WOMAN IN RELATION TO MAN
[Sidenote: No Such Thing as Woman]
“And what about woman’s relationship to the world?”
“There is no such thing as woman.”
“Oh! Oh!”
“There are only women. To talk of Woman as a being apart from man is
absurd. When I used the word Man in talking of the universal mind, I
included women. The word Man as used to represent men is a falsity in
that it excludes women. The word Woman is absurd, however you take it.
“Men and women are cut out of the same piece of stuff—Human Nature. The
woman is cut a bit smaller, and her outline is a bit different, that is
all.
“Mentally it is just the same as physically. She is cut, as a rule, a
bit smaller, and the outline of her mind is a bit different. But it is
only a difference in size and outline. The stuff is the same. And the
outline of the one is complementary to the outline of the other; where
the woman’s outline sinks in the man’s sticks out, and _vice versa_.
Mentally and physically it is the same; they are, in fact, the two
parts of that great jig-saw puzzle, Humanity.
“The Male and Female are not a necessity of Life. They are only a
necessity of higher vegetable and animal life. A large number of lower
organisms propagate unsexually—the monera, the am[oe]bæ, foraminifera,
radiolara, etc. These increase either by splitting in two or putting
out buds. The Male and Female are not, then, a radical necessity of
life, but they are a radical necessity in development and in progress
from a lower to a higher form of life. The Male and Female are not, as
I will try to point out, of the essence of life, but of the essence of
the forms of life.
“We must imagine that the first germ of life was sexless, a cellular
structure that multiplied by splitting in two. We must imagine that
because the rigid law of advance from the simple to the complex imposes
on us the assumption that the first form of life must have been the
simplest, and the simplest is the organism that develops by fission.
“There was a tremendous moment, then, when all earthly life lived and
moved without sign of sex; cellular forms all alike, all developing
alike, and by the same method.
“Had all these forms continued unchanged, the world would now be just
as then. But a change came, due, we must suppose (from analogy), not to
a change in the radical nature of these organisms, but to a change in
the external conditions affecting some of them. The food environment,
or the temperature environment, or the electrical environment
surrounding some of these organisms, or some other unknown but always
external influence, wrought a change in some of these lowly forms of
life. The mother of Form—Differentiation—was the result.
“The organisms affected by Differentiation had to reproduce themselves
by producing other organisms in a slightly different form, either lower
than themselves, or on the same plane as themselves, or higher than
themselves.
“Had they taken the first course, Differentiation would have meant
destruction and death to all the organisms it touched. The second
course was absolutely impossible. A simple organism cannot alter itself
without ascending or descending; if it becomes the least degree more
complex, it ascends; if it becomes the least degree less complex,
it descends. It cannot alter its nature or its form in a horizontal
direction. It is absolutely condemned to the vertical, and must go up
or down.
“These basic simple organisms, then, that formed the foundation for all
life, must have responded to their change in environment by ascending,
that is, by becoming more complex. They must have done this, or else
have descended to death. They were making for the great goal, Sex.
“How they reached that goal may be a story yet to be read by Science,
but reach it they did on the day that two of these simple-minded
organisms reproduced themselves, not by individual fission, but by
mutual union.
“It was not a radical change in the life of the organisms; it was only
a radical change in the method by which that life was reproduced.
“It was a change in business methods. It was co-operation, pure and
simple, between two organisms in the production of other organisms.
Before that day, the whole business had to be done by one individual;
after that day it was done by partners, one called Male, the other
Female.
[Sidenote: Sex a Partnership]
“Now, what is the essence of partnership? Mutual assistance. In a
labour partnership where the business is in the least complex, two men
would be of very little assistance to each other who insisted always
on doing the same job, or the same part of a job. There must always be
a top sawyer and a bottom sawyer, a man who does what the other cannot
do, or gives what the other has not got.
“It is exactly the same in the business of life-production, and the
instant that Form could demonstrate them, the two partners appeared,
and the instant that the new business of Life originated by this
partnership became acute and competitive, the partners found themselves
leagued together not only for the production of life, but for the
defence of that life.
