THE COMING CLASH
Before I endeavour to answer the question with which I concluded the
last chapter, there are one or two additional considerations to which
it is necessary to refer, since they must affect our estimate of the
future.
I have spoken of the possibility of a new freedom for women due to
birth-control and economic independence. Other factors are likely
to make such freedom more imperative on social grounds and less
intimidating on moral ones.
The first is the great and growing preponderance of women in the
community. It is estimated that in Great Britain there are already two
million more women than men, and the figures can no doubt be paralleled
from other Western European countries. Our present moral code condemns
these two million, and as many more as the number of bachelors
involves, to perpetual celibacy and sterility. In other words one woman
out of every ten is expected to deny herself the right to motherhood or
to become an outcast from decent society.
This system is intolerable; it is manifestly breaking down in many
directions, and it continues at all only because public opinion among
women is still too unorganized to protest against it. It is already
the subject of wholesale disregard and infringement in practice, and
it will be abolished in theory as soon as the social sense of the
community has progressed to the point of removing the stigma from
illegitimacy and the reproach from unmarried motherhood. In other words
the system is bound up with the man-made convention which insists that
the right to have a child shall be saddled with the duty of looking
after a man, and, since there are not enough men to go round, women
will sooner or later be forced in self-defence to permit themselves to
have children without husbands.
So far as the right to sexual experience, independently of the right of
motherhood, is concerned, this is already safeguarded by birth-control.
The growing surplus of women will tend, therefore, through the
sheer pressure of virginity, to promote an increase in irregular
relationships, and to reinforce the movement towards freedom already
described.
Nor will religious considerations deter with their traditional force.
I have already spoken of the decline of religious sentiment in
connection with the growth of moral rigour in the herd. Lacking the
conviction that God will punish wrong-doers, they arrogate the right
to themselves. But the same scepticism which lights the fires of the
heresy-hunters encourages the wickedness of the heretics. If marriages
were not made by God, and torment in hell is probably not the result
of adultery, there is no longer reason to think that five minutes’
bliss must be paid for in terms of eternal damnation. It is, no doubt,
true, that God still loves the pure, but when earthly lovers are
available, the price of God’s love may be not worth the paying. Hence
the religious argument, though doubtless it will operate as a brake
in a diminishing number of cases, will no longer act as a wholesale
deterrent.
A more serious consideration is put forward in the name of biology.
“You are,” the biologist will point out, “conducting your argument on
the basis of certain assumptions with regard to the nature of women,
since you predict an increase in sexual irregularity not only among
men, but also, and inevitably, among women. Men, it is agreed, are
regrettably promiscuous, in the sense that, even if they are monogamous
in fact, they are varietist by inclination. But women are different.
Their nature is not varietist but monogamous, and it will, in spite of
all changes of material circumstances and moral sentiments, remain so.
For this reason irregular sexual unions will not increase in the manner
you predict.”
Biological arguments of this type, derived from the alleged nature
of women, are in my view mere man-made superstitions. The particular
argument in question was invented by the peccant male who wished to
convince himself that, however flagrant his own infidelities, his wife
would remain faithful because it was her nature. The superstition was
also useful, because it implied that, although a life of unvarying
fidelity might do violence to his natural proclivities, he need suffer
no qualm of conscience in expecting and exacting conduct which he
repudiated for himself from his monogamous wife. The notion too was
flattering and appealed readily to male conceit.
Now as to the existence of the facts asserted by my imaginary
biologist, there is, I imagine, little doubt. There are, of course,
countless exceptions either way, but the general tendency is not
obscure. While the cases of My Lord and the barmaid are legion, those
of My Lady and the groom are notoriously few. But admitting the fact,
are we to regard it as necessarily unalterable? Many, I know, are
inclined to do so. Contemplating the domestic tragedies springing from
the nomadic tendencies of the male, they have seen in them one more
piece of evidence for the satirical plan on which they believe the
Universe to have been constructed. If indeed there be design in the
scheme of things, to what sort of design do the facts point? To have
made man polygamous and woman monogamous they regard as God’s worst
practical joke, and conclude that, whatever may have been the objects
and disposition of the creator of the Universe, they were certainly not
those of a gentleman.
