THE HOME AS THE HIGHEST POINT YET REACHED IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE
WORLD
[Sidenote: The Advance on Material Lines]
“I cannot deny the truth of what you have told me,” she said. “I can
see clearly the different steps up which the world has come, but
does it not seem that this new universal mind which is the latest
great stage in the advance of the world has, according to you, been
produced by purely material causes? It is as much as to say that the
printing-press, the telegraph, and the steam-engine have created
Good—that they, surely, never could do?”
“They have not; they have only circulated thought; they have only
created the platform for thought to spread on. They have only created
conditions favourable to collective thinking. Collective thought,
infinitely more powerful and complex than individual thought, has
worked purely on the material given to it by individual brains. It
had no other origin or food. Had that material been essentially evil,
or if the evil in it had been excessive in comparison with the good,
the printing-press, the telegraph, and the steam-engine would have
increased the evil in the world.
“But you have indicated one point I would like to dwell on. The
absolute essentiality of material objects and conditions now in the
advance of the ‘spiritual’ and intellectual world, and the absolute
necessity of discarding dreams and fallacies. In the last great
advance, Hoe’s machine has done what all the doctrines could never
have done, yet Hoe’s object was not to construct a machine for the
improvement of ethics. He was, in his labours, a materialist, pure
and simple; his object was the improvement of a machine for the rapid
production of printed stuff. He did not work at all in the matter with
an eye to great and abstract improvements. He just did his little job
well and with all his energy.
“Stephenson, Watt, Wheatstone,—and ten thousand of others, including
the whole army of Science, Invention, and Labour—whose combined work
has produced the Universal Mind, who have, in fact, created Man, each
one of these had only one object: the extension of material knowledge
and the improvement of certain material objects and conditions. They
were not idealists, they were not teachers; they laboured to produce
no doctrines or airy formulæ. They were honest workmen in the cause of
material progress, each with his eye fixed on his job.
“Contrast with these the preachers and teachers—all excellent, mind
you, and making, in their way, for good, yet all, by their combined
efforts, useless for the great uplift that was coming and that could
only come through the work of Scientific men in the field of Science,
and Mechanicians in the field of material improvement.
“And this fact is a perfect lamp for all who would join in the work of
world development. _He who would assist in the development of the world
must work not in the field of dreams and theories, but in the field of
matter._ That is the doctrine of the spirit of the world whose great
hands laboured to make the hills and seas, and flung the moon to the
skies for a lamp and a tide-maker, who moulded the chimpanzees into
men, and men into civilised men. Dreams and theories and doctrines,
preachers, transcendental philosophers and teachers, and even
priests—we want all of them, but they are by-products. The work of the
world remains the essential thing, and the pioneers of the world are
the workers, not the dreamers.
“For, though the universal brain has subordinated the individual,
as the whole organism subordinates the cell, the universal brain
lives, alone, by the individual, and can only grow through material
means. And though the universal brain is better, infinitely, than the
individual, it can only exercise its power for good on the individual
through material means.
“That an individual brain may participate in the life and light of
the brain universal and feed on and increase with that life, and feed
and increase that life, it must first of all receive that light and
life; and, secondly, it must be in a condition to receive it, and
this can only be done by material means. And I will show you what I
mean by an instance. The man who is crushed beneath ruinous labour,
the man whose poverty condemns him not to think, the man who shivers
without a fire, who goes with an empty stomach—all of that vast crowd
of what we call the Poor—each one of these is cut off, more or less,
from the mind universal and can never receive its light except through
material means. Preaching and teaching, dreams and theories are useless
to these. To participate in universal thought—which is universal
good—they must first have the time to think in, they must be defended
from the wolves that prey on thought, Cold and Hunger; they must be
preached to practically by the two great Apostles, Wheat-flour and
Firewood; they must be treated as Hoe treated the dull steel that made
his press—lifted materially.
