Eden Vale: Aug. 16, ----
In your last letter you give expression to your astonishment that our host,
with only a salary of 1,440£ as a member of the government of Freeland, is
able to keep up such an establishment as I have described, to occupy an
elegant villa with twelve dwelling-rooms, to furnish his table, to indulge
in horses and carriages--in a word, to live as luxuriously as only the
richest are able to do among us at home. In fact, David was right when he
promised us that we should not have to forego any real comfort, any genuine
enjoyment to which we had been accustomed in our aristocratic palace at
home. Our host does not possess capital the interest of which he can use;
nor is Mrs. Ney a 'blue-stocking'--as you surmise--who writes highly paid
romances for Freeland journals; nor does the elder Ney draw upon his son's
income as artist. It is true that Mrs. Ney once possessed a large fortune
which she inherited from her father, one of the leading speculators of
America; but she lost this to the last farthing in the great American
crisis of 18--, soon after her marriage. The domestic habits of the Neys
were not, however, affected in the least by this loss; for since her
migration to Freeland she had never made any private use of her fortune,
but had always applied its income to public purposes. This does not prevent
Mr. Ney from spending--over and above the outlay you mention--very
considerable sums upon art and science and in benevolence: the last of
course only abroad, for here no one is in need of charity. As it is not
considered indiscreet in Freeland to talk of such matters, I am in a
position to tell you that last year the Neys spent 92£ for objects of art,
75£ for books, journals, and music, 120£ in travelling, and 108£--the
amount that remained to their credit after defraying all the other
expenses--in foreign charities and public institutions. Thanks to the
marvellous organisation of industry and trade, everything here is
fabulously cheap--in fact, many things which consume a great deal of money
in Europe and America do not add in the least to the expenses of a Freeland
household, as they are furnished gratuitously by the commonwealth, and paid
for out of the tax which has been subtracted in advance from the net income
of each individual. For example, in the cost of travelling, not a farthing
has to be reckoned for railway or steamship, since--as you have already
learnt from my former letters--the Freeland commonwealth provides free
means of personal transport. The same holds, as I think I have already told
you, of the telegraphs, the telephones, the post, electric lighting,
mechanical motive-power, &c. On the other hand, the Freeland government
charges the cost of the transport of goods by land and water to the owners
of the goods. I will take this opportunity of remarking that almost every
Freeland family spends on an average two months in the year in travelling,
mostly in the many wonderfully beautiful districts of their own land, and
more rarely in foreign countries. Every Freelander takes a holiday of at
least six, and sometimes as much as ten weeks, and seeks recreation,
pleasure, and instruction, as a tourist. The highlands of the Kilimanjaro,
the Kenia, and the Elgon, of the Aberdare range and the Mountains of the
Moon, as well as the shores of all the great lakes, swarm at all
seasons--except the two rainy seasons--with driving, riding, walking,
rowing, and sailing men, women, and children, in full enjoyment of all the
delights of travel.
An intelligent and hearty love of nature and natural beauty is a general
characteristic of the Freelanders. They are proprietors in common of the
whole of their country, and their loving care for this precious possession
is everywhere conspicuous. It is significant that nowhere in Freeland are
the streams and rivers poisoned by refuse-water; nowhere are picturesque
mountain-declivities disfigured by quarries opened in badly selected
localities. No such offences against the beauty of the landscape are
anywhere to be met with. For why should these self-governing workers rob
themselves of the real pleasure afforded by healthy and beautiful natural
scenes, for the sake of a small saving which must be shared by everybody?
Naturally, this intelligent regard for rural attractions benefits tourists
also. Everywhere both the roads and the railways are bordered by avenues of
fine palms, whose slender branchless trunks do not obscure the view, whilst
their heavy crowns afford refreshing shade. In consequence of this simple
and effective arrangement, one suffers far less from heat and dust here
under the equator than in temperate Europe, where in the summer months a
several hours' journey by rail or road is frequently a torture. At all the
beautiful and romantic spots, the Hotel and Recreation Associations have
employed their immense resources in providing enormous boarding-houses, as
well as many small villas, in which the tourists may find every comfort,
either in the company of hundreds or thousands of others, or in rural
isolation, for hours, days, weeks, or months.
If you are astonished at the luxury in the house of the Neys, what will you
say when I tell you that in this country every simple worker lives
essentially as our hosts do? The villas merely have fewer rooms, the
furniture is plainer; instead of keeping saddle-horses of their own, the
simple workers hire those belonging to the Transport Association; less
money is spent upon objects of art, books, and for benevolent purposes:
these are the only differences. Take, for instance, our neighbour Moro.