But is the fact really unalterable? May it not be the outcome of
centuries of servitude and seclusion, made absolute by the knowledge
that fidelity meant bread and butter and a home, infidelity starvation
or the streets? Since the beginnings of recorded history the great
bulk of women have, it is true, remained monogamous, but they may have
done so from fear of losing their jobs as wives if they did not. Those
who have been rich enough to stand upon their own financial feet, or
powerful enough to snap their fingers at public opinion, have not been
remarkable for strict observance of the marriage tie. The cases of
Messalina, Catherine the Great and the modern film star, not to mention
a score of less notorious instances, are instructive. Significant too
is the frequency of divorce among those who are sufficiently well to
do to afford the enormous fees exacted by the legal profession from
those who wish to change their partners. It is difficult, in the face
of evidence of this kind, to avoid the conclusion that the monogamous
tendencies of women are the product of training, circumstance, and
environment, and will not outlast the economic disabilities which
produced them.
In any event the present existence of these tendencies, if tendencies
they be, affords no indication of what they may become in the future.
The fact that the primitive savage could only count on the fingers
of one hand does not invalidate the existence of the multiplication
table, any more than the fact that most women want only one man each
now proves that they will not want more in a hundred years. The use of
the word ‘natural’ begs the question. We acquire those characteristics
which our circumstances and environment demand, and then transmit them
to our children in whom, being inherited, they are termed natural.
But this does not mean that our children will not in due course
develop new characteristics of their own, if a change of circumstances
renders the old ones undesirable. There are signs indeed that the new
characteristics are already beginning to appear. The attitude of
representative up-to-date women on this subject is curious. They tend
to deny the difference between males and females which my imaginary
biologist alleged, and to declare that their inclinations are naturally
as promiscuous as those of their husbands. The circumstance that they
control them better argues, they assert, more sense; it does not imply
a difference in nature.
Remarks of this kind are often made by women who, nevertheless,
live exemplary lives and would scorn to revenge themselves upon an
unfaithful husband by imitating his conduct. Nevertheless there is no
reason to suppose that they deliberately misrepresent their feelings,
and we can only conclude that, as usually happens, a new tendency is
manifesting itself in feeling some time before it is translated into
action.
For these reasons I do not think that any convincing arguments as to
the future can be based on the alleged monogamousness of women in the
present. Nor, so soon as the force of the monogamous habit wanes, do I
think that women will consent to put up with the manifest disadvantages
of a system which is based upon the assumption that it is as strong
as it ever was. It is certain that they will not be deterred by the
protests of outraged males. Conventional morality, as I have already
pointed out, like many of our other institutions such as matinées,
concerts and God, is kept going by women, and directly women withdraw
their support, not all the opposition of men will avail to save it.
What then is likely to happen?
Certainly not a relapse into complete promiscuity. The belief that
people are fundamentally licentious, and that a partial removal of
the barriers with which society has hedged about the business of
reproduction will precipitate the population into a welter of unbridled
license, pleasantly shocking though it is to the minds of respectable
people, has absolutely no foundation in fact.
This belief springs from the doctrine of original sin, which has always
been popular among quiet and well-behaved persons. If man is by nature
wicked and sinful, and woman is very little better, then, indeed,
contraception and the economic independence of women will lead to an
orgy of sex indulgence in which the population will shuffle itself like
a pack of cards.
Nothing of the kind is likely to happen.
The purely sexual elements in love have come to occupy an entirely
disproportionate amount of attention owing to the taboos with which
they have been invested. Once these taboos are removed, they will
revert to their natural position of comparative unimportance. If it
were permissible to reproduce the sexual act upon the stage we should
all lose our interest in chorus girls’ legs. Moreover, playwrights
would not trouble to avail themselves of the permission.
