AM I RIGHT?
I have given myself a week to think over the letter of my friend, and I
am now able to perceive that it is built upon a number of most
ingenious fallacies. The chief fallacy appears to be this--that he
insists that the race must always count for more than the individual,
and that the individual must fall in line and step with the average
conventions of the race at the expense of his own well-being, or be
judged a deserter and a recreant.
It is hardly necessary to point out that no doctrine could be more
hostile to collective progress, because progress is not a collective
movement, but the movement of great individuals who drag the race after
them. I do not recollect a single human reform that has been
spontaneously generated in the heart of society itself; it has always
had its beginnings in the hearts of individuals. Thus the Reformation
is practically Martin Luther, the Evangelical revival is Wesley, the
Oxford Movement is Newman, Free Trade is Cobden, and so on through a
hundred regenerations of thought, morals, and politics. 'The world
being what it is, we must take it as we find it,' is a note of quiet
desperation. It is precisely because the Providence of History has
again and again raised up men who were incapable of taking the world as
they found it, that regenerations and reformations of society have
occurred at all. Society never moves forward except when it is goaded
by the spirit of individual genius. So far as we can trace the history
of civilisation, and thanks to modern research we have about ten
thousand years to go by, civilisation is a succession of waves, each
flowing a little higher than its predecessor, with an ebb between each.
At what point is the ebb checked, at what point does the fuller wave
begin to flow? Always with the advent of individual genius. A great
man rises who founds a dynasty; a great thinker, who publishes new
truths; a great lawgiver or statesman, who establishes a new social
system. New worlds need a Columbus, and the social Columbus is always
a man with sufficient daring to stand by original convictions.
Therefore I say that human progress is only made possible by not taking
the world as we find it; and that he is the best friend of collective
progress who is the most obedient not to collective convention, but to
individual insight.
I observe that my friend does not live in the spirit of his own axiom:
else, why should he trouble himself over the inhabitants of Lucraft's
Row? He is certainly not taking the world as he finds it when he
devotes his hours of leisure to impart the elements of decency to
gutter-snipes, and save drunkards from the pit. He is as much an
individualist as I, only his individualism expresses itself in a
different way; which confirms my original conjecture that we may be
equally right in our own mode of life. Nor, by his own confession,
does he really sacrifice his inclinations in his mode of life; he
gratifies his sense of altruism in Lucraft's Row, and I my love of
Nature in the solitude of lonely hills. The objects which give men
pleasure may be so diverse that what is a source of joy to one man may
be an equal source of misery to another. There can be no doubt that
many of the martyrs and ascetics were honestly enamoured of pain and
whatever credit they deserve for sacrifice, they pleased themselves by
renouncing the world, as others by enjoying it; and all that can be
said on the subject is that each pleased himself in his own way.
Thoreau's defence when he was accused of not doing good was that it did
not agree with his constitution; and although the defence sounds like a
piece of amusing cynicism, it was in reality a plea entirely just. The
common fault of the Good Earnest People, as of most people, is that
they can only conceive of doing good after a pattern which is congenial
to themselves. But their mode of doing good, while it suits themselves
admirably, may not suit every constitution, and people of a quite
different mental constitution may be quite as good as themselves,
although it is after a very different pattern. Thoreau did a vast
amount of good by showing men, in his own example, that the simplest
kind of life was compatible with the highest intellectual aims; would
he, in the long-run, have served the world half as well had he forced
himself to live amid the squalor of a New York slum? Are not we so
much the wiser and stronger by the lessons taught in the hut beside
Walden Pond, that it would be the poorest compensation for their loss
to know that Thoreau by dint of effort made himself a fairly efficient
city missionary, or pleased the pundits of a Charity Organisation
Society? Or to take a yet more forcible example of my meaning: Hood
wrote _The Song of the Shirt_, and Wordsworth _The Ode on Intimations
of Immortality_; would either have gained by an exchange of lot? The
one poem could only have been written by a man who knew 'the tragic
heart of towns,' and the other by the man who knew the tranquil heart
of Nature; but Hood, transported to Grasmere, would have written
nothing, and Wordsworth in Fleet Street is unthinkable. As it was,
Destiny took the matter in hand, and having men to work upon whose
first principle of life was to fulfil and not to violate the instincts
of their own nature, succeeded in producing two poets who served
mankind each in a way not possible to the other.