Though an ordinary overseer in the Eden Vale Paint-making Association, he
and his charming wife are among the intimate friends of our host, and we
have already several times dined in his neat and comfortable seven-roomed
house. Even 'pupil-daughters' are not lacking in his house, for his wife
enjoys--and justly, as I can testify--the reputation of possessing a
special amount of mental and moral culture; and, as you know,
pupil-daughters choose not the great house, but the superior housewife. And
if it should strike you as remarkable that such a Phoenix of a woman should
be the wife of a simple factory-hand, you must remember that the workers of
Freeland are different from those of Europe. Here everybody enjoys sound
secondary education; and that a young man becomes an artisan and not a
teacher, or a physician, or engineer, or such like, is due to the fact that
he does not possess, or thinks he does not possess, any _exceptional_
intellectual capacity. For in this country the intellectual professions can
be successfully carried on only by those who possess exceptional natural
qualifications, since the competition of _all_ who are really qualified
makes it impossible for the imperfectly qualified to succeed. Among
ourselves, where only an infinitely small proportion of the population has
the opportunity of studying, the lack of means among the immense majority
secures a privilege even to the blockheads among the fortunate possessors
of means. The rich cannot all be persons of talent any more than all the
poor can. Since we, however, notwithstanding this, supply our demand for
intellectual workers--apart, of course, from those exceptional cases which
occur everywhere--solely from the small number of sons of rich families, we
are fortunate if we find one capable student among ten incapables; of which
ten--since the one capable student cannot supply all our demand--at most
only two or three of the greatest blockheads suffer shipwreck. Here, on the
contrary, where everyone has the opportunity of studying, there are, of
course, very many more capable students; consequently the Freelanders do
not need to go nearly so low down as we do in the scale of capacity to
cover their demand for intellectual workers. It does not necessarily follow
that their cleverest men are cleverer than ours; but our incapables--among
the graduates--are much, much more incapable than the least capable of
theirs can possibly be. What would be of medium quality among us is here
far below consideration at all. Friend Moro, for instance, would probably,
in Europe or America, not have been one of the 'lights of science,' nor 'an
ornament to the bar'; but he would at least have been a very acceptable
average teacher, advocate, or official. Here, however, after leaving the
intermediate school, it was necessary for him to take a conscientious
valuation of his mental capacity; and he arrived at the conclusion that it
would be better to become a first-rate factory-overseer than a mediocre
teacher or official. And he could carry out this--perhaps too
severe--resolve without socially degrading himself, for in Freeland manual
labour does not degrade as it does in Europe and America, where the
assertion that it does not degrade is one of the many conventional lies
with which we seek to impose upon ourselves. Despite all our democratic
talk, work is among us in general a disgrace, for the labourer is a
dependent, an exploited servant--he has a master over him who can order
him, and can use him for his own purpose as he can a beast of burden. No
ethical theory in the world will make master and servant equally
honourable. But here it is different. To discover how great the difference
is, one need merely attend a social reunion in Freeland. It is natural, of
course, that persons belonging to the same circle of interests should most
readily associate together; but this must not be supposed to imply the
existence of anything even remotely like a breaking up of society into
different professional strata. The common level of culture is so high,
interest in the most exalted problems of humanity so general, even among
the manual labourers, that _savants_, artists, heads of the government,
find innumerable points of contact, both intellectual and aesthetic, even
with factory-hands and agricultural labourers.
This is all the more the case since a definite line of demarcation between
head-workers and hand-workers cannot here be drawn. The manual labourer of
to-day may to-morrow, by the choice of his fellow-labourers, become a
director of labour, therefore a head-worker; and, on the other hand, there
are among the manual labourers untold thousands who were originally elected
to different callings, and who have gone through the studies required for
such callings, but have exchanged the pen for the tool, either because they
found themselves not perfectly qualified intellectually, or because their
tastes have changed. Thus, for instance, another visiting friend of the
Neys successfully practised as a physician for several years; but he now
devotes himself to gardening, because this quiet calling withdraws him less
than his work as physician from his favourite study, astronomy. His
knowledge and capacity as astronomer were not sufficient to provide him
with a livelihood, and as he was frequently called in the night from some
interesting observation reluctantly to attend upon sick children, he
determined to earn his livelihood by gardening, so that he might devote his
nights to an undisturbed observation of the stars. Another man with whom I
have here become acquainted exchanged the career of a bank official for
that of a machine-smith, simply because he did not like a sedentary
occupation; several times he might have been elected by the members of his
association on the board of directors, but he always declined on the plea
of an invincible objection to office work. But there is a still larger
number of persons who combine some kind of manual labour with intellectual
work. So general in Freeland is the disinclination to confine oneself
_exclusively_ to head-work, that in all the higher callings, and even in
the public offices, arrangements have to be made which will allow those
engaged in such offices to spend some time in manual occupations. The
bookkeepers and correspondents of the associations, as well as of the
central bank, the teachers, officials, and other holders of appointments of
all kinds, have the right to demand, besides the regular two months'
holiday, leave of absence for a longer or a shorter time, which time is to
be spent in some other occupation. Naturally no wages are paid for the time
consumed by these special periods of absence; but this does not prevent the
greater part of all those officials from seeking a temporary change of
occupation for several months once in every two or three years, as
factory-hands, miners, agriculturists, gardeners, &c. An acquaintance of
mine, a head of a department of the central executive, spends two months in
every second year at one or other of the mines in the Aberdare or the
Baringo district. He tells me he has already gone practically through the
work of the coal, the iron, the tin, the copper, and the sulphur mines; and
he is now pleasantly anticipating a course of labour in the salt-works of
Elmeteita.
In view of this general and thorough inter-blending of the most ordinary
physical with the highest mental activity, it is impossible to speak of any
distinction of class or social status. The agriculturists here are as
highly respected, as cultured gentlemen, as the learned, the artists, or
the higher officials; and there is nothing to prevent those who harmonise
with them in character and sentiment from treating them as friends and
equals in society.
