given by the possession of land. The first perceptions of men seem
always to be that land is common property; but the rude devices by which
this is at first recognized--such as annual partitions or cultivation in
common--are consistent with only a low stage of development. The idea of
property, which naturally arises with reference to things of human
production, is easily transferred to land, and an institution which when
population is sparse merely secures to the improver and user the due
reward of his labor, finally, as population becomes dense and rent
arises, operates to strip the producer of his wages. Not merely this,
but the appropriation of rent for public purposes, which is the only way
in which, with anything like a high development, land can be readily
retained as common property, becomes, when political and religious power
passes into the hands of a class, the ownership of the land by that
class, and the rest of the community become merely tenants. And wars and
conquests, which tend to the concentration of political power and to the
institution of slavery, naturally result, where social growth has given
land a value, in the appropriation of the soil. A dominant class, who
concentrate power in their hands, will likewise soon concentrate
ownership of the land. To them will fall large partitions of conquered
land, which the former inhabitants will till as tenants or serfs, and
the public domain, or common lands, which in the natural course of
social growth are left for a while in every country, and in which state
the primitive system of village culture leaves pasture and woodland, are
readily acquired, as we see by modern instances. And inequality once
established, the ownership of land tends to concentrate as development
goes on.
I am merely attempting to set forth the general fact that as a social
development goes on, inequality tends to establish itself, and not to
point out the particular sequence, which must necessarily vary with
different conditions. But this main fact makes intelligible all the
phenomena of petrifaction and retrogression. The unequal distribution of
the power and wealth gained by the integration of men in society tends
to check, and finally to counterbalance, the force by which improvements
are made and society advances. On the one side, the masses of the
community are compelled to expend their mental powers in merely
maintaining existence. On the other side, mental power is expended in
keeping up and intensifying the system of inequality, in ostentation,
luxury, and warfare. A community divided into a class that rules and a
class that is ruled--into the very rich and the very poor--may "build
like giants and finish like jewelers;" but it will be monuments of
ruthless pride and barren vanity, or of a religion turned from its
office of elevating man into an instrument for keeping him down.
Invention may for a while to some degree go on; but it will be the
invention of refinements in luxury, not the inventions that relieve toil
and increase power. In the arcana of temples or in the chambers of court
physicians knowledge may still be sought; but it will be hidden as a
secret thing, or if it dares come out to elevate common thought or
brighten common life, it will be trodden down as a dangerous innovator.
For as it tends to lessen the mental power devoted to improvement, so
does inequality tend to render men adverse to improvement. How strong is
the disposition to adhere to old methods among the classes who are kept
in ignorance by being compelled to toil for a mere existence, is too
well known to require illustration, and on the other hand the
conservatism of the classes to whom the existing social adjustment gives
special advantages is equally apparent. This tendency to resist
innovation, even though it be improvement, is observable in every
special organization--in religion, in law, in medicine, in science, in
trade guilds; and it becomes intense just as the organization is close.
A close corporation has always an instinctive dislike of innovation and
innovators, which is but the expression of an instinctive fear that
change may tend to throw down the barriers which hedge it in from the
common herd, and so rob it of importance and power; and it is always
disposed to guard carefully its special knowledge or skill.
It is in this way that petrifaction succeeds progress. The advance of
inequality necessarily brings improvement to a halt, and as it still
persists or provokes unavailing reactions, draws even upon the mental
power necessary for maintenance, and retrogression begins.
These principles make intelligible the history of civilization.
In the localities where climate, soil, and physical conformation tended
least to separate men as they increased, and where, accordingly, the
first civilizations grew up, the internal resistances to progress would
naturally develop in a more regular and thorough manner than where
smaller communities, which in their separation had developed
diversities, were afterward brought together into a closer association.
It is this, it seems to me, which accounts for the general
characteristics of the earlier civilizations as compared with the later
civilizations of Europe. Such homogeneous communities, developing from
the first without the jar of conflict between different customs, laws,
religions, etc., would show a much greater uniformity. The concentrating
and conservative forces would all, so to speak, pull together. Rival
chieftains would not counterbalance each other, nor diversities of
belief hold the growth of priestly influence in check. Political and
religious power, wealth and knowledge, would thus tend to concentrate in
the same centres. The same causes which tended to produce the hereditary
king and hereditary priest would tend to produce the hereditary artisan
and laborer, and to separate society into castes. The power which
association sets free for progress would thus be wasted, and barriers to
further progress be gradually raised. The surplus energies of the masses
would be devoted to the construction of temples, palaces, and pyramids;
to ministering to the pride and pampering the luxury of their rulers;
and should any disposition to improvement arise among the classes of
leisure it would at once be checked by the dread of innovation. Society
developing in this way must at length stop in a conservatism which
permits no further progress.