Within reason, continence and constancy are natural to human beings. It
is only the intolerable strain to which our absurd social arrangements
have subjected them that has caused us to regard ourselves as being by
nature unfaithful and incontinent. There is no ground for the belief
that the average man or woman who allow themselves to be guided by
their own impulses must needs be scoundrels. For among their impulses
must be numbered self-respect, moderation, and a sense of what is right
and fitting. Because this sense may be, and often is, at variance with
the herd morality which is crystallized in the law, it does not mean
that it does not exist. On the contrary, it may be in advance of the
morality it disowns, so that people thrown helpless on their passions
may find that honesty, that self-respect, that hatred of cowardice
and deceit, and the desire for cleanliness, health, and efficiency
were master passions disciplining them far more effectively than the
artificial inhibitions of a mediaeval morality based on an obsolete
religion and deriving its power from lethargy and fear.
Some changes in social arrangements there will no doubt be. In Russia,
for example, where the knowledge of birth-control is accessible to
all classes, where any two parties by agreement, or either of the
two parties by request, may obtain a divorce, and where no stigma is
placed upon illegitimacy, there has been a considerable relaxation of
the family system.[7] If this means, as it probably does, that unhappy
families have broken up and that husbands and wives who disliked each
other have availed themselves of the opportunity to make a fresh start,
we need not regret the change. Nobody would contend that society
is the gainer by condemning the unhappily married to a lifetime of
domestic misery, and it is difficult to see why the common sense of
the community which considers the wishes of the parties concerned a
sufficient ground for consummating their marriage does not regard the
wishes of the same parties as a sufficient reason for terminating it.
[7] _Report of Labour Delegation_, 1925. It is interesting to note
that this relaxation has taken place concurrently with a marked
decrease in prostitution.
On the other hand it is unlikely that those who are happily married
will rush to the Registrar with the object of making themselves
miserable by separating, simply because reasonable divorce laws give
them the opportunity to do so. It would be an interesting experiment,
and one which would enable us to estimate the extent of marital
unhappiness, to proclaim a day of conjugal amnesty at recurring
intervals. We might, for example, celebrate the coronation of every
new king by giving to all married couples the right to dissolve
their marriages, and seek other mates. If advantage were not taken
of the facilities offered within twenty-four hours, there would be a
compulsory reversion to the _status quo ante_. Or it might be better
to fix definite periods between the days of amnesty, so that they
would recur at regular intervals. Each general election might serve
as a signal for a conjugal General Post, so that couples would have
the chance of gaining their freedom every five years. I myself would
advocate the institution of such amnesties, although I believe that the
amount of conjugal dislocation they would cause would be surprisingly
small. It is difficult to avoid feeling sentimental at the prospect of
parting even from those whom we dislike, and the fact that couples were
no longer bound in law would only tighten the bonds of sentiment. A
would feel that, unpleasant as B had been, he could not very well let
her down, and B would shrink from leaving A with no one to look after
him, even when she had herself looked after him very badly. You cannot,
in short, live with any one for a number of years without dreading the
prospect of their loss. The knowledge, moreover, that quinquennial
escape was possible might lead to married people treating their
partners with at least the degree of civility they at present reserve
for their acquaintances. I do not think, therefore, that the changes
caused by a conjugal amnesty would be very extensive.
For the above reasons I conclude that the social results of the changes
I have been describing will amount to little more than a diminution
in the number of unhappy marriages, and an increase in the number of
experimental unions.
But it is not to be supposed that the herd will see the matter in
this light. Nothing exceeds the license taken by the imaginations of
very rigid people, and there is little doubt that the vast mass of
respectable citizens, appalled and horrified by what they will insist
on regarding as the prospect of growing and unlimited license, will
rise to meet the situation with panic and persecution. And since, for
the reasons already given, morality in a modern community is that
kind of conduct which suits the stronger, we may expect a revival of
Puritanism expressing itself in a new robustness and acerbity in the
moral sense of the herd.
