THE IDEAL AND THE WAY OF ITS ATTAINMENT
Mr. Stephen questions the possibility of our determining at all what a
state of ideal morality should be. I should contend, on the contrary,
that there would be little disagreement in opinions as to what the ideal
should be, but that rather our chief difficulties must lie in the
determination of the course to be pursued in order to attain to the
ideal. The profligate, it is true, will not be likely to acknowledge
that self-control and faithfulness are parts of an ideal condition if he
thinks that the acknowledgment binds him in any way to faithfulness and
self-control in his own conduct; and the dishonest man will be chary of
admitting that honesty is desirable if his consciousness suggests that
he ought therefore to practise unvarying honesty himself. But the
dishonest man is generally very thoroughly convinced of the desirability
of honor and uprightness in every one else; and the profligate also is
generally both among the loudest in his denunciation of unfaithfulness
in those he feels should be true to him, and sufficiently ready to
acknowledge the social advantages of principles opposite to his own, if
you can but convince him that it is only a matter of pure theory you are
discussing, which will doubtless never be put in practice by society as
a whole, and which in no way interferes with your thorough approval of
his own action. So, too, the cruel, the rough, and the rude, will easily
confess that unselfishness, unfailing kindness, tact, and consideration
in the rest of society, are what the world needs. Did these virtues
exist, there would be no need of the choice between evils now necessary.
That which really troubles us is this choice, the difficulty of
ascertaining just what course is the best, which brings us nearest to
our ideal, assists most effectually in hastening development towards
that goal. For there is no course, under existing conditions, which is
wholly advantageous to society, none which does not involve some evil.
It follows, from this, that it is insufficient to show that any
particular course involves some advantage to some one in order to
demonstrate that it is the right one, as also that it is insufficient to
show that a course involves evil to some one in order to demonstrate
that it is wrong. It is not proved that, because the restraint of any
particular desire or passion is attended with pain to the individual, it
is wrong. The argument has often been, and is still, advanced--seemingly
with the idea that it is conclusive--that the indulgence of physical
passion in youth tends to sobriety and steadiness in later years; and,
with a similar idea apparently, a dramatic critic falls into a rhapsody
over the manner in which the characters in a recent play come out
"purified by the evil" they have wrought or endured.[275] But even if
this argument were scientifically sound, it would not prove the
desirability of self-indulgence, since not the individual alone is to be
considered. The argument is, however, erroneous. With advancing years
comes in general, in any case, a diminution of passion, or at least a
greater admixture of reason; but apart from this, indulgence tends to
increase desire and tendency, except as excess may lead to morbid
conditions, or the disregard of higher instincts to disappointment and
cynicism. When we are told, in another play than the one mentioned
above, and apparently with the idea that the statement is an excuse,
that the hero could find no other outlet for the exuberance of his youth
than the seduction of an innocent girl, we may see no reason to doubt
the assertion, but we may question whether society has not a right,
nevertheless, to suppress a little of such exuberance or turn it into
other channels. The man born with fierce and ungovernable fury in his
disposition may likewise feel a strong propensity to express the
exuberance of his youth in a murder or two; but I see no reason why
society should permit him to do so. The passion of anger is also a
perfectly natural one, and the ungovernable fury which led to murder was
not an exception with our ancestors of the savage plane, but the rule.
Not all natural passion is to be indulged simply because it is natural;
and even the fact that a tendency is good in moderation and under
certain restrictions is no proof that it is good or to be indulged in
immoderation, or without these restrictions. It can have been only by
restriction of the natural savage fury that this fury grew less
prominent in character. The cannibal transported into civilized society
may still have a strong and perfectly natural hunger for my spareribs,
but that is no sufficient reason why he should get them. Jack the Ripper
is endowed, evidently, with a very passionate love for his human
vivisection, and finds it an outlet for an exuberance which also bubbles
out otherwise in many ways; yet I think society will be justified in
putting a peremptory end to that exuberance, when it gets the
opportunity.
Morality is indeed a matter of welfare, and so, of the gratification of
desire and tendency; but neither the present alone, nor the single
individual in preference to all the rest of society, is to be
considered. Effort should be exerted continually for the reduction of
pain to a minimum, in every respect possible, with regard to the
individual and the minority as well as with regard to the majority,
though the greater good and the greater number must always take
precedence. The rule of the majority may be asserted to be moral in that
it is the best possible expedient where there is disagreement of
desires. The necessity for choice between evils is the origin of the
principle of the Greatest Good to the Greatest Number, and this, as has
been said, covers all the ground, _if rightly applied_. But it offers a
temptation to stop with the mere comparison of two sums of individuals
and degrees of happiness for the time being, without taking into the
problem the wider results of a particular choice to society as a whole,
through habit and personal influence. The consideration of these last
important factors has led, on the other hand, to such rules as that of
Kant,--"Act so that the maxims of thy will might be taken as the
principle of universal action"; and this rule, because it goes deeper,
is less likely to lead to error. The moral requirement of continual
effort to find the best method of reducing the evil still remaining, of
recompensing the individual and the minority for the good of which they
are necessarily deprived, needs especial emphasis; for the continual
direction of attention to effort for progress, even where no outward
change is, for the moment, possible, constitutes an inward progress in
character which is ever ready to issue in external progress the instant
opportunity presents itself. Present pain to individuals is the sign of
imperfection in those permitting it and those suffering it, and must
result in increase of tendency in this direction of imperfection unless
it takes place only in spite of the most vigorous effort for its
prevention. Even the reformer must choose that to which he would chiefly
apply his endeavor, with some necessary withdrawal of effort from other
directions. Yet the neglect of any present opportunity of reform or
benefit, though it may sometimes be necessitated for the gain of some
more important future good, is still an outer, and also, especially, an
inner evil, which can be compensated only by a high degree of
superiority in the future good to be obtained. As the man who, perhaps
from the fear of failing in thoroughness, leaves all original work until
middle age, is likely to find his power of originality much deteriorated
by that time, so the man who is cruel to-day, in order to be kind in
some wider respect later on, is likely to find, on the final arrival of
opportunity, if the period through which the unkindness is exercised be
a long one, that his capacity for kindness has diminished. Every neglect
of present opportunity is a loss to character as well as an external
loss. When the present good passed over for the sake of the future
includes the welfare of whole lives, the question of choice and the
postponement of good becomes still graver; when it includes generations,
we need to consider earnestly before we take on ourselves the
responsibility of a choice that shall prefer the future. I cannot agree
with those who believe or practically live out the idea that the present
generation is only or chiefly for the sake of the future generation, the
parents only for the sake of their children, or the individual only for
the sake of society as a whole. We need to remember that the race
includes present and future, and parents and children, and has no
existence outside the individuals that compose it. It is difficult to
reconcile the many conflicting principles; and thus it appears that
morality is not easy, even where earnest desire for it exists, and that
different views with regard to it may be conscientiously held. The
difficulty only increases the duty of continual endeavor to reconcile
the many different conditions of happiness and welfare.
We come thus naturally to a question of the day,--the contest between
the Individualist and the Socialist.
What has already been said makes it sufficiently evident that, if
Individualism is to be maintained at all, it cannot be upheld on the
ground that the doings of the individual are of no importance to
society, and his sins may therefore not be interfered with by society.
In "Social Statics," Mr. Spencer secures freedom for "personal vice" by
turning his principle that a man has a right to seek his own ends as
long as he does not prevent others from the pursuit of their ends, into
the entirely different one, that a man has a right to seek a certain end
if he does not prevent others from seeking the same end.[276] The
argument in this form is applied to drunkenness, but it could as well be
used to prove the moral rightness of murder or any other crime, the sole
condition being that the murderer did not prevent others from committing
the crime also.
