refinement of sympathy. We are not approaching a general and vague
emotion built up out of lesser regards for particular people. We are
approaching a stage of differentiation, of analysis, a stage of the
personal application of that same altruism which appears in its lower
form as blind worship and self-abasement before some fetich. The
utility of this emotion, in whatever stage of its development, is a
consideration that may justify it to the philosopher, but which is not
the _primum mobile_ in the breast of him that has it. The whole
history of man shows that progress comes in the shape of an increasing
tender-heartedness which can give no lucid account of itself, because
it is an organic process.
The learned classes are apt to approach a problem in its most difficult
form. Out of travellers’ tales about man in the South Sea Islands,
the sociologist evolves a theory of religion. Take up a book on the
natural history of religion and you will find enough learned citations
about the Hurons and the Esquimaux and the Thibet tribes to furnish
the library of Pantagruel. Now the regard of a savage for his idol is
a very obscure question of psychology. Ten years of youth spent among
a tribe would not be too long a period in which to lay the foundations
for an intelligent guess at the facts, let alone their significance.
Meanwhile, the actual genealogy of our own religious feelings is
neglected as too familiar. Yet the spiritual history of that race which
gave Europe many of its religions, is better known than any other
history of a like antiquity. The point of view and feeling about life
which has given us our own experience of religion was developed in the
Jew. The Old Testament is the place in which to study the growth and
meaning of the only religious feeling that we are sure we understand.
The history of the Jews is the history of a single overpowering emotion
which appears in its two forms,--so identical in content that you
may often find them both in the same sentence, both in the same verse
of Isaiah or Psalm of David,--prostration before the Lord of Hosts,
compassion for the poor and the oppressed. This passion of altruism
which gave the prophets their terrible power is the legacy of the Jew
to the world. The emotion of self-abasement and self-sacrifice and
the emotion of love towards others, are one thing. This, in its lower
forms, leads to self-mutilation and incantations; in its higher forms,
it becomes embodied by the prophetic fury of great poets into the idea
of a Messiah who shall be both savior and sacrifice. There is only one
passion at work in all these great protagonists of human nature, in
Nathan, Elijah, Jeremiah and in the innumerable prophets who confronted
the arbitrary power of the kings. These men stood for righteousness
and showed an intensity of moral courage which nothing but compassion
has ever engendered, and nothing but faith has ever expressed. The
rags and the self surrender, the purity and the power, the belief
that they spoke not of themselves but for the Lord, have been the
same in all ages. It is impossible to feel compassion in this degree
and not express it in this manner. All just anger is compassion. The
terrible wrath of these men is as comprehensible as their hymns or
their triumph. There is no child that reads Isaiah whose nature does
not respond to him, because the course of feeling in him is true to
life. Between the Old Testament and the New we see a perfectly coherent
development of the same passion of the same race into its higher kind.
Both forms of it have changed. In the New Testament the love has
become specialized into that particular and especial regard for the
soul of each individual man for which we have no counterpart; and the
prostration, the adoration for God the Father, the identification of
the individual with God the Father, has received expression in forms
which one can refer to but not describe. The kingdom of heaven is
within you.
That modern philanthropy which has been overcoming the world during
the last century and has put a spirit of religion into politics, is
expressed in ten thousand dogmas and formulas. These things are the
hieroglyphics of the most complex period in history, but they all read
Love.
The love of man for his fellows is the substantial content of every
ideal, of every reform. In so far as any political cry is valuable,
it represents this and nothing more. Liberty, Equality and Fraternity,
The Declaration of Independence, Utilitarianism, Fourierism, Socialism,
Prohibition, Christian Science and the Salvation Army carry the same
message; and it is only because of this truth, and in spite of the
fact that it is always wrapped up in every kind of falsehood, that
they move the world forward. Take socialism. This thing is the logical
outcome of the passion of pity at work in men who believe that the
desire for property is the controlling factor in human arrangements.
The selfishness of the individual has been assumed as a fundamental law
in that school of thought, which has been dominating all our thought,
and which we habitually accept as final. It receives support from a
superficial view of human nature, and time out of mind has been the
belief of shallow people. But the great intellect and the great labor
of the socialists have been unable to make any impression upon the mind
of a man. We know that their reasoning is foolish. It is to the heart
that their appeal is made. Bellamy’s book sells by the hundred thousand
to tender-hearted people. It is a plea for humanity. It is Uncle Tom’s
Cabin. The function of Socialism is clear. It is a religious reaction
going on in an age which thinks in terms of money. We are very nearly
at the end of it, because we are very nearly at the end of the age.
Some people believe they hate the wealth of the millionaire. They
denounce corporations and trusts, as if these things had hurt them.
They strike at the symbol. What they really hate is the irresponsible
rapacity which these things typify, and which nothing but moral forces
will correct. In so far as people seek the cure in property-laws they
are victims of the plague. The cure will come entirely from the other
side; for as soon as the millionaires begin to exert and enjoy the
enormous power for good which they possess, everybody will be glad they
have the money.
Socialism was useful, but as a theory it was fated from the beginning,
because its prophets and saints are themselves spurred on by a
different motive from that which they evoke in others. They offer
us a religion that assumes that human nature is other than it is, a
religion not based upon self-sacrifice, and so not based upon an appeal
to primary passion, a religion beseeching us to make other people
comfortable. Now the only motive which will make men labor for the
comfort of others, is a belief that this is the quickest way of saving
their souls. If souls are to be saved only through their own unselfish
activity, then it is a lie to hold up property as a goal. The laboring
man can be made happy only by the same means as the merchant. They must
be saved together. The matter of the physical support of the individual
follows in the wake of a regard for his soul, but never precedes it.