Symptoms of this revival are not wanting in this country. If, however,
we wish to see the clearest portents of what is coming we must, as I
have hinted above, look to America. America, as I have already pointed
out, leads the world in morals as in everything else. That American
citizens set great store by morality is notorious. With their constant
Purity Crusades, Puritan pogroms, Vigilance Committees, and popular
juries of selected citizens, who visit surreptitiously and report
upon the moral tone of New York plays, they put our more decadent
civilization to shame. On what sort of lines do these engines of
American morality take action? One instance must suffice. In April of
this year, one Miss Jewell Barker went bicycling in white knickers.
Her outraged neighbours showed their sense of this vicious act by
proceeding to seize and flog Miss Barker’s father. This is at once to
usurp and to invert the divine privilege of visiting the sins of the
fathers upon the children.
America is, of course, pre-eminently the Land of Liberty, and we cannot
hope to emulate her highest feats. Efforts are, however, not wanting
of our endeavours to live up to the standard our cousins set.
I will quote at random one or two American examples with their British
parallels.
_America._ There is sumptuary legislation designed to check the license
of the stage. “There is”, we are told, “a rule in some American towns
that the chorus girls must wear stockings, although the principals are
allowed to appear with bare legs”.
_England._ In recent months there has been a strong provincial movement
against the indecency and unpleasantness of the plays produced in
London. Respectable citizens complain that they never can tell what
salacious beastliness may not be sprung upon their protesting eyes and
ears, what searchlight cast upon the Augæan stables of high society.
Actors and actresses have expressed their views, pointing out that
a pure stage is as good a paying proposition as a nasty one, and
invoking the case of the Gilbert and Sullivan operas to bear witness
to the truth of their contention. These operas, a notorious commercial
success, have never been known to bring a blush to the most bourgeois
cheek. A number of London women have accordingly banded themselves
together vowing to purify the stage. Protests are to be made nightly
in theatres at which plays to which objection is taken are performed.
“We shall stick at nothing,” said the leader of the campaign, “to make
our protest effective”.
Concurrently with this development there has arisen a demand for a
stricter censorship. I think it probable that we are on the threshold
of a period resembling the early seventeenth or middle nineteenth
centuries, when life as it is will be driven off the stage by the
Puritans’ demand for life as it ought to be, love will give place to
sentiment, and reality to romance.
_America._ A new teetotal version of the Bible is promised from
America. The festive passages are all dry, the words ‘raisin cake’
taking the place of the word ‘wine’ wherever the latter occurs in the
Authorized Version. Thus we have “And he dealt to everyone of Israel,
both men and women, to everyone a roll of bread, a portion of meat and
a cake of raisin”.
_Scotland._ Steps were taken in the spring of this year to transfer to
Scotland a film depicting the explorations of Livingstone. An extract
from the daily paper tells us that “Prohibitionists there are already
strenuously objecting to the incident which shows Livingstone, after
he has been found by Stanley, drinking champagne with his rescuer!
The difficulty is that the incident is historically correct ... and
the problem is whether truth should be suppressed in the interests of
morality. ‘At any rate’ said the Secretary of the London Missionary
Society ‘the raising of the question _is evidence of the progress made
since his time_.’” It can scarcely be doubted that if the meeting had
taken place to-day, Livingstone would have acknowledged the march of
progress by drinking water.
A straw shows the direction of the wind, and I should not be at all
surprised to see Scotland go dry in the next fifty years, especially if
she is successful in obtaining Home Rule. If Scotland goes dry, it is
not to be expected that England will fail ultimately to follow suit.
The increase in efficiency among dry workmen is very great, and if
the business men remain “the stronger” in the community, they cannot
continue indefinitely to be blind to its advantages, especially as they
themselves would be immune from the hardships it entails. If we ask
whether an officially dry but unofficially wet business class, and a
working class which is dry both officially and unofficially, does not
mean one law for the rich and another for the poor, our answer is that
conventional morals always does mean this.[8]
[8] Cp. the case of the legs of the chorus and the principals, p. 70.