But the women--elsewhere the staunchest upholders of aristocratic
exclusiveness--in this country are the most zealous advocates of a complete
amalgamation of all the different sections of the population. The Freeland
woman, almost without exception, has attained to a very high degree of
ethical and intellectual culture. Relieved of all material anxiety and
toil, her sole vocation is to ennoble herself, to quicken her understanding
for all that is good and lofty. As she is delivered from the degrading
necessity of finding in her husband one upon whom she is dependent for her
livelihood, as she does not derive her social position from the occupation
of her husband, but from her own personal worth, she is consequently free
from that haughty exclusiveness which is to be found wherever real
excellences are wanting. The women of the so-called better classes among us
at home treat their less fortunate sisters with such repellent arrogance
simply because they cannot get rid of the instinctive feeling that these
poorer sisters would have very well occupied their own places, and _vice
versâ_, had their husbands been changed. And even when it is not so, when
the European 'lady' actually does possess a higher ethical and intellectual
character, she is obliged to confess that her position in the opinion of
the world depends less upon her own qualities than upon the rank and
position of her husband--that is, upon another, who could just as well have
placed any other woman upon the borrowed throne. Schopenhauer is not
altogether wrong: women are mostly engaged in one and the same
pursuit--man-hunting--and it is the envy of competition that lies at the
bottom of their pride. Only he forgets to add, or rather he does not know,
that this pursuit, which is common to all women, and which he lashes so
unmercifully, is, with all its hateful evil consequences, the inevitable
result of their lack of legal rights, and is in no way indissolubly bound
up with their nature.
The women here, who are free and endowed with equal legal rights with the
men in the highest sense of the words, exhibit none of this pride in the
external relations of life. Even when the calling or the wealth of the
husband might give rise to a certain social distinction, they would never
recognise it, but allow themselves to be guided in their social intercourse
simply by personal characteristics. It is the most talented, the most
amiable woman whose friendship they most eagerly seek, whatever may be the
position of the woman's husband. Hence you can understand that Mrs. Moro
could select her husband without having to make the slightest sacrifice in
her relation to Freeland 'society.'
Whilst we are upon this subject, let me say a few words as to the character
of society here. Social life here is very bright and animated. Families
that are intimate with each other meet together without ceremony almost
every evening; and there is conversation, music, and, among the young
people, not a little dancing. There is nothing particular in all this; but
the very peculiar, and to the stranger at first altogether inexplicable,
attraction of Freeland society is due to the prevailing tone of the most
perfect freedom in combination with the loftiest nobility and the most
exquisite delicacy. When I had enjoyed it a few times, I began to long for
the pleasure of these reunions, without at first being able to account for
the charm which they exercised upon me. At last I arrived at the conviction
that what made social intercourse here so richly enjoyable must be mainly
the genuine human affection which characterises life in Freeland.
Social reunions in Europe are essentially nothing more than masquerades in
which those present indulge in reciprocal lying--meetings of foes, who
attempt to hide under courtly grimaces the ill-will they bear each other,
but who nevertheless utterly fail to deceive each other. And under an
exploiting system of society this cannot be prevented, for antagonism of
interests is there the rule, and true solidarity of interests a very rare
and purely accidental exception. To cherish a genuine affection for our
fellow-men is with us a virtue, the exercise of which demands more than an
ordinary amount of self-denial; and everyone knows that nine-tenths of the
wearers of those politely grinning masks would fall upon each other in
bitter hatred if the inherited and acquired restraints of conventional good
manners were for a moment to be laid aside. At such reunions one feels very
much as those miscellaneous beasts may be supposed to feel who are confined
together in a common cage for the delectation of the spectacle-loving
public. The only difference is that our two-legged tigers, panthers,
lynxes, wolves, bears, and hyenas are better trained than their four-legged
types; the latter glide about fiercely snarling at each other, with
difficulty restraining their murderous passions as they cast side-glances
at the lash of their tamer, whilst the ill-will lurking in the hearts of
the former is to be detected only by the closest observer through some
malicious glance of the eye, or some other scarcely perceptible movement.
In fact, so complete is the training of the two-legged carnivora that they
themselves are sometimes deceived by it; there are moments when the hyenas
seriously believe that their polite grinning at the tiger is honestly
meant, and when the tiger fancies that his subdued growls conceal a genial
affection and friendship towards his fellow-beasts. But these are only
fleeting moments of fond self-deception; and in general one cannot get rid
of the sensation of being among natural enemies, who, but for the external
restraints, would fly at our throats. The Freelanders, on the contrary,
feel that they are among true and honourable friends when they find
themselves in the company of other men. They have nothing to hide from one
another, they have no wish either to take advantage of or to injure one
another. It is true that there is emulation between them; but this cannot
destroy the sentiment of friendly comradeship, since the success of the
victor profits the conquered as well. Genial candour, an almost childlike
ingenuousness, are therefore in all circumstances natural to them; and it
is this, together with their joyous view of life and their intellectual
many-sidedness, which lends such a marvellous charm to Freeland society.