The awakening of the spirit of individualism will bring support to the
artisan by bringing in hand work. The machine work with which we have
been content represents a loss of religion in the buyer proportionate
to the selfishness of the times. No system based on thrift will
displace it, but any movement based on self-sacrifice will tend to
correct it. While socialism is worrying out the proof that a wise
distribution of property will bring in virtue and happiness, other and
directer formulations of the truth will have seized the spirits of men
and saved the people.
The balance of altruism in the people of a country, preserved in the
form of practical self-control (no matter under what name), gives the
wealth and power of the country.
Good government then consists in customs which differentiate people.
They represent a permission to each man to be different from his
neighbor. They are the record of what once was love, and now is law.
Bad government consists in institutions which render men similar
through some self-interest, some superstition.
Let us take a few examples at random from history, and see whether
everything of permanent value to the race is not merely a different
form of expression for the same ideal.
Napoleon is a type of selfishness. The focus of his almost illimitable
intelligence fell within himself. He was so self-centred that he did
not precipitate all the passion which supported him upon an idea.
He did much, but he could not transcend the laws of psychology or
escape the insecurity they dealt him out. He was a great reactionary,
living in an age of progress, a great egoist in an age of altruism,
a great criminal. The whole of Europe had hardly strength enough to
shut him up. He went down finally, and yet before he went down, he had
stood for civilization in every country he touched by establishing
law. He gave France his code and his bureaux, things greater than
his dynasty. He made use of the enlightenment, the expert intellect
of France to establish order, and became a great educator through
his institutions, his genius for administration. His worshippers are
so struck with this side of his character that they forgive him his
crimes. For our admiration is chained to the educator. Every great man
is a great educator, and there is no greatness but this. The great man
represents, draws out, projects, and establishes the non-self-regarding
part, the intellectual apparatus of others, and those who do it by the
establishment of law and order receive their tribute as civilizers. The
saints serve the same end. They speak a language different from that of
the law-givers, yet their function is the same. The part a man plays in
the formal government of his times depends on circumstance. It seems to
be governed by the ratio of his altruism to that of his contemporaries.
People will not tolerate a man who is too good or too bad. Had Napoleon
lived in an age of retrogression, very likely he would have died upon
the throne. Had he been less self-seeking than he was, had he possessed
for instance the imagination of Washington, very likely the French
would have deposed him sooner, but in the end the memory of him would
have educated France.
For this is the work of heroes. Where a leader has ideas that are
more unselfish than those of his time, he is deposed, poisoned, or
ridiculed, and his value as an educational force may be increased by
any of these things. Socrates deliberately kept out of politics for
many years, knowing that if he took part, his sense of justice would
lead to his execution, and fearing to throw away his life; he finally
expended it with such ability as to make every atom count. The scholars
have not understood his Apology because they could not fathom the
instinct of the agitator. It is the same with the martyrs, with the
Quakers in Puritan New England, with the Anti-Slavery people. Their
conduct was governed by the truest understanding of how to draw out and
develop the conscience of others. The man who dies for his country does
no more.
Another gigantic educator was Bismarck. To have welded the squabbling
principalities of Germany into an Empire within a lifetime is one of
the achievements of history. But Bismarck held the trump card. He
had a cause to serve. His early work must have been his strongest;
for since the war with France, patriotism has become the curse of
Germany. It is caked into fanaticism, and is being used by autocracy
to ruin intellect. This is the mystical yet relentless punishment for
the element which was not patriotism but thrift in their conduct. The
Germans must be great and unified and recover Alsace for their honor.
But what did they want with the French milliards? They mulcted France
to spare their pockets, and fastened upon themselves the personal
hatred of the French peasant, which gives them William II. for a ruler.
They looked upon property as power. Had they seen clearly that power is
nothing but sentiment, they would have sown peace.
One reason why Holland lost her supremacy was because she came to
regard money as power. She grasped the symbol. For a decline sets in as
soon as selfishness has reached such a point that any of these symbols
are worshipped. Witness Spain, where the gold of Peru ruined the
Spaniards by making them individually selfish.
In the long run virtue and vice contend over national wealth, the first
collecting, the second dissipating. Witness Cuba. Witness Ireland.
China is wrecked by private greed. In the last analysis it is a matter
of personal virtue.
The magnificent intellect and self-control epitomized in Roman
Government, took centuries to perish. Is it a wonder these people
conquered the world?
The United States has been held together by English virtue, and there
was so much of it in the race, that a few generations of money-changers
could not ruin us. We had, not only the creed, but the beliefs of
English liberty. The future of England depends upon her perception of
this truth that power is sentiment. The Venezuela trouble showed her
that her selfish conduct in 1861 made her empire in 1896 insecure. The
spread of England’s empire has been due to a practice in dealing with
the imagination of others. Establish by force, develop by the organized
altruism of good government, protect by display of force.
This system will not apply here. We are the youngest nation and the
most naif. We are at the mercy of wise or unwise treatment. But we can
no more be fooled than a child. No display of force could touch our
imagination or do more than irritate us. Our feelings must be directly
engaged by means not known to diplomacy or to international law. Let
England take a high tone. She must not only seem but be unselfish
towards us, and she will master the globe.
There is one result from the fact that government is a matter of
imagination which is wholly satisfactory. Once set up a scheme of
things which people approve of and it remains. We shall not have good
government in the United States till the people get over their personal
dishonesty; but when we do get it, it will last without effort. It will
be harder to destroy than the spoils system. Vigilance will be needed
constantly, but action rarely. The mere announcement of an abuse will
correct it.
Transcriber’s Note:
Spelling, hyphenation and punctuation have been preserved as published
in the original book.