“But that carries us beyond my immediate point, which is that the
terms Male and Female do not connote separate origins for the objects
they apply to, nor essential differences between those objects. The
two partners are essentially the same, only that one has got his hands
horny from doing the rough jobs of the partnership and the other has
kept her hands soft; one has developed mammary glands by doing her
business in the partnership, the other has developed his biceps in
doing his. One has developed certain attributes of mind in fighting the
world, the other certain other attributes in keeping the home. One has
developed certain organs for reproduction, the other—others.”
“Yet you deny the existence of Woman.”
“Absolutely. But I do not deny the existence of Sex, always holding
that, though Sex is the most powerful factor in development, it has
nothing to do with the essence of life. If it had, you would find men
and women different from one another in essentials. They are not.
“As human beings they are exactly the same, _only_ that you find some
passions and attributes more developed in men, others more developed in
women. But there is not a passion or attribute belonging to men that
is not shared in by women, and _vice versa_.”
“But there is a vast difference between women and men.”
“Of course there is, but it is only a difference, not a division;
moreover, it is only a surface difference, for the deeper you go into
their natures, the less apparent is that difference. Use the touchstone
of the profound emotions. Who has not seen a strong man weep like a
woman, or a weak woman show the heroism of a man? Does sorrow affect
men less than women? Does great joy affect women more than men?
“Is love a thing apart from man, and is it woman’s whole existence? It
is not. That claptrap was born of Fancy, and the passion for saying
a catchy thing. The love of men for women is just as powerful and as
intimately connected with their existence as the love of women for men.
Fidelity, the only true sign of real love, is exhibited by men in just
the same proportion (allowing for the greater temptations of men) as it
is by women.
“No; men and women are absolutely the same as human beings in all
things essential, and the man who denies that is the man who sees the
world with only one eye, and only uses the surface of his brain.
“Men and women are _partners_. Partners in a difficult business. They
have been partners for millions of years, and the differences between
them are caused by the exigencies of the partnership.
[Sidenote: Men—Women, and Women—Men]
“Even in those surface mental differences that mark sex a man will
often approximate to a woman in some particulars, and a woman to a man.
These surface differences are not unalterable.
“Take the love of gossip. Listen to the talk of army men and navy men
and club men.
“Take Vanity, and look at the nuts and the dudes and the macaronis.
“Take curiosity, and remember Coventry. Take love of dress—”
“And remember Mr. ——,” said she, laughing.
“Exactly. And let any one who would controvert me consider his friends
and relations critically, and tell me, with his hand on his heart, are
the males destitute of female attributes and the females of male?
“They are not. They are all human beings, and to class them
philosophically under the two divisions, Woman and Man, is a profound
error and a commonplace error.
“It has led men to look on women as mysterious beings with essential
motive springs and essential mental clockwork quite different from that
of men.
“It has led to frightful volumes of gas being generated in certain
skulls, like the skull, for instance, of X——, and some of the leaders
of the Feminist movement, and the escape of this gas is making an
alarming noise.
“When Ellen Key, for instance, says that ‘Human souls can be divided
into organic and inorganic,’ and that ‘Ibsen makes the masculine soul
inorganic, definitive, finished, determined; the feminine soul, on the
other hand, he more often makes organic, growing in evolution,’ what
does she mean?
“All this loose talk about souls being organic and inorganic I would
not exchange for one small concrete fact—such as that Mrs. Jones is a
better man than her husband, or that John Smith ‘ought to have been
born a girl,’ facts that help to prove that not only are men’s and
women’s bodies and ‘souls’ made of the same stuff, but that the sex
difference is so unfixed a quality that we find women who are to all
intents and purposes men, and men women.
“I will be bold enough to lay down a law based on experience, History,
and Common-sense.
“There is not a womanly attribute of either body or soul that has
not been born of the stuff that men are made of, and there is not an
attribute of women that has not been developed to its womanly pitch
_not_ by virtue of any mysterious energy rising from the source of
‘woman,’ but by purely external conditions. And the same with regard
to men.
[Sidenote: Conditions, Again]
“There you have the old ‘conditions’ coming up again. Let us get at
facts.
“The æsthetic sense is pre-eminently womanly. You will say, at once,
‘This is not so. Women are rarely as good artists as men.’ I was not
talking of art, but of the æsthetic sense.