The practice of virtue, we are often told, is dependent upon the
possession of a sufficient income. It is only the well to do who can
afford to be generous, honest, and unselfish, because they have no
temptation to be otherwise. But what is true of virtue is equally true
of vice, and the experience of the working of prohibition in America
shows how easy it is for the rich to procure illicit indulgences which
are out of the reach of the poor.
There is likely to be legislation against wantonness in dress. By
wantonness is meant the practice among females of unnecessarily
exposing parts of their body. The curious belief that the body is in
some way disgraceful, and that the exhibition of it is, therefore,
wicked is very prevalent among Western peoples. It arises partly
from natural prudery, partly from the property view of marriage,
and partly from the inclemency of the climate which makes bathing a
comparative rarity. The Japanese who have a bath twice a day, observe
no discrimination between the sexes in their bathing. “One day”, said
the Marquis of X who had just returned from Japan, “my wife went to
have a bath, and she got as far as the rinsing stage when two young
Japanese came in. She had to take refuge in the tank, screaming at the
top of her voice until the two young men were taken away. They no
doubt thought her a very fastidious young woman”.
The conviction that the body is wicked and ought to be concealed is
important, because it leads women to expose portions of it which they
would otherwise protect, and rightly protect, from the rigours of the
atmosphere, in the belief that they are making themselves attractive.
Thus women swathed in layers of furs in respect of the rest of their
persons, will venture forth on the coldest day with bare bosoms and
open-work stockings. It is with the same object that, though their
religion bids them mortify the flesh and refrain from making of
themselves a stumbling block to others, they will appear at dinner
with necks, bosoms, backs, and arms completely naked, a proceeding not
only acquiesced in but encouraged by their males. This sort of thing
is anathema to the herd, who cannot afford the evening dress and the
furs, and to the old, the condition of whose bodies does not, except
in the case of the incurably optimistic, permit them to take the same
liberties as their daughters. Hence we may expect a considerable
stiffening of public opinion in the matter of decorum in dress and a
return to the days in which everything except the hands and the face
was carefully covered up.
In the sphere of what is called sexual morality we may expect a growing
tendency to make wickedness (that is to say conduct which is not in the
interests of the stronger) punishable by law. Attempts will be made,
and successfully made, to multiply crimes by Act of Parliament.
A good example of this tendency will be found in the Bill entitled
_The Children, Young Persons, etc., Bill_, introduced by a Labour
Member during the tenure of office by the Labour Government in 1924.
It represents bourgeois or herd morality “in excelsis.” It is known as
the _Offences against the Person Bill_, and its object is to codify
and extend the existing enactments against abortion, cruelty to
children, offences against children, and neglect of children. Many of
its provisions are admirable and afford what is no doubt a necessary
protection to children against suffering and neglect. Nevertheless it
menaces individual liberty in two ways. In the first place it increases
the number of offences punishable by law, often in an arbitrary manner.
For example, it is made a crime punishable by two years hard labour for
a girl of sixteen to have intercourse with a young man of eighteen, the
criminal being not, as one might have expected, the elder of the two
parties concerned, but the girl. She alone is liable to imprisonment;
the young man is allowed to go free. It is also a criminal offence to
conceal the birth of a dead child, to cause or encourage a child to
beg, or to celebrate the marriage of a boy and a girl under sixteen,
such marriages being declared invalid.
In the second place the Bill authorizes grave interference with
personal privacy. The officers and inspectors charged with executing
its multifarious provisions are given unlimited powers of search,
and authorized in certain cases to arrest without warrant. Even if
a bill of this kind were to be administered by angels or sages, the
opportunities for espionage and surveillance which it bestows would
be sufficiently offensive. Since, however, its provisions will in
fact be enforced by inspectors and constables drawn from the lower
middle classes, who will be only too willing to denounce as flagrant
immorality whatever transcends the experience of Clapham, the measure
stands revealed as an attempt to endow the herd with increased powers
of interference and control over the private lives of those who venture
to stand outside it.