But let me go on with the story of my experiences here. Yesterday we saw
for the first time in Freeland a drunken man! We--my father and I--had,
after dinner, been with David for a short walk on the shore of the lake,
where most of the Eden Vale hotels are situated. As we were returning home
we met a drunken man, who staggered up to us and stutteringly asked the way
to his inn. He was evidently a new-comer. David asked us to go the
remaining few steps homewards without him, and he took the man by the arm
and led him towards his inn. I joined David in this kindly act, whilst my
father went home. When we had also got home we found my father engaged in a
very lively conversation with Mrs. Key over this little adventure. 'Only
think,' cried he to me, 'Mrs. Ney says we should think ourselves fortunate
in having seen what is one of the rarest of sights in this country! She has
lived in Freeland twenty-five years, and has seen only three cases of
drunkenness; and she is convinced that at this moment there is not another
man in Eden Vale who has ever drunk to intoxication! You Freelanders'--he
turned now to David--'are certainly no teetotallers; your beer and
palm-wine are excellent; your wines leave nothing to be desired; and you do
not seem to me to be people who merely keep these good things ready to
offer to an occasional guest. Does it really never happen that some of you
drink a little more than enough to quench your thirst?'
'It is as my mother says. We like to drink a good drop, and that not
seldom; and I will not deny that on festive occasions the inspiration
begotten of wine here and there makes itself pretty evident; nevertheless,
a Freelander incapably drunk is one of the rarest phenomena. If you are so
much surprised at this, ask yourself whether well-bred and cultured men are
accustomed to get drunk in Europe and America. I know that happens even
among you only very rarely, although public opinion there is less strict
upon this point than it is here. But in Freeland there are no persons who
are compelled to seek forgetfulness of their misery in intoxication, and
the examples of such persons cannot therefore serve to accustom the public
to the sight of this most degrading of all vices. Many, I know, think that
the disgusting picture afforded by drunken persons is the best means of
exciting a feeling of repugnance towards this vice--a view which is
probably derived from Plutarch's statement that the Lacedemonians used to
make their helots drunk in order to serve as deterring examples to the
Spartan youth. This account may be true or false, but an argument in favour
of the theory that example deters by its disgusting character can be based
upon it only by the most thoughtless; for it is a well-attested fact that
the Spartans--the rudest of all the Greeks--were more addicted to
drunkenness than any other Hellenic tribe. The "deterring" example of the
helots had therefore very little effect. It is because in this country
drunkenness is so extremely rare that it excites such special disgust; and
as, moreover, the principal source of this vice--misery--is removed, the
vice itself may be regarded as absolutely extinct among us. This result has
been not a little assisted by the circumstance that merrymakings and
festivities in Freeland are always largely participated in by women. Since
we honour woman as the embodiment and representative of human enjoyment, as
the loftiest custodian of all that ennobles and adorns our earthly
existence, we are unable to conceive of genuine mirth without the
participation of women. You have seen enough of our Freeland women to
understand that indecorous excesses of any kind in their presence are
wellnigh inconceivable.'
'We are not so much surprised that you Freelanders are proof against this
vice,' replied my father. 'But your respected mother tells us that even
among the immigrants drunkards are as rare as white ravens. Now, I am not
aware that teetotal apostles keep watch on your frontiers. The immigrants,
at any rate many of them, belong to those races and classes which at home
are by no means averse to drinking, and indeed to drunkenness in its most
disgusting forms; what induces these people, when they get here, to become
so persistently abstemious?'
'First, the removal of those things which in Europe and America lead to
drunkenness. Sometimes, during my student-travels in Europe--when I studied
not merely art, but also the manners and customs of your country--I have
gone into the dens of the poor and have there found conditions under which
it would have appeared positively miraculous if those who lived there had
not sought in the dram-bottle forgetfulness of their torture, their shame,
and their degradation. I saw persons to the number of twenty or thirty--all
ages and sexes thrown indiscriminately together--sleeping in one room,
which was only large enough for those who were in it to crowd close
together upon the filthy straw that covered the floor--men who from day to
day had no other home than the factory or the ale-house. And these were not
the breadless people, but persons in regular employ; and not exceptional
cases, but types of the labourers of large districts. That such men should
seek in beastly intoxication an escape from thoughts of their degradation,
of the shame of their wives and daughters--that they should lose all
consciousness of their human dignity, never astonished me, and still less
provoked me to indignation. I felt astonishment and indignation only at the
folly which allowed such wretchedness to continue, as if it were in reality
a product of an unchangeable law of nature. And it seems to me quite as
natural that such men, when they get here--where they regain their dignity
and their rights, where on every hand gladness and beauty smile upon
them--should along with their misery cast away the vices of misery. These
immigrants all gladly and eagerly adapt themselves to their new
surroundings. Most of them cannot expect to become in all respects our
equals: the more wretched, the more degraded, they were before, so much the
more boundless is their delight, their gratitude, at being here treated by
everyone as equals; on no account would they forfeit the respect of their
new associates, and, as these latter universally avoid drunkenness, so the
former avoid it also.'
'You have explained to us why there are no drunkards in this country,' I
said. 'But it appears to me much more remarkable that your principle of
granting a right of maintenance to all who are incapable of working,
whatever may be the occasion of that incapacity, has not overwhelmed you
with invalids and old people without number. Or have we yet to learn of
some provisions made to defend you from such guests? And how, without
exercising a painfully inquisitorial control, can you prevent the lazy from
enjoying the careless leisure which the right of maintenance guarantees to
real invalids? I can perfectly well understand that your intelligent
Freelanders, with their multitudinous wants, will not be content with forty
per cent., when a little easy labour would earn them a hundred per cent.