“Every male artist inherits this sense from his mother. I am speaking
from long observation and experience. It is the woman in the artist
that paints; the woman in the poet that feels; the woman in the
novelist that colours the work. Every man has the æsthetic sense more
or less developed, but women have it, _as a mass_, more developed than
men. Who, for instance, puts the flowers in the cottager’s window?
“I do not believe that the æsthetic sense in the greatest artist is
more developed than it is in hundreds of thousands of women who never
touch art. His power of craftsmanship, purely material and mechanical,
and his power of constructive imagination raise him to the heights, and
these powers only come from the superior conditions favourable to them
under which men have dwelt.
“Go into any house, and you can tell if a woman lives there. Some
delightful trace or touch betrays the fact. It may be a few flowers—it
may be this or that, but the æsthetic touch is there; and in the home
it is chiefly the woman who brings it. Now, why has woman developed
this delightful attribute? It is a property of the mind; but men have
it, too. Why has she developed it out of proportion to the man’s
development in this particular?
“Since she shares it with the man, it is a common attribute, and it is
the purest common-sense to believe that she developed it simply because
the conditions affecting her life were more favourable to its growth
than the conditions affecting the life of the man.
“Though the first scratchings of art in the cave-men’s dwellings were,
most likely, the work of a man, who gave him the æsthetic basis of his
artistic sense? Arguing from what we know—his mother.
“And why did his mother cultivate this sense more than his father?
“If you had seen his father tearing through forests after, and
sometimes in front of, infuriated wild beasts, while his mother kept
cave and looked after the children, you would have a complete and
pictorial answer to that question.
“Even the weariness of the chase is disastrous to the æsthetic sense.
Look at all the hunting men and women you know, if you doubt what I say.
“So, then, without any transcendental talk about ‘souls’ being organic
or inorganic, we may say, arguing common-sensically, that women have
developed one of the most distinguishing ‘womanly’ attributes, not
because she is a woman, but because she is a human being, and the
conditions under which she has always lived have tended toward that
development.
“Again—the love of a mother for her offspring, the one attribute of all
attributes most distinctly and profoundly ‘womanly’: is it different
in kind or essence from the love of a father for his offspring? Surely
not, but it is more complex, more intimate, and more tender and more
lovable, simply because the conditions under which it has grown have
been more favourable to the development of this complexity, intimacy,
and tenderness.
“It is the same beautiful thing, but more peculiarly cultivated, and it
has grown in complexity while the man has been hunting, or trading, or
fighting the world in some other way.
“Go through the whole category of those attributes whose superior
development makes woman the flower of the earth. You will find not
one which has developed on its own account owing to some mysterious
chemistry of being peculiar to Woman,—all have developed from the
common soil of humanity, owing to the superior conditions for their
development in women.
“And the chief of those conditions has been Protection. The old
conditions come up again. The man when he was hunting and killing
beasts for his wife and children, and fighting for their existence,
never imagined that he was by his labours founding Art and Poetry. He
was. He was giving their germs conditions to grow in. Love, tenderness,
gentleness, affection, morality: all were there in the cave with the
woman. She suckled them with her children; she trained them in their
growth with kisses—and slaps. They were the man’s no less than the
woman’s, common to both their natures, but he left them in the cave
with her to take care of, while he went hunting.
“Conditions have made woman what she is: the best and most beautiful
thing in the world. And now Feminists want to change those conditions,
just as Socialists want to change the conditions affecting man.
“Both strike at the Home.”
[Sidenote: Feminism]
“‘Woman must have a freer life.’
“‘To evolve her genius, woman has but one need—Freedom.’
“‘She must be free to form her own ideas and morals.’
“‘Woman must reorganize the mind and soul of humanity, for man has
disintegrated it.’
“Those are some of the teachings of the Apostles of Feminism. I take
them from the work of a clever American woman, and they are a fair
statement of the case for Feminism.
“To the first I give an unqualified assent.
“Freedom, within limits, is the basic condition of growth.
“But what does the Feminist mean by Freedom?
“The third dictum answers that.
“‘She must be free to form her own ideas and morals.’