“Having lifted them thus with food and firewood, let Education have its
say, and Eugenics, up to a certain point. But education is as useless
to a work-broken or starving man as algebra to an ass. Since Man has
awakened to life, he has begun to recognize this. The old religions of
men looked on the poor as a necessary evil. “The poor are always with
us.” But man, though still only a hundred years old, perceives that the
Poor are his disease, that the criminals are his disease, and that the
idle are his disease.
“The universal mind rejects Poverty just as it has rejected Hate, and
Lust, and Intolerance; and its teaching in this respect is, ‘The poor
shall not be always with us.’ That is one of the greatest triumphs of
the great good giant born of the fusion of intelligences; even though,
as yet, the means toward this great end have not been discovered.”
[Sidenote: Socialism]
“What about Socialism?”
“Socialism, Anarchism, and Syndicalism are as yet the most obtrusive
results of this universal-mind disturbance, due to recognition of the
evils that affect the body of Man. The giant, on opening his eyes, is
furious at his rags and tatters, and the sores which they disclose.
Man, newly awakened, is disgusted at his general condition—and that
disgust is at the bottom of all the ‘revolutionary’ unrest which we see
to-day in the western world.
“I spoke to you of set-backs. Should that unrest develop into a storm,
the progress of the world would receive one of the set-backs it is well
accustomed to.”
“What do you mean by a storm?”
“I mean a revolution. An attempt by sudden and violent means to tear
up the rags and heal the ulcers of Man. For instance, were Socialism in
its extreme form to become the directing power of Man to-morrow, were
every man in the world to be equalized materially, the world would be
put back on its path of progress immeasurably.”
“Why?”
“Because the Socialists’ plan is constructed on a fallacy, and were
it to be followed by Humanity, it would mean utter disruption of all
social communities.”
“What is the fallacy?”
[Sidenote: The Fallacy]
“The fallacy is this: The idea that the individual is the essential
cell of the community, and that the energy and life of any community
spring from the individual. This is not so. The essential cell of the
community is the Family, or, in other words, the Home, and all the
energy and life of the community spring from the Home.
“The reason of this is simple. The Home is bisexual, the individual
unisexual.
“All the vitality of a community arises from the interplay of the two
sexes one upon the other, and this interplay, to be productive of
communal life and good, must take place in the Home. Individual men and
individual women utterly divorced from a home of any sort lose force
and deteriorate, and become warped and dwarfed.
“Sexual force, that is to say, the force that draws man to woman, that
produces Love and Children, and love of children, and the love of
children for their parents and for each other—sexual force, the fiery
grandfather of affection and filial love, can only be developed as a
force for communal good and individual good in the Home.
[Sidenote: The Home Is Everything]
“The Home is _everything_.
“It is the foundation of the community, it is the essential cell of the
world. You cannot injure the community without injuring the home, and
you cannot injure the home without injuring the community. You cannot
improve the condition of the community radically by pooling all the
money and distributing it among the homes, or by pooling all the means
of production and wealth creation and distributing work tickets to the
Home-makers. Such a distribution of the means of living would leave
utterly untouched the diseases that prey on the homes of the nation and
would touch with a killing hand the _vitality_ of the Home.”
“What do you mean by that?”
[Sidenote: Its Construction]
“Simply this. Every home is a tiny nation built exactly on the plan of
the big nation, of which it forms a unit and which, in fact, is its
counterpart in large.
“The home has its head, just as the nation has its head. Like the
nation, it is bisexual; it has its exchequer, its fighting force, its
ethical laws, its ambitions, its alliances, and its frontiers. It
trades with other homes and combinations of homes just as the nation
trades with other nations. It has its imports and its exports. It
has its foreign loans and national credit. It has its internal and
external politics. It has all these, whether it be a man and wife
living in rooms or a family of twenty, and it is the facsimile of the
nation simply because the nation is not a differentiation of it but an
aggregation of it. What is done to the nation is done to the home.
[Sidenote: Its Power]
“A home, or a family, if you like the term better, is a ganglion of
forces. Love and Pride, Economy (or the saving instinct) and Ambition,
not to speak of Affection, are the best of these forces, just as the
best forces in the nation are Love, Pride, Ambition, not to speak of
Patriotism.