I suspect there is a great deal of cant to be cleared out of the mind
before we can become equitable judges of what doing good really means.
I define doing good as the fulfilment of our best instincts and
faculties for the best use of mankind; but I do not expect that the
Good Earnest People will accept this definition. They would find it
much too catholic, simply because they have learned to attach a
specialised meaning to the phrase 'doing good,' which limits it to some
form of active philanthropy. If they would but allow a wider vision of
life to pass before the eye, they would see that there are many ways of
doing good besides those which satisfy their own ideals. It is a
singular thing that men find it very difficult to live lives of charity
without cherishing uncharitable tempers towards those who do not live
precisely as they themselves do. For instance, the busy
philanthropist, nobly eager to bring a little happiness into the grey
lives of the disinherited, often has the poorest opinion of artists and
novelists, who appear to him to live useless lives. But when Turner
paints a picture like the _Fighting Temeraire Towed to Her Last Berth_,
which is destined to stir generous thoughts in multitudes of hearts
long after his death: or when Scott writes novels which have increased
the sum of human happiness for a century, is not each doing good of the
rarest, highest, and most enduring kind? The fulfilment of one's best
instincts and faculties, for the best use of mankind, is not only the
completest, but also the only available form of philanthropy. Since
Nature has chosen to endow us with diverse faculties, our service of
mankind must be diverse too. In a word, doing good is a much larger
business than the ordinary philanthropist imagines; it has many
branches and a thousand forms; and they are not always doing the most
who seem the busiest, nor do those accomplish most in the alleviation
of human misery whose contact with it is the closest.
During the last year of my life in London I came into contact with a
brilliant young Oxford man, who had manifest talents for oratory,
leadership, and literature. He was in search of a career, and being a
youth of quick sympathies and very generous instincts, he was soon
caught in the tide of a certain social movement, whose chief aim was to
induce persons of culture to live among the very poorest of the poor.
The leader of this movement was a man of beautifully unselfish temper,
but of no striking intellectual gifts; apart from a certain originality
of character, which was the fruit of this unselfish temper, he was
quite commonplace in mind, and could have aspired to no higher rank in
life than an honourable place among the inferior clergy. He attracted
this brilliant youth, however; a youth who had been president of the
Oxford Union, and had taken a double first in classics, for whom
distinction in life seemed inevitable. The end was that his convert
joined what was really a lay order of social and religious service. He
lived among the slums of Holborn, devoted himself to the instruction of
the children of the gutter, kept the accounts of coal and blanket
clubs, and accepted cheerfully all the drudgery of philanthropy among
the poor. Most people, I am quite aware, will say that this is a very
noble example of renunciation; so it is, and as such I can admire it.
But is there nothing else to be considered? May not the sociologist
ask whether a man is serving society in the best way by refusing to use
his best gifts in the only direction in which they could have full
play? For many years this youth had trained himself for a particular
part in life which few could fill; he might have influenced the
councils of his nation by his powers of debate, the mind of his nation
by his gift of literature; he should have stood before kings and spoken
to scholars; yet all these high utilities were extinguished in order
that he might do something which a man with only a tenth part of his
gifts might have done quite as well. Think of the picture; a scholar
who never opens a book, an orator who addresses only costers and
work-girls, a writer who writes nothing, a leader of men who exerts no
public influence; and what is this wilful destruction of high faculties
but social waste and robbery? No doubt he is doing good; but would not
the good he might have done have been far wider, had he followed the
line of his natural gifts, and occupied the place in life for which
those gifts obviously fitted him?