Encouragement would also be given to malevolent and offensive persons
who wished to do harm to their neighbours by laying information against
them. In general, liberty would be diminished, offences multiplied,
and the individual rendered more subservient to public opinion than is
the case to-day.
Another expression of herd feeling will be a growing tendency to
enquire into the private lives of those who hold public appointments.
The herd, that is to say, will increasingly demand of those who fill
positions of eminence and authority in the land that they shall
conform in practice, and profess to conform in belief, to the code of
prejudices and preferences which it pretentiously calls its morals.
Even to-day, at the end of half a century of individualist thinking,
fitness to perform a particular job is one of the least important
qualifications in a candidate. What is important is that he shall
be a member of a recognized religious sect, such as the Church of
England or one of the sub-sects of Nonconformity, that he shall
live with one wife, avoid divorcing and being divorced, and display
studiously temperate habits. He must also exercise discretion in his
public utterances, be judiciously but not violently patriotic in his
sentiments, eschew extreme views in politics, refrain from supporting
unpopular causes, and on all occasions give the herd the answers it
expects. Thus in Wales it is difficult if not impossible for a man to
hold any public appointment unless he is a member of a particular
chapel, and at English Universities many teaching posts are reserved
for those in Holy Orders. Given the capacity for reflecting the
opinions and flattering the prejudices of the many, men of acknowledged
incompetence may successfully aspire to the most responsible posts.
There is indeed no post in the country a man cannot hold with credit,
if he can only succeed in holding his tongue.
Conformity rather than intelligence is more particularly required of
those who seek to instruct the young. A man’s ability to demonstrate
the differential calculus or impart the facts of history would not, it
is true, appear to be lessened by his having passed through the divorce
court. Yet there is no doubt that such an event will cast a blight upon
his career as a teacher. People are too satisfied with their own ways
of thought and habits of conduct to wish for their children anything
better than that they should think and act as they do themselves. What
is demanded of the teacher, therefore, is that he should transmit to
the children the same beliefs as those which are held by their parents.
He must hold up to their admiration those things which their parents
consider to be admirable, such as God, vaccination, monogamy, the
Treaty of Versailles and the capitalist system, and speak with scorn
and contempt of Bolshevism, atheism, Germany, free love and agitators,
whom parents consider to be evil. When the teacher does this he is what
is called a safe man. He inspires confidence and obtains preferment.
Provided, in short, that he guarantees not to teach anything new, his
capacity to teach anything at all is not seriously questioned. And,
since the best minds of every generation, being in advance of their
time, would prefer not to teach at all rather than to perpetuate the
dogmas in which they have ceased to believe, the successful teacher is
not always remarkable for intelligence.
In any event, whether intelligent or not, he must conform, and will
have to do so increasingly. The herd morality which drove a statesman
of the calibre of Dilke out of public life because it disapproved
of his private life, is, after a temporary relapse, increasing in
strength, and in the immediate future nobody who does not profess the
morality to which the middle classes adhere will stand any chance of
public office. If a man’s actions belie his professions he must be
careful to conceal them.
One of the results of this development will be an increase in
hypocrisy. To-day the agnostic don at Oxford worships regularly in
the College Chapel, and men will be driven increasingly to give
lip-service to ideals and shibboleths which in their hearts they
despise. In general, the gulf which separates public profession and
private practice, a gulf which has made England a byword for hypocrisy,
will grow wider. Driven to profess the beliefs of shopkeepers, men will
rely increasingly upon their private judgment as a sanction for their
conduct. Hence the attempt to impose a uniform standard based upon an
obsolete morality upon our public men may lead to a revival of that
unfashionable organ the private conscience, and those from whom an
unwilling conformity is exacted in public, will insist that they and
they alone are the judges of what is right and wrong in private.