Nor is the Individualism less self-contradictory which bases its theory
on the principle that it is the office of civil law to guard the rights
of the individual. What individual? All individuals? If so, then
assuredly it is the duty of the State to see that the laborer is paid a
fair price for his work.
Nor can it be shown, as Hoeffding asserts, that intellectual labor
benefits the whole of society, while manual labor is less valuable
because it is for a few. The intellectual laborer knows well of what
value to him and his ilk is the manual labor which feeds him, clothes
him, and manufactures the thousand and one things necessary for his
comfort, leaving him leisure to pursue his studies with all material
wants provided for. The satisfaction of our material wants is the very
first requisite of life, without which intellectual labor would be an
impossibility.
There are, however, many degrees and shades of Individualism. As
Hoeffding says, Individualism may be identical with Egoism, but it need
not be so. And, moreover, as has been noticed, the adherents of theories
of Egoistic Morals are not necessarily adherents of any theory of
selfishness.
The theories bearing the name of Socialism are also very various,--quite
as much so as those included under the head of Individualism. It is,
therefore, both confusing to consider Socialism without some notice of
the distinction between these various phases of theory, and is likely to
lead to protest from one side or the other. But no single party of
Socialists can be treated exclusively as "the" Socialists; a minority of
the party cannot expect to be regarded as anything but a minority.
Of the tendency to represent the whole of the present order of society
as utterly bad,--a tendency not confined to the Socialist party, but
nevertheless strongly developed in many parts of it,--considerable has
already been said. As Hoeffding remarks, it is difficult to perceive how,
in an utterly corrupt society, any foundation may be found on which to
build the almost flawless society the Socialist proposes to institute.
If the course of evolution has hitherto been propitious to the increase
of evil, it is difficult to find any scientific grounds for a belief
that evolution will now proceed to favor the good. If man, as a being
possessing reason, has hitherto chosen, in increasing degree, injustice
towards his fellow-man, it is scarcely possible for any one who proceeds
upon the supposition of constancy in the action of man as a part of
nature to hope that future events will exhibit exactly opposite
characters. Assuredly, we are far enough from the goal yet, but in order
to demonstrate this fact it is not necessary to prove that we are worse
than any previous age has been. The tendency to lay stress, by every
means, on present evil, in the endeavor to impress its reality and
undesirability upon the mind of society, is comprehensible; and
doubtless, too, as the troubles of the individual are likely to appear
to himself among the hardest possible, so to those on whom the evils of
the age press most severely these are likely to seem greater than the
evils of any other times. But this method of regarding history is not
the less erroneous. "In the age of chivalry men had at least a common
ideal," said a Socialist to me, not long since. But what an ideal! And
unity of purpose is not by any means necessarily a sign of a high plane.
It may, on the contrary, signify stupidity, lack of the power of
independent thought. The first result of thought on any particular
subject is sure to be a division of opinion, although mutual criticism
gradually evolves harmony from the strife, and brings about a degree of
unity again, on a higher plane; for the mutual criticism is sure to have
been of intellectual use. The Socialists themselves have demonstrated
the fact that division of opinion necessarily arises when men begin to
think upon any question, for with the development of their party many
different phases of socialistic theory have appeared. The history of the
division of the Church into sects, and of the mutual criticism of these
sects, has been the history of religious progress.
With some Socialists, again, the already criticised idea of a "return to
nature" plays a conspicuous part. But we have never departed from
nature; we are as much a part of nature, as natural, as we ever were.
Or, if we are to return, who shall tell us at just what point we leave
the "artificial" and arrive at the "natural"? There are no
stopping-places, no stations or pauses, in the scale of evolution. There
is only continual change by inappreciable increments. The theory of
evolution carries with it no significance which could authorize us to
consider that we had arrived at our goal at one point rather than at
another. And, again, if we are to give up the artificial customs of
later development and return to earlier habits, then customs of
altruistic action, as the most distinctive and characteristic of later
forms of conduct, must be chiefly affected. If, however, by a return to
nature is meant the adoption of a simpler mode of life in some classes
in order that a less simple but more healthful one may become possible
in other classes, the question of the desirability of such a change is,
of course, open to discussion; but let us consider it under these terms
then. To designate the proposed mode of life as a return to the natural,
thus making present modes of life artificial, is to smuggle in an
illegitimate assumption against the latter.
It is the habit of a portion of the Socialist party to represent the
laborer as the epitome of all the virtues, the capitalist as his moral
opposite. This view cannot be other than erroneous, considered from any
standpoint. Moral evil cannot affect one part of a closely united
society without affecting the other parts also, though it may assume
different forms in different parts. This should be, in reality, the
Socialist's strongest argument, and is, indeed, one which he constantly
makes use of in other connections. If the steady labor of one class is
often associated with certain virtues, there are many elements of its
surroundings which tend to develop and encourage certain vices also; and
if, on the other hand, excessive wealth is often the condition, as well
as the result, of selfishness, still the relief from material anxieties
may be used, on the other hand, as opportunity for other useful labor,
and leaves room, indeed, for a development of finer intellectual and
moral qualities. To reply that much greater good would accompany other
conditions is irrelevant; for we are not now comparing actualities with
ideals, but one class of people with another under existing
circumstances.
A somewhat similar phase of idea to that just considered is found in the
agitation against machinery. This agitation is not of recent date,
however; it began over two centuries ago, and would, if it had
succeeded, have deprived the world of nearly all the comforts and
conveniences which have, since then, become possible. Doubtless the
abolishment of machinery would temporarily furnish labor to all the
unemployed. Indeed, it has been computed, from facts supplied by the
statistical bureau of Berlin, that it would require about double the
number of inhabitants now on the face of the globe to perform the labor
accomplished by the steam works of the principal civilized lands. But
the increase of the earth's inhabitants depends, to a great extent, on
the favorable or unfavorable circumstances of the environment; and we
cannot suppose otherwise than that the sudden accession of abundant
means of livelihood would cause a very great acceleration of the rate of
increase and so a speedy return of the old problem. Even supposing that
a certain recklessness of sexual indulgence would be done away with
under better circumstances which afforded access to other means of
pleasure than the purely physical, this over-indulgence leads quite as
often to sterility and disease as to excess of offspring. Habit and
opinion not being matters of instantaneous or even rapid change, the new
order of society would very largely depend upon the character and ideas
acquired under the old order, and population must increase with a
rapidity fostered by an immense multiplication of regular marriages, and
by more healthful surroundings for offspring at all ages. Unchecked, as
hitherto, by the excessive mortality due to famine, filth, and neglect,
it must soon arrive at a point where the questions of competition again
present themselves. But machinery is a relative term. Every tool and
device for lightening labor is, in fact, a machine, and takes, by
definition, from the labor of the world. When, therefore, we should find
ourselves face to face with the former conditions, I do not see that any
consistent course would lie before us but the doing away with our more
complicated tools, and, later, with our less complicated ones, and so
on, as the increase of the world's inhabitants brought again and again
the recurrence of questions of competition, until we should arrive, at
length, at that ancient state of things where all transport would be
made by porters, land ploughed by the pointed stick, and clothes--if we
consented to withdraw labor from the cultivation of the earth for the
manufacture of such luxuries--would require for the preparation of each
garment several weeks, months, or even years of work. I do not see where
else the theory of the abolishment of machinery for the sake of
supplying labor to the unemployed can logically and practically lead,
especially as the withdrawal of machinery must mean, in the end, the
withdrawal of those opportunities for cultivating the arts and sciences
which the leisure from merely mechanical pursuits alone can give. Under
more primitive conditions of labor, the ignorance of the masses must
spread more and more, until its widening circle must take in the great
majority of men, as was the case when these primitive conditions
prevailed. In other words, the abolishment of machinery means social
retrogression, and, if affording temporary relief, leaves the race, in
the end, on a lower plane of evolution, with the work of advancement to
its former plane all to do over again.