“Inseparably connected with these fine forces are other most
powerful forces: Greed, Ostentation, Chauvinism (for a family can be
Chauvinistic as well as a nation), Love of Domination, etc.
[Sidenote: Its Death Blow]
“Now, the forcible toeing the line by _each family_ to a fixed income
and ambition would hit the life of the home a death blow.
“I will give you one instance. Ambition would be tom up by the roots.
God only knows all the fine things that are clinging to the roots of
Ambition. Man knows a few of them. Fathers of families deny themselves
and work hard that they may see their sons and daughters advance in
the world; knowing, as they do, that material advance is bound up with
good conduct, they look to their own conduct and the teaching of their
children. Mothers do the same.
“Look at life as you know it, and tell me frankly, is not this true?
That the destruction of Ambition in the family would tend largely to
destroy the energy and life of the family and its power as a centre of
force.”
“It is true.”
“Yet your Advanced Socialist, with his eyes fixed on what he calls ‘the
State,’ does not reckon on this, and his theory, were it turned to
practice, would destroy Ambition.
“Then, again, Pride, not pride in high deeds, but pure, low-down,
material pride—how nasty it is, but what a tremendous force it is!
From the cock that crows to the State that prospers, it is ubiquitous
as sodium. It is purely human and animal, yet it is one of the major
forces that hold the family together and make it living.
“Yet, if Ambition goes, material Pride must go—absolutely. Then take
the Hoarding Instinct. This would be absolutely destroyed by your
Advanced Socialist, yet without the Hoarding Instinct, which, in a
more or less attenuated form, is the Saving Instinct, family morality
would cut a poor show. Self-denial would vanish and that demi-virtue,
Carefulness.
“You will notice that I am keeping entirely to material instincts and
things, and I will rise to the height of saying that the teaching of
the destruction of the Hoarding Instinct by Socialists is a blasphemous
teaching, and the blasphemy is against the Holy Spirit of Good. I
have left the individual for the family, but the destruction of this
instinct would wreck the individual as well as the family.
“Ambition, Pride, the Hoarding Instinct, are not passions; they are
Laws that govern the growth of life, and they are as immutable as the
laws of gravity.
“Without going further, I shall content myself with the destruction of
Ambition, Pride, and the Hoarding Instinct, and leave the family robbed
of them by the Advanced Socialist—and withered in its growth. I shall
come back to the point I started from—the Home. Your Socialist talks of
the State.
“I say again—There is absolutely no such thing. There is only a
collection of homes.
“Behind the word State he hides his absolute ignorance of fundamentals.
He fancies, as I said before, that the nation is an aggregation of
individuals, and on that assumption he concludes that each individual
should be tuned to the pitch of the mass, so that all should sing in
harmony.
“But the nation in reality is not an aggregation of individuals at
all; it is an agglutination of Families or Homes.
“The word State, as implying a homogeneous and isolated power, is
philosophically meaningless. The State is not a separate entity
from the Home. It is only, in the administrative sense, a name for
the common executive which the homes of the nation have created to
conduct their external affairs individually as between themselves, and
collectively as between other common governments or executives.
“When the Advanced Socialist talks of the welfare of the State he is
talking of the welfare of the majority of individuals. When he talks
of the State seizing the common wealth, he means that the majority
of individuals will seize it and distribute it among themselves and
the minority. He has absolutely forgotten those separate hives of sex
life, industry, ambition, antagonism to other hives, and energy, which
are the real units of the nation, the Families, which are by their
constituent vices and virtues the breeding-grounds of all social energy
and virtues.
“And he would advance the world on its progress by seizing with the
brute force of individuals dominion over the homes of the nation. He
would allow an executive created by force to dictate to each home its
foreign and domestic policy; he would limit its imports and exports,
destroy its ambitions, plunder its hoard, and make slaves of its
individuals.