But among the fresh immigrants there must certainly be many who at first
can scarcely know what to do with the full earnings of their labour, and
who at any rate--so I should suppose--would prefer to draw their
maintenance-allowance and live in idleness rather than engage in what, from
their standpoint, must appear to be quite superfluous labour. Perhaps, with
respect to the right to a maintenance-allowance, you make a distinction
between natives and immigrants; if so, what gives a claim to maintenance?'
'No distinction is made with respect to the right to a
maintenance-allowance, a sufficient qualification for which is a
certificate of illness signed by one of our public physicians, or proof of
having attained to the age of sixty years. The greatest liberality is
exercised on principle in granting the medical certificate; indeed,
everyone has the right, if one physician has refused to grant a
certificate, to go to any other physician, as we prefer to support ten lazy
impostors rather than reject one real invalid. Nevertheless we have among
us as few foreign idlers as native ones. In this matter also, the influence
of our institutions is found to be powerful enough to nip all such
tendencies in the bud. Note, above all, that the strongest ambition of the
immigrant is to become like us, to become incorporated with us; in order to
this, if he is healthy and strong, he must participate in our affairs. They
understand human nature very imperfectly who think that proletarians in
whom there lingers a trace of human dignity would, when they have an
opportunity of taking part in important enterprises as fully enfranchised
self-controlling men, forego that opportunity and prefer to allow
themselves to be supported by the commonwealth. The new-comers are
_anxious_ to participate in all that is to be earned and done in this
country; in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred no other stimulus to work is
needed than this. And the few to whom this stimulus is not sufficient, soon
find themselves, when the novelty of their surroundings has worn off,
compelled by _ennui_ and isolation to turn to some productive activity. We
have here no public-house life in the European sense, no consorting of
habitual idlers: here a man _must_ work if he would feel at ease, and
therefore everyone works who is capable of doing so. The most stubborn
indolence cannot resist for more than a few weeks at the longest the
magical influence of the thought that in order to dare to salute the first
in the land as an equal no other title of honour or influence is necessary
than any honest work. Consequently, even among the immigrants strong
healthy idlers are extremely rare exceptions, which we allow to exist as
cases of mental disease. But even these must not suffer want among us.
Without possessing any recognised right to it, they receive what they need,
and even more than is absolutely necessary according to European ideas.
'As to the question whether the right of maintenance does not attract into
this country all the bodily and mental incapables, the cripples and the old
people, of the rest of the world, I can only answer that Freeland
irresistibly attracts everyone who hears of the character of its
institutions; and that therefore the proportion between the immigrants who
are capable of working and those who are not is dependent simply upon
whether such information reaches the one class more quickly and more easily
than it does the other. We reject no one, and admit the cripple to our
country as freely as the able-bodied worker; but it lies in the nature of
things that the ablest, the most vigorous, offer themselves in larger
numbers than those who are weak in body or in mind.
'From the founding of our commonwealth we have insisted upon the ability to
read and write sufficiently to be able to participate in all our rights.
Freedom and equality of rights assume the possession of a certain degree of
knowledge, from which we _cannot_ exempt anyone. It is true we might resort
to the expedient of exercising guardianship over the untaught; but to do
this would be to open up to the authorities a sphere of influence which we
hold to be incompatible with real freedom, and we therefore treat
illiterate immigrants as strangers, or, if you will, as guests whom it is
everyone's duty to assist as much as possible, and who, so far as they show
themselves capable of doing anything, suffer no material disadvantage in
comparison with the natives, but are not allowed to exercise any political
right.'
'But how,' asked my father--'how do you arrive at a knowledge of the mental
condition of your ignorant fellow-countrymen? Have you a special board for
this purpose; and do no unpleasantnesses spring from such an inquisition?'
'We make no inquiry, and no board troubles itself about the knowledge of
the people. At first, in order not to be overwhelmed by foreign ignorance,
we took the precaution of excluding illiterates from gratuitous admission
into Freeland, but for the last nineteen years we have ceased to exclude
any. Everyone, without any exception, has since been free to settle
gratuitously in any part whatever of Freeland. No one asks him what he
knows; he is free to make full use of all our institutions, to exercise all
our rights; only he must do so in the same way as we, and that is
impossible to the illiterate. Whithersoever he goes--to the central bank,
to any of the associations, to the polling-places--he must read and write,
and as a matter of course write with understanding--must be familiar with
printed and written words; in short, he must possess a certain degree of
culture, from the possession of which we cannot exempt him even if we
would.'
'Then,' said my father, 'your boasted equality of rights exists only for
educated persons?'
'Of course,' explained Mrs. Ney. 'Or do you really believe that perfectly
uneducated persons possess the power of disciplining themselves? Certainly,
real freedom and equality of rights presuppose some degree of culture. The
freedom and equality of rights of poverty and barbarism can, it is true,
exist among ignorant barbarians, but wealth and leisure are the products of
higher art and culture, and can be possessed only by truly civilised men.