And this brings us to the consideration of another point, namely, the
agitation against luxury,--an agitation carried on not, like that
against machinery, by only a portion, if a considerable portion, of the
Socialist party, but by that party as a whole. We may inquire, then, as
to what luxury is. The Socialists find considerable trouble in defining
it; they generally content themselves with the word alone, leaving it
undefined or referring, with a general indefiniteness, to "velvets,
jewels, and laces," or "diamonds and silks"; the German Socialists have
sometimes shown particular antipathy to the glace glove; and a society
of English Socialists listened, not long ago, to a lecture in which, as
an example of the reforms proposed by Socialism, it was prophesied that
the evening-dresses of the future would be made of more lasting though
not less delicate and beautiful material. This last would assuredly be
desirable, if it could be carried out; but it remains to be seen in how
far it is practicable. The things which are the most delicate, whether
they be clothing or other articles, are ordinarily likewise the most
perishable; the union of delicacy of texture with endurance is a problem
that can be solved only by gradual improvement if at all; and it is
probable that it can be solved only relatively in some cases and not at
all in others; yet there are few people who will not find delicacy an
attribute of beauty. Few will disagree with M. de Laveleye that beauty
of costume must consist rather in harmony of colors and purity of line
than in the mere costliness of the goods; however, in a large number of
cases, excess of price corresponds to some actual superiority of color,
durability, or texture, in the goods. Doubtless it is true that some
things (M. de Laveleye instances opium) may cost much money and yet be
useless or even harmful; but this very limited assertion cannot, by any
logical method, be converted into an assertion that the price of an
article is an argument against it. Even the extra price demanded and
paid for novelties corresponds to an actual, general desire for variety,
and if this is often carried too far, the fact still remains that the
want is inherent in all human nature, indeed, in all life, and cannot be
entirely disregarded. The proposal of M. de Laveleye to reinstitute a
national dress is, for this reason, a foolish and inartistic one. No two
people are suited to exactly the same costume; and the more society
develops the more the individual shows a desire for individuality in
dress. No nation with a sense of beauty will ever consent to eternal
sameness.
Luxury is relative, as M. de Laveleye himself acknowledges. We might
define it, as he does at one point,[277] by excess of price or labor
expended. In that case, such articles as those African dresses which it
takes several years to manufacture would assuredly come under the head
of luxuries, and must, as such, be condemned from the standpoint of the
tribal plane of advancement; though they are not equal in texture or
taste of ornamentation to many of the cheapest of English goods, within
the reach of all but the very poorest. What are, with Europeans, the
bare necessities, or comforts of lowest grade, represent the extreme of
luxury to the Africans on whose plane our ancestors once stood. Many of
the things which are regarded by the average individual of to-day as
indispensable--every-day comforts--were within the reach of only the
wealthy few, a century ago, and could be had only as rare and choice
articles, to be preserved with the greatest care. The comforts of a
century ago represent, again, the luxuries of a preceding age, and so
on. Almost all products of labor are costly and rare before they can
become cheap and abundant. Had our ancestors entertained a socialistic
prejudice against the luxuries of their age, and resolved, with one
accord, to forego their manufacture as supplying only artificial needs,
we should not have had them to-day; but it is doubtful whether the
social problem would be any nearer solution than it is. The agitation
against machinery, at least, is ill combined with an agitation against
luxury; for every removal of machinery must make luxuries out of what
were, before, mere comforts, and advance the things now regarded as
necessities to the plane of the present comforts, as far as expenditure
of labor is regarded. M. de Laveleye distinguishes between rational and
primitive needs and irrational, "superfluous," or "spurious," ones; and
he defines the rational ones as those which reason asserts and hygiene
determines.[278] But from the merely hygienic point of view, every need
bears with it, by its very existence, a title to some consideration,
health and the gratification of desires being most intimately connected.
Certainly luxury is not necessarily inconsistent with the most healthy
physique, or the longest life. Many of the things ordinarily looked upon
as luxuries present unusually favorable conditions for health. Nor can
the question be decided by arbitrarily pronouncing all desires for
luxury "spurious." To M. de Laveleye and a minority of others they may
appear so; but what right has the individual to the assumption that all
needs beyond his own are spurious? Even the poorer classes of society
would, for the most part, be very glad to possess the luxuries of the
rich, and find them desirable; in other words, those desires which M. de
Laveleye pronounces spurious appertain to very nearly all human beings
who have at all formed a conception of their possibility. The savage
does not desire what we term luxury in as far as he knows nothing of it.
The argument that luxury is wrong or irrational simply because men once
were able to do without it is by no means conclusive. The conditions of
life, the employments of human beings, are far different now from those
of the time when men "lived in houses of osier." "Primitive" the desire
for luxury may not be; but if we attempt to determine what is primitive
in man, we shall meet with excessive difficulties. And again, if we
decide the question on the basis of any assumption against the
non-primitive, we must, in all consistency, exclude, as has already been
said, all higher ethical emotion and the love of art and science; none
of these can be pronounced primitive. Possibly we might define hunger,
thirst, sexual appetite, and the desire for a comfortable degree of
warmth, as the most primitive human needs; and these, indeed, are soon
satisfied; but the man who has no needs beyond these can not represent
the social ideal. The whole history of civilization from century to
century is the history of the formation of new needs and the gradual
satisfaction of these in larger and larger circles, until their objects,
from costly and hardly obtainable rarities, have become articles of
common use. With this course of development, coarseness has decreased,
refinement and taste have become more general. Nor can we, as has before
been stated, divide the human being into his separate desires and
functions, and assume that he can get rid of this or that one without
influencing all. The desires of the human being are of organic growth,
and the desire for luxury has an organic connection with the taste and
refinement with which it has grown. It is impossible that the love of
beauty in general should develop without the appearance of a desire for
beauty in the details of every-day life,--in utensils, clothing,
surroundings of every sort; as it is impossible, also, that this desire
for beauty in particulars should be dispensed with without a
corresponding retrogression in refinement and love of beauty in general.
One of the chief expenses of American entertainments is the profusion of
flowers used in decoration, and often most artistically arranged; and
whatever else may be said on the subject, the pleasure derived from them
can scarcely be termed spurious or irrational. Not all large sums spent
by the rich are given for mere display or for sensuality; they may be
spent for scientific experiments on a large scale, like those of Edison,
for travel, for books, for statuary and fine pictures, for fine
architecture, for rich tapestries and carpets, and even in great measure
for appliances and methods that secure greater cleanliness and more
healthful ways of living altogether. Nor are the appliances of art and
culture as desirable in huge museums or draughty and ill-ventilated
libraries, or anywhere else where the individual is forced into the
noise and numerous other annoyances of a promiscuous crowd, as in his
own home, arranged according to his own peculiarities of taste, and
associated with all the joys of love and domestic freedom. When sympathy
has become so general and so strong that not only men but women also can
find their best intellectual enjoyment in public places, these reasons
will cease to be of any force, but at present they have even moral
force; and since inherent character is a matter of evolution, a
condition of general sympathy and mutual consideration, and even of
universal common decency, must be of slow growth. It may further be
said, in particular, that there is no material more used by artists than
the so-much-decried velvet; again, many people of taste, who otherwise
spend money for little more than the necessities of life, find a
peculiar delight in the delicacy of fine laces, and are willing to
forego many other pleasures in order to possess them. George Eliot's
Dorothea, otherwise simple of habit, content with her plain wool gown,
found a peculiar fascination in the colors of an emerald bracelet, and
numerous persons confess to a similar pleasure in the changing rainbow
of the diamond, or the clear blue of the sapphire. These desires and
pleasures exist; they exist in people of comparative taste; they exist
as the result of human progress; they are not confined to a few
individuals; and they cannot be dismissed with a mere arbitrary
definition of them as "artificial," "superfluous," "irrational," or
"spurious."