This story is a pertinent example of the cant of Doing Good. By all
means let those live among the poor and work for their betterment who
have a distinct vocation for the task; but it is not a vocation for
all. I object to the spectacle of a late president of the Oxford Union
giving up his life to the management of coal and blanket clubs, just as
I object to the spectacle of a thorough-bred racehorse harnessed to a
dray. It is a waste of power. But the Good Earnest People never see
this side of things, because they are afflicted with narrowness of
vision. They admit no definition of doing good but their own. They
cannot see that the man who passes from a distinguished University
career to a distinguished public life may do more for the poor by his
pen, by his power of awakening sympathy, by the opportunity that may be
his to obtain the reversal of unjust laws or the establishment of good
laws, than he ever could have done by living in a slum as the friend
and helper of a small group of needy men and women. Decisive victories
are won more often by lateral movements than by frontal attacks. The
wave of force which travels on a circle may arrive with more thrilling
impact on a point of contact than that which travels on a horizontal
line. Society is best served after all by the fullest development of
our best faculties; and whether we check this development from pious or
selfish motives, the result is still the same; we have robbed society
of its profit by us, which is the worst kind of evil which we can
inflict on the community.
If this statement of social obligation is admitted as correct, most of
my friend's strictures on my conduct dissolve into mere harmless
rhetoric. For instance, he says I have 'marooned' myself, and goes on
to draw a fancy picture of a South Sea Islander, content with laziness
and sunshine, intimating that this is the kind of life which I have
chosen. On the contrary my life is what most city men would call a
hard life. I work hard every day, the only difference between my work
and theirs being that my work is natural, wholesome, and pleasant,
while theirs is drudgery. In what am I more selfish than the average
citizen, who after all is doing just what I am doing, viz. working for
his living? My friend would have me believe that the man who toils in
cities does so from exalted motives. He is bearing the weight of
empire, assisting in the growth of British commerce, and generally
serving the cause of national progress, while I sit in ignoble
independence on my own potato patch. I have known a good many men
engaged in the lower ranks of commerce, but I have yet to meet one who
is influenced in the least by these highly-coloured motives and ideals.
They are intent on earning their living, no more. Their interest in
commerce is precisely confined to what they can get out of it. They
bear just as little of the burden of the Empire as the tax-gatherer
will permit them. There is not one of them who would not object with
vigour to take a single shilling less per week for the sake of
progress, or any cause that might arrogate that title. Besides, it is
surely a piece of undiluted Cockney egoism to suppose that the only
persons who do their duty by the Empire are Londoners. We are still an
agricultural country, and there are some millions of people who live
upon the land. They do some kind of work, which one may suppose is of
some utility and value to the nation; why should their kind of work be
despised? They also pay taxes, give an equivalent of labour for their
keep, rear children, educate them, and send them out to be of some
service to the State; what does the dweller in cities do more than
these? If I were disposed to argue the question, I should contend that
the man who gets a bushel of corn or a sack of good potatoes out of the
land has added a more real asset to the wealth of the community, and
therefore deserves more praise from the commonwealth, than all the
tribe of stockbrokers since the world began; for these lords of wealth,
who reign supreme in cities, produce nothing. But since my friend is
fond of quoting Browning, I also will quote him, and let the poet say
in the flash of three lines what the dialectician would need a page to
say:
All service ranks the same with God,--
God's puppets, best and worst,
Are we: there is no last nor first,
Of course there is no disputing the general truth of the statement that
nations are developed by the call made upon their energies by
difficulty, and their power of response to that call. But why should
such a statement be construed into a reproach on my mode of life? If
my friend, who is probably sitting in a comfortable office at this
moment, adding up figures which he could do almost with his eyes shut,
would condescend to visit my potato patch, he would find call enough
upon his energy. I have almost broken my back, and certainly blistered
my hands, for the last four hours in hoeing my potato trenches into
good level lines, and I have still an hour's work at weeding to do
before I can satisfy myself that I have earned my dinner. I can assure
him that bread-fruit does not grow on my land, nor am I in danger of
being corrupted by a too easy means of subsistence. The worst crime
that can be alleged against me is that I have changed my occupation in
life, but I am very far from being unoccupied. The occupation which I
now follow is the most ancient and most honourable in the world; I
believe that Adam followed it. Is it not a curious irony upon
civilisation, that it has so filled the mind with artificial estimates
of work, that a form of work which is still practised by the great
majority of the world's inhabitants is scarcely regarded as work at all
by the insolent minority of mankind who happen to live in cities? But
I have long observed that there is a universal tendency in men only to
regard as work the peculiar sort of work which they themselves do; and
so the artisan supposes he is the only genuine 'working man,' and the
shopkeeper thinks the life of the professional man a piece of organised
idleness, and the tradition appears ineradicable that all the clergy,
from bishops downwards, never work at all because they do not sit in
offices. It is of a piece with the theory of 'doing good'; for all men
are bigots when they attempt to measure the universal life of men by
their own little egoistic standards.