He who would make men free and rich must first give them knowledge--this
lies in the nature of things; and it is not our fault, but yours, that so
many of your compatriots must be educated into freedom.'
'There you are right,' sighed my father. 'And what has been your experience
of these illiterate immigrants?'
'The experience that this exclusion from perfect equality of rights, being
connected with no material disadvantage, operates as an absolutely
irresistible stimulus to acquire as quickly as possible what was left
unacquired in the old home. For the use of such immigrants we have
established special schools for adults; neighbours and friends interest
themselves in them, and the people learn with touching eagerness. They by
no means content themselves with acquiring merely that amount of knowledge
which is requisite to the exercise of all the Freeland rights, but they
honestly endeavour to gain all the knowledge possible; and the cases are
very few in which the study of a few years has not converted such
immigrants into thoroughly cultured men.'
'And as to the immigrants who reach us in a really invalided condition,'
interposed David, 'we fulfil towards them the duty of maintenance as if
they had grown old and weak in Freeland workshops. We have not detected any
considerable increase of our annual expenditure in consequence. It is a
characteristic fact, moreover, that those who reach us as invalids make for
the most part only a partial use of their right to claim a
maintenance-allowance. These pitiable sufferers as a rule take some time to
accustom themselves to the Freeland standard of higher enjoyments, and at
first they have no use for the wealth which streams in upon them.'
'I must ask you to remove yet one other difficulty, and one that seems to
me to be the greatest of all. What of the criminals, against whose
immigration you are not protected? To me it seems most strange that, with
the millions of your Freeland population, you can dispense with both police
and penal code; and I am utterly at a loss to understand how you dispose of
those vagabonds and criminals who are sure to be drawn hither, like wasps
by honey, by your enticing lenity, which will not punish but merely reform
the bad? It is true you have told us that the justices of the peace
appointed to decide civil disputes have authority in the first instance in
criminal cases also, and that an appeal is allowed from these to a higher
judicial court; but you added that these judges had all of them as good as
nothing to do, and that only very rare cases occurred in which the
reformatory treatment adopted in this country had to be resorted to. Have
your institutions such a strong ameliorating power over hardened
criminals?'
'Certainly,' answered Mrs. Ney. 'And if you carefully consider what is the
essential and ultimate source of all crime, you will find this is quite
intelligible. Do not forget that justice and law in the exploiting form of
society make demands on the individual which are directly opposed to human
nature. The hungry shivering man is expected to pass by the abundance of
others without appropriating that which he needs to satisfy the imperative
demands of nature--nay, he must not indulge in envy and ill-will towards
those who have in plenty what he so cruelly lacks! He is to love his
fellow-man, though just where the conflict of interests is the most bitter,
because it is waged around the very essentials of existence--just there,
where his fellow-man is his rival, his tyrant, his slave, in every case his
enemy, from whose injury he derives gain and from whose gain injury accrues
to him! That for thousands of years all this has been inevitable cannot be
denied; but it would be foolish to overlook the fact that the same cruel
sequence which made the exploitation of man by man--that is, injustice--the
necessary antecedent to the progress of civilisation, also called into
existence crime--that is, the rebellion of the individual against the order
which is both horrible in itself and yet indispensable to the welfare of
the community. The exploiting system of society requires the individual to
do what harms him, because the welfare of the community demands it, and
demands it not as a specially commendable and pre-eminently meritorious
act, which can be expected of only a few noble natures in whom public
spirit has suppressed every trace of egoism, but as something which
everyone is to do as a matter of course, the doing of which is not called a
virtue, though the not doing of it is called a crime. The hero who
sacrifices his life to his fatherland, to mankind, subordinates his own to
a higher interest, and never will the human race be able to dispense with
such sacrifices, but will always demand of its noblest that love of wife
shall conquer love of self; nay, it may be stated as a logical consequence
of progressive civilisation that this demand shall grow more and more
imperative and meet with an ever readier response. But the name of this
response is 'heroism,' its lack involves no crime; it cannot be enforced,
but it is a voluntary tribute of love paid by noble natures. But in the
economic domain a similar, nay, more difficult, heroism is required
especially from the lowest and the most wretched, and must be required of
such as long as society is based upon a foundation of exploitage, and
'criminal' must be the name of all those who show themselves to be less
great than a Leonidas, or a Curtius, or a Winkelried on the battle-field,
or than those generally nameless heroes of human love who have fearlessly
sacrificed themselves in the conflict with the inimical powers of nature at
the bidding of the holy voice within them--the voice of human love.
'But we in Freeland ask from no one such heroism as our right. In economic
matters we require of the individual nothing that is antagonistic to his
own interests; it follows as a matter of course that he never rebels
against our laws. That which under the old order could be asserted only by
self-complacent thoughtlessness, is a truth among us--namely, that economic
morality is nothing but rational egoism. You will therefore find it
intelligible that _reasonable_ men cannot break our laws.