The more cultivated Socialist complains of the lack of taste in society;
and an artist who is also a Socialist not long ago expressed his regret
that art was at present "unable to prevent" the wearing of unbecoming
forms of dress, etc. But we trust that this is not a hint that
socialistic government would undertake to decree what forms of dress
should be adopted; and we scarcely think that it could supply taste
itself to all people, or render differences of taste impossible. Taste
is, like everything else, a matter of evolution; it must make its
experiments, and undergo many failures for every step in advance. The
modern average of taste is as much in advance upon the average of our
savage ancestors as the modern average of morals is an advance upon
savage morals. The ideal of taste is, by definition, above the average;
and it may be doubted whether the time will ever come when there will
not be both degrees and differences of taste, and also an aesthetic
superiority of taste among those who devote their lives to art that will
render the average "poor" to them.
If, then, we are to condemn luxury on any tenable scientific grounds, we
must face the fact that it is an organic feature of the progress of
human society in intellectual and moral character, and a part of human
happiness; and we must show, over against these undeniable facts,
outweighing reasons for condemning it. The matter is more difficult than
a superficial Utilitarianism perceives.
The question seems to be one of the relinquishment of certain things on
the part of one class, in order that another may be elevated to a higher
plane. Certainly, no one can deny that the present misery and
degradation in society is a moral wrong, and that it is our duty to
seek some method by which it may be removed as speedily as possible. But
what is the degree of relinquishment which will suffice to raise all the
poor to a plane of comfort? Without defining the tastes for the
refinements or elegancies of life as "spurious," or, except as they are
personally injurious or associated with idleness, as in themselves bad,
we must admit that there are many exaggerations of expenditure for the
mere pleasure of the moment to a very small minority of individuals,
which, in view of the joys the same sums might secure for multitudes,
cannot be justified. But suppose that we do away with the spending of
immense sums for the entertainment of princes and potentates, with the
lavishing of wealth on a single dinner, on a single reception, on
carriages built for the mere purpose of carrying a single millionaire
bride to the church-door, and with the other expenses of this order;
shall we be able, as a result, to supply all the destitute with
comforts? Or to what length must we go, to what grade of luxury must we
descend in our reforms, in order to secure this? It would certainly not
be for the general good that society as a whole should relinquish all
the refinements that it has won in its evolution and be reduced to a
mere bread-and-butter level in the equalizing process. Beyond the
superficial utilitarian comparison of the two classes we have to
consider also the welfare of society as a whole. If we cannot morally
defend the sacrifice of the general good to one class, neither can we
defend its sacrifice to another class.
And here we come again to the population question. It is foolish to
suppose that character, as already formed, at any period, in adults, as
inherited correlative with physical organization, and as further
influenced by the contact of children with parents, husbands with wives,
friends with friends, and classes with classes, could be changed in the
twinkling of an eye. It is foolish to suppose that men would become all
at once, with the accession of comfort, wise, prudent, self-controlled,
and unselfish. On the contrary, those unused to prosperity are generally
the ones who use it least well when their lot is suddenly changed. Many
would not perceive or realize what results their action would have on
the condition of future generations, and many would not care as long as
they themselves escaped those results. We cannot, therefore, conceive
otherwise than that the rate of increase of population would suffer an
immense acceleration, were prosperity to be all at once secured to all
classes. Supposing, then, that the equalization of wealth, or that even
comfort to the poorer classes, were possible without a return to too
primitive a standard of life for all society, would the reform be a
permanent one?
The population question is one that the majority of Socialists
systematically avoid. But however avoided theoretically, it cannot be
avoided when we come to practice; and for this reason practical men are
likely to steer clear of theories that take no account of it. There is a
reason for this almost universal avoidance of the population question by
Socialists; it is, in fact, a question which stands in the way of the
very large majority of socialistic projects. But even the more advanced
of Socialists take but little notice of its importance. At a recent
meeting of the London Fabian Society, a large number present seemed to
agree with a member who argued that population might be left to take its
own course since "there is only a tendency" to too rapid increase.
Naturally, there is only a tendency to increase beyond the food supply,
since beyond this limit comes--death from privation and disease; and
since even beyond the limit of comfort come morbid conditions which
gradually bring death. If the theory of the Fabian in question is not
_laisser faire_, then I do not know what is. But the population question
never has solved itself and never will; it can only be solved by
definite intention.
At the same discussion mentioned above, another debater objected to any
decrease in the size of the families of laborers, on the ground that
such decrease would tend to lower wages and so also to lower the
standard of life. But the payment of higher wages, either on an average
to correspond with an actual average of larger families, or in
particular cases in view of the size of family in these cases, can never
constitute a raising of the standard of life; on the contrary, the wages
would be paid on the old standard for the individual, and competition
would be increased by the actual increase of population. The standard of
life is, and can be, raised only as a higher standard for the individual
is demanded and obtained.
But to these various arguments may be objected by the Socialists that
under socialistic government the whole environment of human society
would be changed, and so the old rules would be of no force. And this
brings us to another point.
A word continually in the mouth of certain of the Socialists is
"environment." Man is what he is, say they, by virtue of his
environment. Change the environment, and he must change. The present bad
condition of things is due to the environment; crime is the effect of
poverty, selfishness of competition; therefore, we have but to introduce
the socialistic form of government in order to do away with poverty and
crime at the same time with competition. The argument is attractive and
seems to solve the question as easily and indisputably as if it were a
mere elementary problem in Geometry. But the solution does not at all
harmonize with the course of analysis followed in this essay. From the
idea of an individual introduced into social conditions where poverty is
absent, it generalizes to the whole of society introduced to a new set
of laws. It forgets, in its definition of environment, that _men
themselves are the most important factor of the environment_, and that,
_in order to_ change the environment, one must change the moral
character of men with respect to each other. The whole argument makes
the mistake of choosing the one of two concomitants as alone cause and
regarding the other as alone effect. It is perfectly true that, if you
can abolish poverty, you will also have abolished crime and sin; and,
without looking farther, the Socialist regards this as conclusive
evidence that the system he proposes is logically demonstrated to be the
right and sure cure for present evil; but it may be added that _it is
quite equally true_ that, if you can abolish crime and sin, you will
have abolished poverty, also; and then it may be further said that
neither can be abolished, as a whole, first, in order that the other may
be gotten rid of through its disappearance. Competition is no more the
cause of selfishness, than selfishness is the cause of competition; the
present legal system, the present form of government is no more the
cause of the evils in society than the other evils in society are the
cause of the defects in the present form of government. Man's nature is
no more the effect of the social environment than the social conditions
are the effect of his nature. Extreme poverty and crime or vice work
reciprocally for each other's increase, or they increase and decrease
with what may be termed oscillations; poverty results in vice and vice
in poverty, or vice in poverty, and poverty again in vice; in the
individual, either may be primary, may precede the other. It is as true
that you must change men's characters in order to change all the outer
evils of the environment as it is that you must change the outer evils
in order to change men's characters. It is as true that you must get rid
of crime and vice in order to get rid of poverty as it is that you must
get rid of poverty in order to get rid of crime and vice. Here is the
new version of the serpent with its tail in its mouth; but here it is
not a symbol of eternity, but of evolution. _There is no one cause of
the evils in society, but all existing things are interdependent
conditions._ There is, therefore, no possibility of getting rid of any
one of them at one stroke, its abolishment to be followed by the
disappearance of the others; as they increase, so they must
decrease,--by reciprocal action, or complex action and reaction.