As to that imposing axiom, that all our actions must be measured by
their collective effects, I heartily agree to it, because it is
precisely here that I think my case is strongest. I do not, of course,
invite all men to follow my example by returning to what my friend
calls 'barbarism,' and there is so little danger of any such
catastrophe that it is not worth while discussing it. But if any
considerable number of men should think my example good, I would not
deter them from following it, because I believe that no greater service
could be done to society than to multiply the number of individuals who
prefer a simple to an artificial existence, who are willing to live
lives of honest labour and entire contentment, who will care not at all
for riches, but will spend their utmost care upon their virtues, who
will count 'self-possession,' the best of all possessions, and the
power of living in God's world in cheerful happiness and modest
usefulness the real programme of life which God has set before all His
children, and which alone is worth our hope and struggle. The basis of
all good citizenship is physical and moral health. Health is really
wholeness, and so we get the word holiness, for all these words are
products of the same idea. What service to the race can be greater,
both in its present value and its ultimate effect, than to produce men
and women both physically and morally whole? It is no doubt a duty to
do all we can to help the unfit, and assist the infirm; but it is
better wisdom and a truer duty to produce the fit and the whole. In
the degree that I am better equipped as a man, I am better equipped as
a member of the commonwealth. All questions of _doing_ good are
secondary to the question of _being_ good; and to be good is but a
synonym of moral wholeness. If a nation can succeed in producing
efficient human creatures, efficient first of all in body, because that
is the basis of all efficiency of mind, and will, and energy, there
will be no question of efficient citizenship. As for me, I have found
the means of a more efficient manhood by a return to a simple and a
natural life; and therefore I am quite willing to submit my action to
the test of collective example, believing that the more widely it is
imitated, the better will it be for the happiness and well-being of my
nation, and of the world.
The best way of doing good that I can devise is to make myself an
efficient member of society; and it is obvious that if every man did
this there would be very little work for the professional
philanthropist. It is not help that men need most, but opportunity.
Philanthropy is, for the most part, engaged in patching up the sick
anaemic body of society; which is equivalent to minimising the distress
of ill-health without producing good health. The wise physician knows
very well that no amount of medicine will do much for the anaemic
child; what the child wants is room to grow. We have social physicians
in plenty, each with his own particular medicine, but all of them
together have said nothing half so wise as these two lines of Walt
Whitman:
Now I see the secret of the making of the best persons;
It is to grow in the open air, and to eat and sleep with the earth.
To create the best persons is to accomplish a service for society which
is durable, and therefore is the only real good. I claim that this is
what I have tried to do in my own case, and in no other way could I
discharge my obligation to society so well. Economically considered I
am now a profitable asset to society. I do a man's work every day, and
I earn my keep. When the time comes for my children to go out into
life they will take with them good thews and muscles, sound bodies, and
well-furnished minds. I imagine that this is about as good a
contribution to the cause of Progress, the service of Commerce, and the
maintenance of Empire, as any one man can make.