How long such a state of complete petrifaction, when once reached, will
continue, seems to depend upon external causes, for the iron bonds of
the social environment which grows up repress disintegrating forces as
well as improvement. Such a community can be most easily conquered, for
the masses of the people are trained to a passive acquiescence in a life
of hopeless labor. If the conquerors merely take the place of the ruling
class, as the Hyksos did in Egypt and the Tartars in China, everything
will go on as before. If they ravage and destroy, the glory of palace
and temple remains but in ruins, population becomes sparse, and
knowledge and art are lost.
European civilization differs in character from civilizations of the
Egyptian type because it springs not from the association of a
homogeneous people developing from the beginning, or at least for a long
time, under the same conditions, but from the association of peoples who
in separation had acquired distinctive social characteristics, and whose
smaller organizations longer prevented the concentration of power and
wealth in one centre. The physical conformation of the Grecian peninsula
is such as to separate the people at first into a number of small
communities. As those petty republics and nominal kingdoms ceased to
waste their energies in warfare, and the peaceable co-operation of
commerce extended, the light of civilization blazed up. But the
principle of association was never strong enough to save Greece from
inter-tribal war, and when this was put an end to by conquest, the
tendency to inequality, which had been combated with various devices by
Grecian sages and statesmen, worked its result, and Grecian valor, art,
and literature became things of the past. And so in the rise and
extension, the decline and fall, of Roman civilization, may be seen the
working of these two principles of association and equality, from the
combination of which springs progress.
Springing from the association of the independent husbandmen and free
citizens of Italy, and gaining fresh strength from conquests which
brought hostile nations into common relations, the Roman power hushed
the world in peace. But the tendency to inequality, checking real
progress from the first, increased as the Roman civilization extended.
The Roman civilization did not petrify as did the homogeneous
civilizations where the strong bonds of custom and superstition that
held the people in subjection probably also protected them, or at any
rate kept the peace between rulers and ruled: it rotted, declined and
fell. Long before Goth or Vandal had broken through the cordon of the
legions, even while her frontiers were advancing, Rome was dead at the
heart. Great estates had ruined Italy. Inequality had dried up the
strength and destroyed the vigor of the Roman world. Government became
despotism, which even assassination could not temper; patriotism became
servility; vices the most foul flouted themselves in public; literature
sank to puerilities; learning was forgotten; fertile districts became
waste without the ravages of war--everywhere inequality produced decay,
political, mental, moral, and material. The barbarism which overwhelmed
Rome came not from without, but from within. It was the necessary
product of the system which had substituted slaves and colonii for the
independent husbandmen of Italy, and carved the provinces into estates
of senatorial families.
Modern civilization owes its superiority to the growth of equality with
the growth of association. Two great causes contributed to this--the
splitting up of concentrated power into innumerable little centers by
the influx of the Northern nations, and the influence of Christianity.
Without the first there would have been the petrifaction and slow decay
of the Eastern Empire, where church and state were closely married and
loss of external power brought no relief of internal tyranny. And but
for the other there would have been barbarism without principle of
association or amelioration. The petty chiefs and allodial lords who
everywhere grasped local sovereignty held each other in check. Italian
cities recovered their ancient liberty, free towns were founded, village
communities took root, and serfs acquired rights in the soil they
tilled. The leaven of Teutonic ideas of equality worked through the
disorganized and disjointed fabric of society. And although society was
split up into an innumerable number of separated fragments, yet the idea
of closer association was always present--it existed in the
recollections of a universal empire; it existed in the claims of a
universal church.
Though Christianity became distorted and alloyed in percolating through
a rotting civilization; though pagan gods were taken into her pantheon,
and pagan forms into her ritual, and pagan ideas into her creed; yet her
essential idea of the equality of men was never wholly destroyed. And
two things happened of the utmost moment to incipient civilization--the
establishment of the papacy and the celibacy of the clergy. The first
prevented the spiritual power from concentrating in the same lines as
the temporal power; and the latter prevented the establishment of a
priestly caste, during a time when all power tended to hereditary form.
In her efforts for the abolition of slavery; in her Truce of God; in her
monastic orders; in her councils which united nations, and her edicts
which ran without regard to political boundaries; in the low-born hands
in which she placed a sign before which the proudest knelt; in her
bishops who by consecration became the peers of the greatest nobles; in
her "Servant of Servants," for so his official title ran, who, by virtue
of the ring of a simple fisherman, claimed the right to arbitrate
between nations, and whose stirrup was held by kings; the Church, in
spite of everything, was yet a promoter of association, a witness for
the natural equality of men; and by the Church herself was nurtured a
spirit that, when her early work of association and emancipation was
well-nigh done--when the ties she had knit had become strong, and the
learning she had preserved had been given to the world--broke the chains
with which she would have fettered the human mind, and in a great part
of Europe rent her organization.