If we imagine, for a moment, a whole society of savages suddenly
introduced to a set of ideal laws by--we will say--some one individual
from out an ideal society, who proclaims these laws and then returns to
his own land, we shall not be able to imagine such laws remaining in
force for any great length of time. If we suppose our own ancestors of
the stone age introduced to our own laws by some one from out the
present century returning to them as Mark Twain's Yankee returned to the
court of King Arthur, we shall not imagine those laws as very long
binding; and nothing could be truer to facts of psychology than the
gigantic tragedy with which Mr. Clemens' book closes. No set of ideal
laws introduced to an inideal society can be regarded as the
"environment" of that society, which shall render it ideal. The more
democratic a country, the more the passing, even, of a law or measure
depends on the general sentiment; but many laws have been passed and
many measures of government projected which have failed completely in
administration because they were too far in advance of the general moral
status. External morality of institutions and internal morality of
character in society as a union of many individuals can only increase
together, and gradually, by reciprocal action. In other words, the
evolution necessary to the attainment of any ideal condition where
poverty and crime are eliminated must be internal as well as external;
and this is a fact that few Socialists recognize, at least practically,
and that even the Fabians, accepting as they do the theory of evolution,
continually fail to take account of in the application of their
theories. They have indeed received the theory of evolution as regards
external institutions; but, with perhaps a few exceptions, they have not
regarded it in its inner, psychical significance. This is made evident
by the continual recurrence of such references and remarks as we have
criticised, which trace all evil to our "artificial system," refer to
character as bad because "saturated with immoral principles by our
commercial system,"[279] and reckon upon a change in this "artificial
system" which, first accomplished, will cause a revolution in character.
The acknowledgment of the necessity of evolution is, for the most part,
forgotten in practical discussion; and the reason of this forgetfulness
is easily understood from just the fact noticed--that the evolution, the
necessity of which is recognized, is the mere external one of state
institutions. Character is regarded in any case as a dependent, an
effect; and this is in accordance with the old theory of the will as
passive and as determined by the rest of nature, never as the active and
independent factor determining and instituting. Thus, even a Fabian is
likely to look with only half-approval at institutions like the Society
for Ethical Culture, which has for its first object the cultivation of
character; and many Socialists, until very lately the great majority,
have regarded all improvements which did not bear directly towards
Socialism as mere temporizing. The socialistic government was to be
first established, and this would perform all the reforms necessary; or,
rather, evils would disappear of themselves when once it was
established. Fortunately, Socialism is itself undergoing an evolution.
But again, even those Socialists who talk of an evolution up to
"socialistic forms" are continually found representing the ease with
which government might, at present, take over the business of the
nation. This is the natural result of the fact that the evolution
recognized as necessary is only that of institutions, not that of
character. The perception, on the other hand, that character is not, at
present, capable of receiving or administering a socialistic form of
government, is the reason of much of the resistance opposed to a party
which, whatever a very small minority may claim as to theory, is
practically endeavoring to force a system of government upon peoples not
prepared for carrying it out with success. There are few governments, as
yet, where even the democratic idea has sufficiently taken root to
render the people at all used to self-government; and where they exist,
the good they confer is not unmixed. I am not advancing an argument
against democracy; but the defects of human nature which render its
benefits of a mixed character must hinder in an incomparably greater
measure a scheme which would place all power, even to the control of all
wealth, in the hands of the administration; in other words, Socialism,
if introduced to-day, could no more get rid of poverty and crime than
democracy can get rid of them; and the gulf between the old and the new
order being so great a one, the danger attending the new institutions
would be particularly great. As Hoeffding remarks, it is not proved,
because we intrust many things to state-government (with mixed good and
evil) that it would be well to intrust the management of _all_ matters
to it. The Socialists propose to secure the perfection of system by
making the government responsible to the people and the executive
responsible to the government; but in democratic governments this
principle is already carried out. Are we to suppose that the possession
of still greater power and so still larger opportunities for fraud would
afford the people greater security? Or how could the responsibility of
the legislative and administrative functions to the people be still
better secured than it is anywhere at present? The power of the people
might be extended to include interference with both functions. But the
socialistic government must, in any case, be excessively complicated;
even Bellamy, whose government is much simplified by the supposition of
the immediate attainment of an ideal character through the action of the
social "environment," designates the scheme as "very elaborate." The
difficulties of direct interference with the legislative functions in
countries larger than Switzerland (where the referendum is occasionally
resorted to), the difficulties of deciding on evidence before the court
of the whole country in cases where the power of deposition might be
used, the labor of arriving at a general verdict about which there
should be no dispute, the strife and party feeling which must be thus
continually engendered in the contest of opinions as long as men have
not attained to an ideal character, would be likely, if such powers of
national interference were often exercised, to keep the country in a
state of continual uproar; while, on the other hand, if peace were
purchased at the sacrifice of the power of direct interference, the
machinery of state would no more than at present secure the nation from
fraud, which must be greater as the power in the hands of a socialistic
government would be larger. To the man of principle, it would doubtless
appear foolish as well as wrong to sacrifice position, comparative
comfort, and the esteem of fellow-citizens, for mere gain in wealth by
dishonest means; but as long as there are many men by whom temporary
gratification is often preferred even at the sacrifice of more lasting
pleasure, and selfish pleasure is of more account than public esteem, as
long as there are men to whom the element of excitement in crime is an
attraction, as long as women are often unscrupulous and men the slaves
of passion, as long as there are those who find the power to command by
means of wealth more desirable than security in moderation, and as long
as there remain others who will bow down to wealth fraudulently
acquired, as long, too, as there are countries anywhere upon the earth
in which malefactors may find refuge, the chances of fraud under a
socialistic government are large. They must be particularly large where
"inordinate luxury and the hope of it" are abolished; for, leaving out
of account all question as to the morality of luxury, there are
undoubtedly many men who desire as much of it as they can obtain.
Bellamy discreetly supposes his ideal government to be adopted at once
by all nations, thus paying no attention to the obviously very different
degrees of social development represented by those different nations.
But as long as any communication of trade whatever existed with nations
still under the old regime, ingenuity could devise ways of theft, and
foreign lands would constitute a goal for the enjoyment of the spoil.
There are, and will be for very many years yet, plenty of places of
refuge for the clever thief. Moreover, communication and commerce with
other lands not only being necessary but becoming daily more and more
desirable, a law excluding all foreigners would be difficult to
establish; and this being the case, the social equilibrium must be
continually disturbed, and inner character affected by the influx from
other nations.