I have taken the _Offences against the Person Bill_ as a typical
instance of the kind of legislation in which the new Puritanism may
express itself. It indicates a return to the Greek conception that men
can be made good by Act of Parliament. In the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries this conception was regarded with disfavour. As the
result of the individualist thinking of the preceding fifty years, the
idea that there was one good life which all men ought to lead had been
abandoned. The individualist view was that there were different kinds
of good lives for different men, as many in fact as there were men to
live them, and that it was, therefore, impracticable to establish by
law a positive standard of ethical conduct to which all must conform.
In so far as law had any function in the matter, it was, by prohibiting
violence and the cruder forms of robbery, to guarantee to the community
a certain background of order without which no good life was possible.
Since the mere process of obeying the law did not make a man a good
man but only restrained him from certain unappetizing kinds of vice
by which no decent upper or middle class citizen was attracted, it
followed that the function of the law was negative merely; its object
was to prevent citizens from so conducting themselves that nobody could
be virtuous, not to define virtue or to tell men how to attain it. The
definition of virtue was a matter for the individual’s insight, and
the attainment of virtue a matter for the individual’s conscience;
provided, therefore, that a man abstained from the grosser forms of
anti-social conduct which were prohibited by law, the question of what
he ought to do, and what refrain from doing, was one which he alone
could decide.
I believe that this nineteenth and early-twentieth century
libertarianism in matters of thought and conduct is decreasing and will
continue to decrease. The cult of uniformity is hostile to the liberty
of the individual, and in order to secure the performance of conduct
of which the herd approves, the legislature is likely to assume a more
positive control over men’s lives than has been customary in the past.
We shall, in other words, revert to the conception of one good life for
all men, or rather for all poor men, a good life which it is conceived
to be the business of the State and of public opinion to promote.
Summing up, therefore, we may predict the immediate future somewhat
as follows: Coming into contact with the increased facilities for
freedom of action to which reference has been made, the new itch to
regulate men’s lives will lead to persecution and heresy-hunting. Men
will be hounded out of public life because of their private morals,
and acceptance of certain habits of belief and codes of conduct will
be made indispensable to the holding of public appointments. Instead
of choosing for a post the man who is best qualified to do the job, we
shall choose the man who most nearly reflects the habits of thought
and conduct of the selection board, that is to say, of the herd who
elected the selection board to represent them. The growth of Puritanism
will bring a growth in hypocrisy, a fruitful and invaluable offshoot
of Puritanism. There will be an even greater disparity between men’s
practices and their professions than there is at present, and their
professions will tend increasingly to condemn their practices. The
world, in short will become a paradise for the average man and a hell
for the exceptional one.
So much we may expect during the next fifty years. If, however, I am
asked which of the two opposing tendencies I have attempted to describe
in this book will ultimately prevail, my answer is that it will not
be the bourgeois Puritanism whose apparent victory I foresee in the
immediate future. Nor, indeed, do I think that that victory will be
more than apparent.
The history of morals, like that of politics, follows the swing of the
pendulum, and some reaction on the part of each generation from the
habits of its fathers seems to be inevitable. In so reacting it reverts
to those of its fathers’ fathers. Thus each generation tends to take
the gods of its grandfathers from the shelf upon which its fathers have
placed them.
To-day we are at the beginning of a period of reaction from the license
of the War. The difference between young people of between the ages
of eighteen and twenty-four and their predecessors of seven years ago
is very marked. The latter were casual, offhand, and easy-going. They
observed little ceremonial in their relationships with each other,
smoked, flirted and made love when and where they pleased, married in
haste and repented at leisure or dispensed with marriage altogether,
and despised rather than revered the aged to whom they were a constant
source of horror and amazement. What is perhaps most noticeable about
their successors to-day is their improvement in manners. They are
chivalrous to women, considerate to the old, maintain a decorum at
dances which is positively Victorian, and instead of hastening to
establish sexual relations with whomsoever attracts them, have actually
gone out of their way to postpone the fruition of their desires by a
reintroduction of the rite known as “engagement”.
In particular, women, no longer treated as the equals of men, are
alternatively worshipped and disregarded, blown aloft like soap bubbles
or jettisoned as lumber. The reaction, in short, is already well under
weigh, and its influence for many years to come will be great.