The rise and growth of European civilization is too vast and complex a
subject to be thrown into proper perspective and relation in a few
paragraphs; but in all its details, as in its main features, it
illustrates the truth that progress goes on just as society tends toward
closer association and greater equality. Civilization is co-operation.
Union and liberty are its factors. The great extension of
association--not alone in the growth of larger and denser communities,
but in the increase of commerce and the manifold exchanges which knit
each community together and link them with other though widely separated
communities; the growth of international and municipal law; the advances
in security of property and of person, in individual liberty, and
towards democratic government--advances, in short, towards the
recognition of the equal rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness--it is these that make our modern civilization so much
greater, so much higher, than any that has gone before. It is these that
have set free the mental power which has rolled back the veil of
ignorance which hid all but a small portion of the globe from men's
knowledge; which has measured the orbits of the circling spheres and
bids us see moving, pulsing life in a drop of water; which has opened to
us the antechamber of nature's mysteries and read the secrets of a
long-buried past; which has harnessed in our service physical forces
beside which man's efforts are puny; and increased productive power by a
thousand great inventions.
In that spirit of fatalism to which I have alluded as pervading current
literature, it is the fashion to speak even of war and slavery as means
of human progress. But war, which is the opposite of association, can
aid progress only when it prevents further war or breaks down
antisocial barriers which are themselves passive war.
As for slavery, I cannot see how it could ever have aided in
establishing freedom, and freedom, the synonym of equality is, from the
very rudest state in which man can be imagined, the stimulus and
condition of progress. Auguste Comte's idea that the institution of
slavery destroyed cannibalism is as fanciful as Elia's humorous notion
of the way mankind acquired a taste for roast pig. It assumes that a
propensity that has never been found developed in man save as the result
of the most unnatural conditions--the direst want or the most
brutalizing superstitions[46]--is an original impulse, and that he, even
in his lowest state the highest of all animals, has natural appetites
which the nobler brutes do not show. And so of the idea that slavery
began civilization by giving slave owners leisure for improvement.
Slavery never did and never could aid improvement. Whether the community
consist of a single master and a single slave, or of thousands of
masters and millions of slaves, slavery necessarily involves a waste of
human power; for not only is slave labor less productive than free
labor, but the power of masters is likewise wasted in holding and
watching their slaves, and is called away from directions in which real
improvement lies. From first to last, slavery, like every other denial
of the natural equality of men, has hampered and prevented progress.
Just in proportion as slavery plays an important part in the social
organization does improvement cease. That in the classical world slavery
was so universal, is undoubtedly the reason why the mental activity
which so polished literature and refined art never hit on any of the
great discoveries and inventions which distinguish modern civilization.
No slave-holding people ever were an inventive people. In a
slave-holding community the upper classes may become luxurious and
polished; but never inventive. Whatever degrades the laborer and robs
him of the fruits of his toil stifles the spirit of invention and
forbids the utilization of inventions and discoveries even when made. To
freedom alone is given the spell of power which summons the genii in
whose keeping are the treasures of earth and the viewless forces of the
air.
The law of human progress, what is it but the moral law? Just as social
adjustments promote justice, just as they acknowledge the equality of
right between man and man, just as they insure to each the perfect
liberty which is bounded only by the equal liberty of every other, must
civilization advance. Just as they fail in this, must advancing
civilization come to a halt and recede. Political economy and social
science cannot teach any lessons that are not embraced in the simple
truths that were taught to poor fishermen and Jewish peasants by One who
eighteen hundred years ago was crucified--the simple truths which,
beneath the warpings of selfishness and the distortions of superstition,
seem to underlie every religion that has ever striven to formulate the
spiritual yearnings of man.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 44: Chapter III, Book X, of "Progress and Poverty;" copyright,
1907, by Henry George, Richard F. George, and Anna G. de Mille. The
chapter is here reprinted by permission of Mr. Henry George, Junior, and
the publishers, Messrs. Doubleday, Page and Company.]
[Footnote 45: How easy it is for ignorance to pass into contempt and
dislike; how natural it is for us to consider any difference in manners,
customs, religion, etc., as proof of the inferiority of those who differ
from us, any one who has emancipated himself in any degree from
prejudice, and who mixes with different classes, may see in civilized
society. In religion, for instance, the spirit of the hymn--
"I'd rather be a Baptist, and wear a shining face,
Than for to be a Methodist and always fall from grace,"
is observable in all denominations. As the English Bishop said,
"Orthodoxy is my doxy, and heterodoxy is any other doxy," while the
universal tendency is to classify all outside of the orthodoxies and
heterodoxies of the prevailing religion as heathens or atheists. And the
like tendency is observable as to all other differences.--Author's
note.]