There is another general objection to socialistic schemes which bears on
the point of their application to present conditions, namely, their
arbitrary nature, the manner in which they would decide summarily many
questions on which society is at present most at variance and different
individuals entertain the most conflicting opinions, the comparative
value of which can be tested only by experiment. This feature of
Socialism is inseparable from the general condition of things. Many
feel, therefore, and feel with reason, that sympathy is not yet
sufficiently general and strong to warrant the entrusting of all
interests of the individual to a majority of his fellow-men. It is even
a question whether free scientific investigation would not be imperilled
if some Socialists had their way. It is not long since that I heard an
"evolutionary" Socialist expressing his opinion emphatically that the
waste of time and energy in the pursuit of ambitions never to be
realized was so undesirable that he questioned whether the individual
ought to be permitted to choose a vocation in which it is believed he
will fail. But the element of interest that causes a man to choose a
given occupation is the very factor which most often results in
efficient labor; and it is the testimony of many that the perseverance
possible through love of their work has prevailed in direct opposition
to the predictions of onlookers. Thousands of men have succeeded against
all expectations. It is by no means those who apparently possess most
ability who succeed best or profit the world most by their work. There
are projects of arbitrariness very similar in sort and nearly as great
in degree in all the Socialistic schemes in which the questions of the
day are furnished with cut and dried answers. It is strange, for
instance, that American advocates of women's right to a free choice of a
vocation have failed to discover with what dexterity Bellamy avoids the
whole question of women's capacity, by the discreetly blind remark that
they are not only inferior to men in strength, but "further disqualified
in special ways" (a formula which the author finds so successful that he
repeats the words in a subsequent essay), while he appears practically
to side with the Conservatives in thought on the matter. The government
of Bellamy provides, furthermore, that one can change his vocation only
up to the age of thirty-five, and even to this date only "under proper
restrictions"; the experience of mankind has shown, however, that a
man's best inspirations may come to him after this age, and lead to a
development of talents heretofore unsuspected even by himself. The "aids
to choice" in a state may be as numerous as you like; but they can never
give a man of thirty the experience and mental development of the man of
thirty-five, thirty-seven, or forty. The assistance which the judgment
of others can give in the choice of a vocation is, for the most part, of
little use to the adult; and whatever the minor advantages of an
elimination of the certain amount of disturbance consequent on changes
of occupation, the harm to society of restriction on efforts in any
direction of useful labor must more than counterbalance these.
The method of newspaper-editing in Bellamy's state is also peculiar. The
people who desire any special interest to be brought before the public
choose an editor, establish a newspaper "reflecting their opinions and
devoted especially to their locality, trade, or profession," and when
the editor fails to give satisfaction in his publications, simply
"remove him." This method would, I fear, scarcely meet the desires of
any editor possessed with a brain, and to whom his profession was
something more than a matter of mere automatism.
Indeed, the whole order of Bellamy's state is of too military and
automatic a character; though it is easy, in a work of fiction, to
represent the members of his industrial army as universally content and
universally virtuous.
It is in consequence of the more or less distinct perception that, for
all these reasons, human nature of the present time is unsuited to the
absolute cooeperation involved in Socialism, that many Individualists
advocate a continuation of the system of competition. From ancient
savagery up to our present half-civilization has been a gradual
evolution, not of government with character as its effect, but of
government and character as cooerdinates, or (if we view them in another
light) as advancing by mutual action and reaction; and our future must
constitute a like gradual evolution (though with continual acceleration
of velocity) of character and government as cooerdinates; the attempt of
individuals or parties to force one of these cooerdinates before the
other must always result in failure. It is true, as Mr. Grant Allen
stated in a lecture before the London Fabians--designed as refutation of
the Individualistic theory that competition is necessary for the best
social evolution--that natural selection favors cooeperation,[280] that
is, that those societies in which the efforts of individuals are most
supplemented by the aid of others, have the best chance of life and
health both as wholes and in their individual units; but this fact does
not do away with the necessity of the evolution of cooeperation
_cooerdinate with character_. "We know now," says another Fabian, "that
in natural selection at the stage of development where the existence of
civilized man is at stake, the units selected from are not individuals
but societies."[281] This, however, we do not know. Natural selection
acts on cell, on individual, and on all the various social units to
which men combine, in their multiplicity of relations. It does not cease
to act on individuals because it acts also on social organizations, any
more than it ceases to act on cells in acting on organisms as wholes; it
is only true that the line of the preservation of the individual and
that of the preservation of the whole of society approach each other
more and more nearly with social progress. The tendency of the whole of
social evolution has been one of increasing cooeperation cooerdinate with
increasing social instinct or sympathy in all its complex relations and
dependences; and with the attainment of the maximum of sympathy we can
not well imagine or suppose anything else than the maximum of
cooeperation. On the other hand, the gradual nature of social evolution
up to this maximum, and the contest of differing opinions, secures a
sufficient experiment, and so the protection of the people from tyranny
under another name; for it is not the emotional nature of man alone
which must grow to greater harmony, it is also his intellectual nature;
as opinions are brought nearer and nearer to each other by mutual
criticism, men become more capable of cooeperation; and this intellectual
agreement represents the line of adjustment or natural selection, since
it is the conclusion reached by means of experience--the common
knowledge bought through the practical application of various
principles. A tribe of savages would be incapable of administration of
the government of our so-called civilized states, as also of obedience
to it:--both because the individual would rebel in opinion and in
emotion at the barriers imposed by it, and because the functions of
administration in the hands of savages would tend to injustice that
would be greater as the sphere of government exceeded that to which the
tribe had been used; and for similar reasons, the present age is
incapable of that maximum of cooeperation in all relations which is
involved in Socialism. Even the aesthetic use of wealth, moderation and
taste in enjoyment, must be learned by degrees; it cannot be infused by
any government. The savage envies, in our more civilized states, chiefly
the opportunities for the gorging of good things and for self-adornment
which they afford; and the savage lack of self-control where alcohol is
concerned, is proverbial; the average of more civilized societies shows
a much greater self-control and moderation in the face of opportunities
of purely sensual gratification, and a much greater love of more
aesthetic and more moral pleasures. Or rather, we should perhaps say, as
before, the sensuality becomes more refined, and is gratified in more
moral ways, through its organization with higher instincts. It is not
among the wealthier classes, who have had the use of wealth, that taste
is poorest; on the contrary, the average of taste is smaller, the outlay
for foolish ornament of all sorts larger in proportion to means, in the
poorer classes; and were these classes to come without change of
character into possession of considerable means of enjoyment, it is to
be suspected that expenditure for tasteless adornments would, in many
cases, and especially among the women, precede and exceed expenditure
for higher things.
And this brings me to a more especial consideration of that very large
portion of the Socialist party who acknowledge no necessity for an
evolution up to Socialism in any sense, but desire a revolution. Bellamy
distinctly denies the necessity of an evolution, and many of his
followers agree with him on this point; but the revolution he believes
in and hopes for is a bloodless and peaceful one. To this conception the
preceding objections sufficiently apply.