“That is Socialism pure and simple. Arsenic could not be simpler or
purer as a poison to the common good and the vitality of any social
community.”
[Sidenote: Building, Not Breaking]
“And you?”
“I would push the world on, as I said before, by building from below
and by purely material means. Instead of hitting the family a blow in
its vital part, I would foster its wellbeing. I would give it drains
and ventilation; I would, from the common fund that all the families
have pooled in the taxes, make better the houses; I would even call
upon the more prosperous families to help the poorer, but my one aim
and object would be the protection of the family in all that makes for
its vitality.
“I would foster family ambition and the saving and hoarding instinct,
and cooking and household management and everything that would keep
heads of families by the hearth instead of talking Syndicalism in
pot-houses and scandal in clubs. I can not say all I would do, but
broadly I would do everything possible for material betterment and
everything possible for the betterment of Family Life.
“And that is what will happen, Socialism or no Socialism. We began by
talking of the world as a globe of fire; we went on to hills and seas,
saurians, animals, men, civilised men, Man with a universal mind.
“We have reached the world as it is—a collection of families or
molecules, constituting Man with a universal mind.
[Sidenote: The Danger of Dreams]
“That mind, new-born, is filled with dreams and illusions: Anarchism,
Socialism, Syndicalism, and so forth.
“Let Man remember this: He was built out of facts, not theories;
matter, not fancies; families, not individuals; and that to grow in the
fashion that these new theorists would have him grow, he would have to
destroy the molecules that constitute him and resolve himself into his
original atoms.”
“What is a molecule?”
“A molecule is a family of atoms.”
[Sidenote: The Human Equation]
“You are, then, opposed to any fixed plan for the betterment of the
world. You would simply work by bettering material conditions?”
“I am not opposed to any fixed plan. I only say this, that all the
fixed plans I have seen are unworkable, and from one cause.”
“What is that?”
“The framers of them have forgotten that _any plan for betterment of
the world is absolutely unworkable that leaves out the Human Equation_.
“That is not a saying of mine. It is a Law. And, what is more, it is
part of a universal law. You cannot improve the condition of vegetation
unless you allow for the weakness as well as the virtues and strength
of vegetable life, nor can you improve the condition of mankind unless
you allow for its weaknesses and sins and follies as well as for its
virtues and its strength.
“What I have said to you about Socialism is not an _ex-parte_ statement
by a man opposed to Socialism. I am opposed to nothing but error, and
when I see Laws as fixed and as immutable as Bode’s Law or the law of
gravity disregarded by men who are proposing to reform the world, and
when I point out these fatal flaws in their reasoning, that does not
mean that I am opposed to all plans for reforming the world, but it
does mean that I would test by everyday logic any plan for everyday use.
“Will it work? Will it perform the work for which it was invented as a
kinetic engine?
“Those are the two questions on which the capitalist satisfies himself
first before he invests his money in any invention in mechanics.
“Then he asks, will it wear without undue destruction of parts?
“Then he satisfies himself as to its economics. Any plan of world
reform which leaves out the Human Equation is equivalent to an
engineering plan which leaves out of consideration details like the Law
of the Dead Centre or the Law of Expansion and contraction of metals.
“If you will examine any great engineering plan, whether it be the plan
for a bridge or a marine engine, you will find that it is a simple
bouquet of natural laws, all brought together by the engineer for a
definite purpose, and every law is stamped with the + or - stamp of
nature. They are the laws of weakness and the laws of strength, and
these wonderful laws that preside over matter so interpenetrate one
another that you cannot divorce them one from the other. They may be
said to form alloys. Thus the law that rules over the breaking strain
is at once the law of strength and weakness. The giant that lives in
water springs into steam under the conditions of the + law that gives
him strength, but never for a moment does he escape from the - law of
condensation which is ever ready to reduce him to water again in a
twinkling. And so on.
“Now, the task of the engineer is _not_ to eliminate the - laws from
nature, but to account for them, and, if possible, to make them, by a
trick of genius, work for him. The engineer does not attempt to destroy
Inertia, the weakness that lives in the dead centre of things; he
counteracts the idleness of inertia by means of the fly-wheel.