[Footnote 46: The Sandwich Islanders did honor to their good chiefs by
eating their bodies. Their bad and tyrannical chiefs they would not
touch. The New Zealanders had a notion that by eating their enemies they
acquired their strength and valor. And this seems to be the general
origin of eating prisoners of war.--Author's note.]
THE MORALS OF TRADE[47]
HERBERT SPENCER
On all sides we have found the result of long personal experience, to be
the conviction that trade is essentially corrupt. In tones of disgust or
discouragement, reprehension or derision, according to their several
natures, men in business have one after another expressed or implied
this belief. Omitting the highest mercantile classes, a few of the less
common trades, and those exceptional cases where an entire command of
the market has been obtained, the uniform testimony of competent judges
is, that success is incompatible with strict integrity. To live in the
commercial world it appears necessary to adopt its ethical code: neither
exceeding nor falling short of it--neither being less honest nor more
honest. Those who sink below its standard are expelled; while those who
rise above it are either pulled down to it or ruined. As, in
self-defence, the civilised man becomes savage among savages; so, it
seems that in self-defence, the scrupulous trader is obliged to become
as little scrupulous as his competitors. It has been said that the law
of the animal creation is--"Eat and be eaten;" and of our trading
community it may be similarly said that its law is--Cheat and be
cheated. A system of keen competition, carried on, as it is, without
adequate moral restraint, is very much a system of commercial
cannibalism. Its alternatives are--Use the same weapons as your
antagonists, or be conquered and devoured.
Of questions suggested by these facts, one of the most obvious is--Are
not the prejudices that have ever been entertained against trade and
traders, thus fully justified? do not these meannesses and
dishonesties, and the moral degradation they imply, warrant the
disrespect shown to men in business? A prompt affirmative answer will
probably be looked for; but we very much doubt whether it should be
given. We are rather of opinion that these delinquencies are products of
the average English character placed under special conditions. There is
no good reason for assuming that the trading classes are intrinsically
worse than other classes. Men taken at random from higher and lower
ranks, would, most likely, if similarly circumstanced, do much the same.
Indeed the mercantile world might readily recriminate. Is it a solicitor
who comments on their misdoings? They may quickly silence him by
referring to the countless dark stains on the reputation of his
fraternity. Is it a barrister? His frequent practice of putting in pleas
which he knows are not valid; and his established habit of taking fees
for work that he does not perform; make his criticism somewhat suicidal.
Does the condemnation come through the press? The condemned may remind
those who write, of the fact that it is not quite honest to utter a
positive verdict on a book merely glanced through, or to pen glowing
eulogies on the mediocre work of a friend while slighting the good one
of an enemy; and may further ask whether those who, at the dictation of
an employer, write what they disbelieve, are not guilty of the serious
offence of adulterating public opinion.
Moreover, traders might contend that many of their delinquencies are
thrust on them by the injustice of their customers. They, and especially
drapers, might point to the fact that the habitual demand for an
abatement of price, is made in utter disregard of their reasonable
profits; and that to protect themselves against attempts to gain by
their loss, they are obliged to name prices greater than those they
intend to take. They might also urge that the strait to which they are
often brought by the non-payment of accounts due from their wealthier
customers, is itself a cause of their malpractices: obliging them, as it
does, to use all means, illegitimate as well as legitimate, for getting
the wherewith to meet their engagements. In proof of the wrongs
inflicted on them by the non-trading classes, they might instance the
well-known cases of large shopkeepers in the West-end, who have been
either ruined by the unpunctuality of their customers, or have been
obliged periodically to stop payment, as the only way of getting their
bills settled. And then, after proving that those without excuse show
this disregard of other men's claims, traders might ask whether they,
who have the excuse of having to contend with a merciless competition,
are alone to be blamed if they display a like disregard in other forms.
Nay, even to the guardians of social rectitude--members of the
legislature--they might use the _tu quoque_ argument: asking whether
bribery of a customer's servant, is any worse than bribery of an
elector? or whether the gaining of suffrages by claptrap
hustings-speeches, containing insincere professions adapted to the taste
of the constituency, is not as bad as getting an order for goods by
delusive representations respecting their quality? No; it seems probable
that close inquiry would show few if any classes to be free from
immoralities that are as great, _relatively to the temptations_, as
those which we have been exposing. Of course they will not be so petty
or so gross where the circumstances do not prompt pettiness or
grossness; nor so constant and organised where the class-conditions have
not tended to make them habitual. But, taken with these qualifications,
we think that much might be said for the proposition that the trading
classes, neither better nor worse intrinsically than other classes, are
betrayed into their flagitious habits by external causes.