A revolution in the ordinary sense of the word is always, however, the
sign of powerful opposition between two parties, of which one may gain
the immediate ascendancy by force; but will surely be exposed,
afterwards, to the long-enduring hatred, opposition, and revenge of a
strong minority, that will make itself felt with an energy greatly
increased by the vindictiveness which naturally follows on war and
defeat. France is still suffering from her revolutions even at this
length of time after their occurrence. Where the people have no vote and
real influence upon the government, and even the expression of opinion
is restricted by law, so that to gain an influence is practically
impossible, a political revolution may take place; but its results, both
immediate and remote, must contain a very large modicum of evil even if
some advance is accomplished by it. A revolution to obtain the
establishment of absolute cooeperation would be self-contradictory, and
the self-contradiction of character implied in it would result in its
failure; it could not happen in a country at all prepared for absolute
cooeperation, or even for a very high degree of cooeperation. A revolution
in any country at the present time would have to reckon with all sorts
of depraved tastes and vicious characters, matters of organization and
inheritance which neither in the individual, nor in the line of descent,
could be gotten rid of in a day; which must, indeed, affect society for
many generations, and before they could be eradicated would do away with
Socialism or destroy its success. Poverty and crime cannot be banished
by any device of mere legislation; only with time and by gradual means
can they be gotten rid of.
Socialism is, then, as a whole, too impetuous, if Individualism is, as a
whole, too reluctant. But Socialism is undergoing an evolution, as has
been said. Arising as the voice of the poor, the oppressed, the
miserable, the hungry, it has made itself heard and has materially
modified public opinion, while it has, at the same time, been itself
modified, according to the universal law of the equilibration of forces.
Forced by necessity practically, and gradually altered by criticism as
to theory, it is coming to give its energies less and less to a
consideration of the final socialistic government which should do away
with the necessity of further reforms because accomplishing an immediate
and universal one, and devoting them more and more to present measures
of reform, many of which are simply liberal measures proposed by
non-Socialists and such as would have had no meaning to the majority of
Socialists of a few years past, or would have been regarded by them as
useless temporizing. In its mutual action and reaction with
Individualism, it will doubtless still more modify and be modified, so
that more and more ground for united action will be won. The cause of
the laborer is the most urgent of our times; but increase of wages will
be of very little use except as it is steadily accompanied by aids to
knowledge and self-direction, aids in the formation of character, in the
use of self and of the means of enjoyment; otherwise, the laborer must
continually defeat his own cause, and renew the old problems.
The education of self-control must begin with the child. The education
of the child is never to be considered by itself; the child is not one
individual and the adult another, neither is there any dividing line
between childhood and maturity; and that which the individual is to
become in later life he must grow towards as a child. The habits which
the man would exercise the child must learn. In Germany, where the
military spirit prevails, implicit obedience to authority is ranked
among the highest virtues, and habits of strict military discipline are
carried into the family as well as exercised in all public relations. In
countries where more democratic ideas are strong, the older methods are
giving way to milder ones. These sometimes degenerate into the opposite
extreme of careless indulgence, with bad results; but taken on the
average, their beneficial influence is seen in the greater alertness,
originality, and openness of the children brought up under them.
Frankness and originality are on the average incompatible with harsh or
stern treatment; the latter is more likely to generate craftiness,
fawning hypocrisy, or an unloving and unlovable rigidity of character;
and any of these qualities is compatible with secret self-indulgence in
any form, wherever this is possible. Only an education in freedom can
teach the use of freedom. The old, hard, religious idea of "breaking the
will" (the natural outcome of a religion based on blind faith, "fear,"
and unquestioning obedience) was a sad blunder; what we need is not less
but more will, with better direction of it. True, the wisdom of
experience must always guide the young; but its guidance, to attain the
best results, should make itself as little felt as authority as
possible, and should withdraw into the background as early as possible.
Not that it should degenerate into slipshod yielding to importunities,
but that it should endeavor to give reasons rather than mere rules of
conduct, to instil principles and ideas rather than laws, and so to
develop the power of self-direction. It is often objected that the young
child is incapable of comprehending principles; but so is the infant
incapable of comprehending speech, and yet it is through the use of
speech to the infant that comprehension is gradually attained; as sounds
are fixed in the receptive memory of the infant, and slowly acquire
meaning, so ethical principles, simply stated, may be communicated, and
will be better and better understood as the child develops. This method
of instruction is, rightly understood, as far from weakness as it is
from tyranny and dogmatism; indeed, no method demands in the instructor
so much care, thought, and patience. It must be judicious and
consistent, never capricious, and its fundamental principle must be the
cultivation of justice through justice, and so of kindness through
kindness. Especially should the young be prepared in the home, by
self-knowledge, for the trials and temptations which menace in the world
outside, through the passions of maturity. To the earnest man or woman,
nothing appears more trivial than the false shame which hinders, even in
the home and between parents and children, the moral discussion of some
of the most important of human relations for good or evil. To the pure
all things are pure; but, unfortunately, it is also true that to the
impure all things are impure. Nothing is more injurious to children than
the morbid curiosity stimulated through the secrecy and deception which
are ordinarily practised, and which inspires them with the sense of a
mystery that is half criminal, half sacred. Curiosity grows under such
tuition, a disproportionate interest is awakened and often comes to be
satisfied from sources outside the home, with an admixture of deplorable
vulgarity, the influence of which is not soon lost. Such a tuition
tends, not to purity of thought, but to impurity, and often directly to
vice. The mystery with which natural, and what may be perfectly moral,
relations is thus invested, is often the source of a fatal attraction to
ignorant youth. What we need to make out of our children is not puppets
of which the world as well as ourselves may pull the wires, but earnest
and self-comprehending men and women, self-reliant and fearless because
life is no strange country filled with unknown shadows and pitfalls, but
a pleasant land, whose dangers, known, may be avoided, and the road
through which leads to a comprehended and desirable goal.
Parental power was once held sacred and beyond interference;
nevertheless the use made of it does not seem to have been always a
sacred one. The Roman law allowed parents to put their children to
death. The modern state has tended, on the other hand, to take away more
and more power from the parents, extending its protection to the
helpless child. And this is well; the child, as well as the adult,
should have the right of protection against abuse. Nevertheless, the
theories which would relegate the whole education and care of the child
to the state must be regarded as too extreme. Whatever disadvantages
there may be in the government of parents, especially at the present day
when the education of women is still so inadequate, there is yet nothing
which the child cannot better miss out of his education than the
influence of parental love, the lack of which no state institution can
ever supply. Granted that parental government is of a most mistaken sort
in some cases, and that it is not perfect in any case, it still remains
true that family affection furnishes one of mankind's greatest joys,
and that the love of the parent should, and even does, on the average,
make the best protection and educator weak and clinging childhood can
have. No one who has at all studied the condition of children in orphan
asylums and other institutions under the care of the state, can have
failed to notice, even in those institutions managed with the greatest
kindness, the immense difference in happiness and attractiveness between
their inmates and the children used to family love and mother's
caresses. The lack of love makes the child unlovable. The fundamental
method of reform lies, not in the withdrawal of all power from parents,
but rather in the better preparation of men, and especially of women, to
fulfil the duties of parentage. Such a preparation must consist,
however, less in any particular study than in such general physical,
intellectual, and moral discipline and education as shall expand all the
powers in health and harmony, thus securing to children a good physical
inheritance and an early guidance both wise and moral. A higher morality
must particularly emphasize the fact that not self alone or even merely
the two parties to a marriage are to be considered; that the welfare of
possible offspring must be regarded; and that, therefore, marriage with
the morally unfit is a crime against future generations as well as
against self, and marriage of the physically unfit, where offspring are
permitted, is equally a wrong. The old idea, encouraged in women, that
it was a good and noble use of life to "marry a man in order to reform
him," is beginning to go out of vogue; and future standards will not
tolerate the present social dogma that, however much of a profligate a
man may have been, whatever associates he may have affected, however he
may have betrayed the innocent and debauched his own moral sense, he is
still fit to mate with any pure and good woman.