“The weakness of Steam under the law of condensation becomes in
the hands of the engineer the strength of the steam-engine. The
bursting power of steam, which is ever at war with the weakness of
the boiler metal, he counteracts by the safety-valve. He must allow
for everything, or his machine either will not work or bursts into a
thousand fragments.
“And do you imagine for a moment that human passions and energy,
strength and weakness, are less potent than the forces and weaknesses
which the engineer has to account for in his plan? Do you fancy that
Inertia is confined to metals, and friction to working parts of
machinery? Do you fancy that the social engineer, dealing with powerful
and explosive forces, can plot out a social machine without taking into
consideration the weaknesses which are complementary to the forces with
which he has to deal?
“Yet, in all the plans I have examined, from Socialism to Syndicalism,
not one engineer has submitted to me a plan in which human passions and
energy, strength and weakness, are allowed for.
“That is a fact.
“I shall give you just one little instance, taken from Syndicalism.
“We shall destroy all businesses, says the Syndicalist, by vexatious
strikes. The capitalist, having vanished (struck out), the hands will
work the business.
[Sidenote: Syndicalism]
“Just so. But he forgets that all businesses, like all men, die in
time. Suppose all businesses were converted into Syndicalist businesses
worked by all the hands, in a world of Syndicalist businesses—they
would not escape from the law of decay and death which hangs over
everything material. Businesses would die, and new businesses
would have to be born under Syndicalism, just as in our world. The
competition would be just as keen and the factors of death just as
potent. But the factors of life would not be as potent. How would a new
business be born to live under Syndicalism?
“Let us suppose that six men, by energy, hard work, a little money,
and self-denial (all necessary), found a small business. It grows and
prospers, and in a year’s time they find that they must introduce new
labour to cope with the work. But the new hands are all Syndicalists.
They don’t want wages, they must have their share in the business. They
are taken on, six of them.
“We now have twelve men working a growing and prospering concern.
Unless they are absolute fools, they must recognize that expansion to
them means simply more danger and worry, for expansion is impossible
without more labour, and all the new labour introduced only sops up the
profits like a sponge, and even were the profits to increase out of
proportion to the total labour employed, that increase of individual
profit would in the majority of businesses be small—in numerous
businesses it would be non-existent. Why should they expand and risk
what they have got—for all expansion in business means risk—simply to
benefit potential labourers?
“The law of Inertia comes at once into play, without any flywheel to
counterbalance it. The business ceases to grow, and, a hundred to one,
dies.
“That is only one of the flaws in the Syndicalist’s design. His machine
has not been constructed with a view to this and other human weakness.
In a world of automata it might work; in a world of flesh and blood it
wouldn’t. In short, Syndicalism could destroy all the businesses of the
world quite easily, but it could not build them again.
[Sidenote: The Theories]
“Syndicalism, Socialism, Anarchism cannot stand for a moment under the
eye of analysis without tumbling to pieces as practical inventions.
“They seem daring and ingenious, but they are dishonouring to virile
thought.
“Let us change for a moment and ask ourselves, not what we would say
to the engineer who disregarded natural laws, but what would we say of
a playwright who proposed to present life to us in a play constructed
without a proper view to human passions, weaknesses, and fallibility,
as well as to human virtue, altruism, etc.?
“We would say at once: It is not possible. He may write such a play,
but it would have this fault: it would represent no society that ever
lived in the world, and in a thousand years hence it would be as
valueless as it is to-day.
“And that is, in fact, what you might say of all the Theorists in
Humanity I know. They have written plays for men to act in that are
quite valueless to-day, would have been quite valueless a thousand
years ago, and will be quite valueless a thousand years hence.
“They have left out Human Nature.”
[Sidenote: The Laws of Nature]
“The Statesman who would leave the world better than he found it must
take Human Nature as it is, and, instead of attempting to make it grow
in direct violation of the laws that rule it, he must assist it to grow
in accordance with those laws.