'But you ask, further, how does it happen that those unfortunates who in
other countries are driven into crime, not by want, but by their evil
disposition--and it cannot be denied that there are such--do not give us
any trouble? Here also the question suggests its own answer. This hatred
towards society and its members is not natural, is not innate in even the
worst of men, but is the product of the injustice in the midst of which
these habitual criminals live. The love of wife and of one's fellows is
ineradicably implanted in every social animal--and man is such an animal;
but its expression can be suppressed by artificially excited hatred and
envy. It is true that long-continued exercise of evil instincts will
gradually make them so powerfully predominant as to make it appear that the
social nature of man has been transformed into that of the beast of prey,
no longer linked to society by any residuum of love or attachment. But it
only _seems_ so. The most hardened criminal cannot long resist the
influence of genuine human affection; hatred and defiance hold out only so
long as the unfortunate sees himself deprived of the possibility of
obtaining recognition in the community of the happy, as one possessed of
equal rights with the others. If this hope is held out to him all defiance
ceases.
'I question if there has ever been a large percentage of men of criminal
antecedents among the immigrants into Freeland. As my son has already said,
the proportion in which different categories of men have come hither
depends not upon the greater or less degree of misery, but upon the
intelligence of the men. Since the criminal classes in the five parts of
the world know relatively less of Freeland than do the honest and
intelligent workers, I am convinced that relatively fewer of them have come
hither. At any rate, we have seen very few signs of their presence here. We
have a few dozen incorrigibly vicious persons in the country, but these are
without exception incurable idiots. How these reached us I do not know; but
of course, as soon as their mental unsoundness was ascertained, they were
placed in asylums.'
This point being cleared up, my father asked for a final explanation. He
said he could perfectly understand that the Freeland institutions, being
nothing else but a logical carrying out of the principle of economic
justice, were thoroughly capable of meeting every fair and reasonable
demand. He nevertheless expressed his astonishment at the perfect
satisfaction which the people universally exhibited with themselves and
their condition. Did not _unreasonable_ party agitations create
difficulties in Freeland? Particularly he wished to know if Communism and
Nihilism, which were ever raising their heads threateningly in Europe, gave
no trouble here. 'In the eyes of a genuine Communist,' he cried, 'you are
here nothing but arrant aristocrats! There is not a trace of absolute
equality among you! What value can your boasted equality of _rights_ have
in the eyes of people who act upon the principle that every mouthful more
of bread enjoyed by one than is enjoyed by another is theft; and who
therefore, to prevent one man from possessing more than another, abolish
all property whatever? And yet there are no police, no soldiers, to keep
these Bedlamites in order! Give us the recipe according to which the
nihilistic and communistic fanaticism can be rendered so harmless.'
'Nothing easier,' answered Mrs. Ney. 'Supply everyone to satiety, and no
one will covet what others have. Absolute equality is an hallucination of
the hunger-fever, nothing more. Men are _not_ equal, either in their
faculties or in their requirements. Your appetite is stronger than mine;
perhaps you are fond of gay clothing, I would not give a farthing for it;
perhaps I am dainty, while you prefer a plain diet; and so on without end.
What sense would there be in attempting to assimilate our several needs? I
do not care to inquire whether it is possible, whether the violence
necessary to the attempt would not destroy both freedom and progress; the
idea itself is so foolish that it would be absolutely inconceivable how
sane men could entertain it, had it not been a fact that one of us is able
to satisfy neither his strong nor his weak appetite, his preference neither
for fine nor for quiet clothing, neither for dainties nor for plain food,
but must endure brutal torturing misery. When to that is added the mistake
that my superfluity is the cause of your deficiency, it becomes
intelligible why you and those who sympathise with you in your sufferings
should call for division of property--absolutely equal division. In a word,
Communism has no other source than the perception of the boundless misery
of a large majority of men, together with the erroneous opinion that this
misery can be alleviated only by the aid of the existing wealth of
individuals. This view is inconceivably foolish, for it is necessary only
to open one's eyes to see what a pitiful use is made of the power which man
already possesses to create wealth. But this foolish notion was not hatched
by the Communists; your orthodox economists gave currency to the doctrine
that increased productiveness of labour cannot increase the already
existing value--it was they, and not the Communists, who blinded mankind to
the true connexion between economic phenomena. Communists are in reality
merely credulous adherents of the so-called "fundamental truths" of
orthodox economy; and the only distinction between them and the ruling
party among you is that the Communists are hungry while the ruling classes
are full-fed. When it is perceived that nothing but perfect equality of
rights is needed _in order to create more than enough for all_, Communism
disappears of itself like an evil tormenting dream. You may require--even
if you do not carry it out--that all men shall be put upon the same bread
rations, so long as you believe that the commonwealth upon which we are all
compelled to depend will furnish nothing more than mere bread, for we all
wish to eat our fill. To require that the same sorts and quantity of roast
meats, pastry, and confections shall be forced upon everyone, when it is
found that there is enough of these good things for all, would be simply
puerile. Hence there is and can be no Communist among us.
'For the same reason Nihilism is impossible among us, for that also is
nothing more than an hallucination due to the despair of hunger, and can
flourish only on the soil of the orthodox view of the world. Whilst
Communism is the practical application which hunger makes of the thesis
that human labour does not suffice to create a superfluity for all,
Nihilism is the inference drawn by despair from the doctrine that culture
and civilisation are incompatible with equality of rights. It is orthodoxy
which has given currency to this doctrine; certainly, as the spokesman of
the well-to-do, it holds no other inference to be conceivable than that the
eternally disinherited masses must submit to their fate in the interests of
civilisation. But the party of the hungry turn in foaming rage against this
civilisation, the very defenders of which assert that it can never help the
enormous majority of men, and therefore can do nothing more for them than
make them increasingly conscious of their misery. We have demonstrated that
civilisation is not merely compatible with, but is necessarily implied in,
the economic equality of rights. Hence Nihilism also must be unknown among
us.'