The necessity of a better physical and intellectual education for the
mothers of the race, as a preparation for the adequate performance of
their duties, must be, at the present time, especially emphasized. The
task of the mother in the early training of children is one that
requires practical knowledge of the world, broad views, and that power
of judgment which is possible only through mental discipline.
Superstition, narrowness, subjection to tradition and dogma, are
incompatible with efficient motherhood. The education must, then, be
real, no cramming with stale facts and staler theories; it must advance
with the science of the day, and deal with its vital questions.
But the standpoint which regards women only as means to ends outside
themselves, which calculates all the advantages to be permitted them by
the measure alone of their usefulness to husbands or children, is a poor
one. To afford to all individuals the full and free development of
capacity must be the ideal of society. The ancient conceptions which
laid little emphasis practically, whatever they might do theoretically,
upon the woman's right to opportunities for her own sake, which made
meekness and self-abnegation her chief virtues, and fixed its regard
always upon future generations in her case, is one that cannot be
defended from a higher ethical standpoint. If no man lives unto himself
alone, neither should any man, or woman either, be expected to spend his
life merely as a means to others and having no end in himself. Every
human being has a right to a share in the general privileges and
pleasures. For their own sake, and that of society as a whole, as well
as for that of their immediate friends and family, women should share
equally with men the benefits of mental culture, its aesthetic
enjoyments, its consolations and distractions, and the calm and
self-poise bestowed by its broad outlook. To women as well as to men
applies what has already been said of the folly and sin of ignorance of
the world. We have only to look at France in order to perceive the evils
of a system which brings girls to maturity in a condition of seclusion,
ignorance, and dependence, and then suddenly launches them upon society
wholly unprepared to withstand the temptations it presents. The evil
results of a less degree of the same system are visible all over the
world. On the other hand, it is in just that country--America--where
women have had the most freedom, that they are also most capable of
enduring freedom, and that their civilizing influence is most visible.
They are not the less womanly for this liberty, and society is very much
the better for it. Indeed, their attractiveness and the power they wield
through it is not equalled in any other country. "I wonder," writes
George Eliot, "whether the subtle measuring of forces will ever come to
measure the force there would be in one beautiful woman whose mind was
as noble as her face was beautiful--who made a man's passion for her
rush in one current with all the great aims of his life." "It is
terrible--the keen, bright eye of a woman when it has once been turned
with admiration on what is severely true; but then the severely true
rarely comes within its range of vision."
The questions of marriage and prostitution may be reduced to the single
question of the desirability of monogamy. No one can well deny the evils
attending the existence of a class of prostitutes isolated from moral
associations, despised and ill-treated, daily sinking lower and lower
through this isolation, and contaminating, by their influence, those who
come in contact with them. The practical question is, then, would it be
well for society as a whole to assume another attitude, of open
approval, towards prostitution, to admit those who are now outcasts to a
position on a par with faithful wives and pure maidens. This was the
position of Athenian prostitutes, and it existed together with, we may
suppose, comparative chastity on the part of maidens and faithfulness on
the part of wives. These, however, did not take part in the social life
of the men, but lived in seclusion in their homes; it would be
impossible to accord a similar position to prostitutes in modern society
unless with the practical surrender of any demand or expectancy of
faithfulness on the part of wives, or of chastity on the part of
maidens. Even in France, where the position of prostitutes most nearly
approximates the Athenian, a very distinct dividing-line is drawn
between the _demi-monde_ and the rest of society; and, indeed, special
precautions are taken to secure the chastity of girls. In like manner,
purity might perhaps still be secured in girls, after the admission of
prostitutes to a position of equality with other women, by a convent
education and the greatest watchfulness; but the lack of self-dependence
would be likely to be followed, as it now so often is in France, only in
far greater degree, by excesses after the attainment of comparative
self-direction with marriage. The profligate soon tires of the
prostitute, and desires higher game; unbridled license begets morbid
passion; the sense of honor is blunted; the pure cease to be safe except
as far as they are able, by self-control and self-defence, to protect
themselves; and for such self-poise only an education of freedom, of
knowledge of the world and of self, can prepare. Nor could even such a
system of seclusion as we have imagined exist for any length of time
side by side with the full acceptance of prostitution as perfectly
honorable and right; the two things are self-contradictory and
incompatible; in France, faithfulness is not less desired of wives than
in other countries. Indeed, the majority of men in civilized countries
would never consent to a system of general promiscuity; they desire
women, that is, a large number of women, a sufficient number to supply
them with wives, to remain pure, whatever liberty they demand for
themselves. The whole progress of society has been in the direction of
monogamy, and the reason of this is obvious: as reason and taste
develop, man ceases to be satisfied with the mere enjoyments of the
animal; he develops higher powers and instincts which also demand their
satisfaction; these powers, too, are not separate entities, but are
organized with the more primitive capacities and the whole organization
becomes another through their appearance. As the social instinct grows,
and intellect comes to take a higher place, the mere or chiefly physical
passion felt between the sexes of lower species becomes the higher human
love, an organized instinct in which all the moral and intellectual
desires, the highest aims and emotions of the individual are fused to a
whole. Moreover, momentary pleasure becomes, with social progress,
indeed with all evolution, less and less the ruling power; man, above
all creatures, comes to demand enduring sources of satisfaction.
Faithfulness in love is as necessary to perfect satisfaction as is
faithfulness in friendship; and the long as well as the close
companionship of congenial natures is now, and must more and more
become, the spring of our highest human joys. Disappointment in marriage
may incline the individual to doubt, by a universalization from his own
case,--to which disappointment is prone,--whether life-long love and
faithfulness are possible; but he still must feel that this is the
ideal. It has been said that men are naturally polygamous, women
monogamous; but this statement is obviously erroneous, since men by no
means favor general polygamy; even the savage is capable of jealousy,
and men have continually used the superior power they have possessed in
law and public opinion to emphasize the exclusive claim they have upon
the women they take to wife. It is only true that, having also had the
power in their hands of refusing a like faithfulness to that which they
demand from women, they have used this power to their own advantage.
Women desire faithful love on the part of men quite as much as men
desire it on the part of women; and women are quite as capable of
physical excesses and of fickleness as are men, when the restraints of
public opinion and social law are once broken over.
A condition of promiscuity is impossible in an ideal society, and can
never be the goal towards which we tend. Men would not submit to it in
the women they loved; and if it is not possible for wives, then we have
left us only the alternative of prostitution in its present form,
increasingly worse in character as the ideal of faithfulness is more
universally demanded and more completely carried out in wives, and the
necessary cooerdinate social ostracism and disgrace of the prostitute
increases. But this also cannot assuredly be our ideal; the increasing
misery of the class of prostitutes is not a thing to be sought. The
whole theory which tolerates prostitution is, in fact, illogical and
only devised as a prop for the selfishness of men, who are content to
take their pleasure at the expense of so much misery. The same thing
cannot be, as some one has said, at once right for the man to demand and
infamous for the woman to permit. Where the act is one to which both
sexes are necessary, it must, if it be right at all, be right for both,
and if it is wrong, then wrong for both. And this would remain true even
if it were proved that, because of greater strength or for any other
reason, the sexual passion of men ought not to be restrained; for, the
responsibility of the prostitute's misery is thus laid at the door of
men; if the women who ply this traffic are prompted by no passion, but
only compelled by destitution, then the blame of their unhappy
compulsion to such a traffic rests more than ever on the heads of those
who furnish the demand to which their supply answers. In any case, the
man is an accessory before the fact to a thing which he acknowledges
wrong on the part of its performer.