“Those laws are in the main good.
“As I have pointed out to you, they are the laws that cultivated
crocodiles so that at last they became men, that cultivated a hell of
fire until it became a habitable world, and that will cultivate men
until they become better than present-day men.
“The Reformer must study those laws. He must look at the world
generously and widely, and from the very beginning of things. He must
have communion with the great earth spirit which has brought all of us
to where we are, and, humbling himself to the dust, study the working
of that spirit through the ages.
“He will, unless he is blind, inevitably see one truth: that this great
spirit has never meddled with the growth of life and thought, but has
laboured Titanically to prepare the conditions favourable to that
growth.
“It led life by the fin and claw till life developed hands and a mind
wherewith to develop its own conditions favourable to growth. And all
the improvements of the world since then have followed that law, the
Law of Improvement of Conditions, not any vague Law for the Improvement
of Life.
“When Life left the trees and found or dug caves to live in, it left
behind it, as a record of its first shelter and home and improved
condition, the first vague scratchings of Art. You may be sure that
could it have found a record we would discover also in those caves some
sign of the first glimmer of Love.
“The cave was the first home of the germ of civilisation, and the man
who built the first hut laid the foundations of all the palaces and
cathedrals of earth.
“The man who improved the condition of the first square yard of land
laid the foundation of all worldly prosperity, and the man who made the
first hinge of hide for the first door destroyed a barricade and laid
down the first condition for hospitality.
“_Whenever man has fallen away from the teaching of this law, he has
always fallen._
[Sidenote: Athens, Egypt, Rome]
“Athens rose to the heights of the Acropolis, but she failed in the
furtherance of those conditions necessary for the development of
the world—witness her streets. Rome rose to splendour and fell in
ruins simply because of her failure in the development of material
conditions to feed and foster Progress—witness her roads—made for
armies to march on. Egypt destroyed herself with dreams of mysticism
and power useless to the development of life—witness the Pyramids and
the Sphinx.
[Sidenote: The Work of the Barbarians]
“All these so-called civilizations failed because they were inhuman in
the path of progress.
“They were not developments, but essays in development. Their
civilizations had no relation to the broad Human Family, and gave no
platform for that family to develop on. Athens, Rome, Egypt carried
Arts, Power, Mysticism to the heights, while down on the plains the
tillers of the soil, the serfs, and the barbarians carried on Human
Nature.
“Athens, Rome, and Egypt, like some modern philosophers, took no
account of human weaknesses. Examine their laws and codes, their
policy, and their view-points, and you will at once see that their
platform was so narrow that only a class could stand on it, and that
their atmosphere was stifling to Man. Human nature could not develop in
it. There was no liberty for growth. Human nature had reached a certain
point; it made blind attempts to rise higher. It rose to heights of
Egyptian power and mysticism, and fell; to heights of Athenian art and
philosophy, and fell; to heights of Roman splendour, and fell. It was
like an animal trying to leave a sea, and falling back at each attempt
by reason of the crumbling of the shore under its weight.
“It had not found the resting-place of solid rock. The hard rock of
Liberty and material good and material Reason and material development.
[Sidenote: Bacon]
“At last it found the rock by the man’s hand that could only find
and cling to that rock. That hand was Bacon’s. It was so essentially
material and human that it could distinguish rock from friable sand,
and so powerful that, having found a hold, it never let go.
“Bacon was the first modern man to seize the earth spirit’s law that
development is only possible when conditions for development have been
already prepared.
“His ‘Fruit’ was another word for conditions.
“His genius recognized intuitively that the only way to develop Man is
to let Man develop, and the only way to let him develop is to give him
liberty, mentally and physically, and a safe and sheltered platform.
“Better his material conditions.”
* * * *
“You asked me, was I opposed to any ‘plan’ for the Development of
Humanity, and I replied, and reply, in effect, that I am not, always
providing that it allowed for human development along human lines.
“That is the sum total of the matter, and the first essential of Man in
his relation to the world.”