'Then you think,' I said, 'that equality of actual income has nothing to do
with equality _of rights_? For my part, I must admit that that useless
heaping up of superfluous riches, which we have occasion to observe in our
European society, has grown to be a very objectionable thing, even though I
am convinced that the misery is not, in the slightest degree, caused by
this accumulation of wealth in the hands of a few, and would not be
materially alleviated by a general distribution of it. A social system that
does not prevent this excessive accumulation in a few hands must remain
imperfect, whatever provision it may make in other directions for the
welfare of all.'
'And I cannot altogether get rid of the same feeling,' said my father. 'But
my opinion is that in this revolt against inequality in itself we need see
nothing more than the moral repulsion which every impartial thoughtful man
feels against what have hitherto been the _causes_ of the inequality. Among
us at home, we see that large fortunes are very seldom acquired by means of
pre-eminent individual talent, but are, as a rule, due to the exploitation
of other men; and, when acquired, they are sure to be employed in further
exploitation. This it is that arouses our indignation. If a fortune,
however great, were acquired merely by pre-eminent talent, and employed to
no other end than the heightening of the owner's personal enjoyment--as is
the case in Freeland--the repugnance we now feel would soon pass away. What
does our amiable hostess think upon this point?'
'The repugnance to excessively large fortunes,' replied Mrs. Ney, 'is not,
in my opinion, based upon any injustice in their origin or use, but has a
deeper cause--namely, the fact that, apart from very rare exceptions, the
difference of capacity in men is not so great as to justify such enormous
differences of fortune. Most of the wealth of a highly civilised society
consists of what was bequeathed by the past; and the portion actually
produced by existing individuals is so relatively small that a certain
degree of equality--not merely of rights, but also of enjoyment and
use--possesses a basis in fact and is a requirement of justice. Every
advance in civilisation is synonymous with a progressive diminution of the
differences. Carry your thoughts back to primitive conditions, when the
individual, in his struggle for existence, was almost entirely shut up to
the use of his congenital appliances, and you will find the differences
were very great: only the strong, the agile, the cunning could hold their
own; the less gifted were compelled to give way. As the growth of
civilisation added to men's appliances, so that even the less gifted was
able to procure what was necessary to his subsistence, the difference in
the achievements of different individuals at first remained very great. The
skilful hunter gets a far richer booty than the less skilful one; the
strong and nimble agriculturist achieves with the spade a manifold greater
result than the weak and the slow. The invention of the plough very
materially reduces this difference, and--so far as the difference depends
upon physical capacity--the invention of the power-machine reduces it
almost to _nil_. Machinery more and more takes the place of the energy of
human muscles; and, at the same time, the results of the talent and
experience of previous generations accumulate and, in a growing ratio,
exceed the invention of the actual living generation. It is true that in
intellectual matters the individual differences do not diminish so
completely as in matters dependent upon the corporal powers; but even the
intellectual differences do not justify the colossal inequality suggested
to the mind by the words "a large fortune." The man who drives a
steam-plough may be either a giant or a dwarf, but he gets through the same
amount of work. Quick-wittedness and discretion in conducting the process
of production will considerably increase the result; but in the present day
an achievement which shall exceed the average a hundredfold or a
thousandfold in value is possible only to genius, and it is only to genius
that our sense of justice would accord it.
'I believe that in this respect also our Freeland institutions have hit the
mark. Among us inequality exists only so far as the difference of capacity
justifies it; and we have seen that, in proportion as wealth increases, the
distribution of it becomes automatically more and more equal. As in this
country everything is controlled by a competition which is free in fact,
and not in name merely, it follows as a necessary result that every kind of
capacity is better paid the rarer it is. When we first founded our
commonwealth knowledge and experience in business were rare--that is, the
demand was greater than the supply; they were therefore able to command a
higher price than ordinary labour. This is no longer the case; thanks to
the general improvement in culture and the intensive participation of all
in all kinds of business, head-work, as such, has lost its claim to
exceptional wages. Only when superior intellectual gifts are connected with
knowledge and experience in business can the man who performs head-work
expect to obtain higher pay than the manual labourer. Yet even here there
is to be seen a _relative_ diminution of the higher pay. In the early years
of Freeland a specially talented leader of production could demand six
times as much as the average earnings of a labourer; at present three times
as much as the average is a rare maximum, which in the domain of material
production is exceeded only in isolated cases of pre-eminent inventors. On
the other hand, the earnings of gifted authors and artists in this country
have no definite limits; as their works are above competition, so the
rewards they obtain bear no proportion to those obtainable in ordinary
business.
'But in this way, I think, the most delicate sense of equality can be
satisfied. Economic equality of rights never produces absolute and
universal equality; but it is really accompanied by a general levelling of
the enjoyments of all, and leaves unaffected only such incongruities as the
most fastidious sense of justice will recognise as having their basis in
the nature of things.'
Here ended this conversation, which will ever be a memorable one to me,
because it confirmed my decision to become a Freelander.