But the normal cycle of action and reaction, of licentious eighteenth
and Puritanical nineteenth centuries, depends for its recurrence on
the entrance of no new factors; it is bound up that is to say with the
property status of women and the production of children as the fruit
of sexual intercourse. Once new factors are introduced, it may well
be thrown permanently out of gear. Birth control and the economic
independence of women are to my mind factors of this kind. The changes
they portend are incalculable, and, though their full effects may be
delayed for two or three decades, no Puritan revival nor any number
of such revivals, whether backed by the law or finding expression in
public opinion merely, will in the long run be able to stand against
them.
* * * * *
I am conscious that what I have written in this book will seem to many
to be cynical and disruptive. I shall be charged with taking a low view
of human nature, and speaking slightingly of morality. My answer is,
first, that what I have written of in these pages is not human nature
as a whole, but that part of human nature only which expresses itself
in what is called morality; and secondly, that what is called morality
is not in any true sense of the word morality at all. Morality, as I
understand it, is positive: it insists that certain things are good and
ought to be pursued even if the heavens fall. But the habits of thought
and standards of conduct I have analyzed in this book, although they
are called morality, are not positive but negative. Their appeal is to
men’s fears rather than to their hopes; they tell them not what they
must do to be saved, but what they must not do if they are to avoid the
censure of society. Their basis is the instinct to possess, and their
weapon the power to blame. Men blame those who claim a liberty they
dare not assert for themselves, and dignify with the name of morality
the indulgence of possessive instincts in which savages glory without
hypocrisy. “What could I have done in the circumstances?” asked the
husband of an erring wife in a recent society scandal case. “If you ask
me to tell you I will. You could have told your wife that if she went
with the man again, you would get her divorced. You could then have
gone up to London and assaulted Sir X Y, and to hell with your career”,
replied the eminent counsel on the other side.
This is the law of the jungle; it is the expression of most of what
passes for morality to-day, and, while it prevails, there is little
hope for the world. Of positive morality which brings the conviction
that some things are good and ought to be pursued for their own sake,
there has never been less. It is doubtful indeed whether a positive
morality can exist without a strong and lively religious feeling, and
religion was never at so low an ebb.
The emotional enthusiasm which religion generates is indispensable to
a true morality. For good or for evil religion is the looser of great
forces. It may be captured and made to serve base ends, but under the
influence of the emotion which it creates men can be brought to believe
that some things _are_ better than others, and to overcome any obstacle
in order that the good things may prevail. It is this belief which is
lacking in the world to-day.
Until, then, the life-force can contrive again to send a great
religious teacher into the world, a true, positive morality will be
lacking. The man who is born in England will continue to believe that
it is right to marry one wife, and the man who is born in Persia
will continue to believe that it is right to marry four, and each
will invoke morality to justify his belief. Such morality is merely
topographical; it reflects no conception of what is good, and it gives
us no hope that the world can be made better because it does not
believe that its own world is bad.
Meanwhile the less we write and think about morality the better. A
world without religion is a sad and a tiring world because it lacks an
object, and for this reason there have been few generations which have
known less happiness than our own. In such a world those who think the
least have the best of it. In such a world reflection can only produce
despondency, and it is better to take our professions and prejudices
ready made from the social shop, than to embark on a sea of troubles
by thinking out a morality for ourselves, to act with the business man
rather than to brood with the philosophers.
In a new and positive morality in which men can believe lies the hope
for the world; yet such a morality cannot come without a revival of
religion. Religion and religion alone gives the driving force which
impels men to change things, and until a religious attitude to the
world again becomes part of man’s common heritage, all the apparent
changes in morality, of which different ages and countries are the
witnesses, will fail to disguise the fundamental fact that there is no
morality to change.
* * * * *
Transcriber’s Notes:
――Text in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).
――Punctuation and spelling inaccuracies were silently corrected.
――Archaic and variable spelling has been preserved.
――Variations in hyphenation and compound words have been preserved.