“One would fancy from that that ‘woman’ was an animal capable of
evolving ideas and a moral code different from man. Since woman is just
the same human animal, we may put this aside, and ask again what the
Feminist means.
“She asks, in fact, that women may be free to change their morals (we
shall leave the talk about ideas aside for the present) in any way they
please.
“Now, morals cannot be changed in a horizontal direction. It’s up, or
down, or stationary. Any change in morals is for the better or for the
worse.
“Does the Feminist ask for freedom to change her morals for the better?
She has perfect freedom to do that; most men will applaud her, and most
women, too.
“Does she ask for freedom to change her morals for the worse?
“If she is making that demand, let her frankly avow that what she wants
is license, not freedom.
“There is a lot of difference between the two.
“I am not arguing to get the Feminist in a hole, but simply to clear
the ground of brambles.
“She does want license, as a matter of fact; one would be blind who
looked at her programme and did not see that.
“And the license she wants is not the license to steal, or lie, or
murder, or commit arson. When she talks of forming her own morals, she
has one morality entirely and solely in view—the morality that presides
over Love; and when she asks for license, it is license in Love.
“Men have more license in this matter than women. That is undoubtedly
so.
“Men, since the beginning of the world, have had more license than
women; but that license is a relic of barbarism. It was useful once,
but it is becoming less useful every day, and _pari passu_ men are
becoming more moral.”
“Useful once?”
“In this way. Men in the past were the fertilisers of the world. Who
brought Roman blood to England, Norman blood, Norse blood? Men. Roman,
Norman, and Norse women had nothing to do with the matter. Their duty
was to stay at home and be moral. Armed and roaming men fertilised the
world, just as bees fertilise a field of clover, crossed the races, and
made the vitality of them.
“Roman, Norse, and Norman virtues that make England great were born
of Roman, Norse, and Norman license. The same fact applies to all
Europe. But the day of the free-lance in love is gone. He who was once
a world-maker is now a world-curse. He is not now a world-maker, but a
Home-wrecker and a woman-wrecker.
“Nations no longer require him for a fertiliser. Men no longer travel
in masses, armed with spears; they go in railway carriages, accompanied
by their families, and the world can get all the fertilisation it wants
by immigration.
“License still lives among men, but it lives as a reptile; among men
it is dying, yet Feminists, when they ask for license, would give this
dying thing a new birth among women. They forget that what was once a
bad necessity is now a hideous and dying superfluity.
[Sidenote: The Right of Motherhood]
“I have heard it stated by Feminists that motherhood is the right of
every woman.
“So is fatherhood the right of every man, and on that plea a man might
base a very wide scheme of immorality.
“As a matter of fact, there is something else: the right of the child.
“A woman has _no_ right to motherhood unless she can provide a home for
her child. A father has no right to fatherhood who cannot do likewise.
And by a home I do not mean shelter and food; I mean everything sacred
that lies in that word Home. Love, affection, self-restraint, mutual
respect, and family respect.
“Of course, if the Feminist says, Destroy the home, one has nothing
more to say. She is logical.
“But to say, I shall increase license among women without injuring or
destroying the home, at once reduces her to a person who is not logical.
“As a matter of fact, the Feminist movement, as far as its moral side
goes, is confined to a certain number of men who desire the extension
of license; to a certain number of women who do likewise; and to a
certain number of women who feel acutely that women are put upon by men
in the matter of morals. That men have set up a rule of conduct for
women which they don’t obey themselves.
“This is not so. The sternest moralists are women, and the morality of
these moralists is not an abstract quality; it arises from a profound
and intuitive motherhood instinct that tells them that license is death
to the welfare of the child, whether it develops and is shown in the
mother or the child.
“The child must restrain itself and not steal the jam; the woman must
restrain herself and not let her honour be stolen.”
“And, you will say, the man must restrain himself and not steal her
honour?”
“Certainly.
“And every man, who is a man and not a cur, obeys that law as far as in
him lies.
“Man, you must remember, has a lot to fight against, and nothing so
much as the old rules of license under which he has lived for ages.
“They used to be a royal robe; they are now a beggar’s tatters. He is
ashamed to be seen in them nowadays; he only puts them on in private;
yet they are always crying to him to put them on, just as filth is
always crying to a dog, Roll in me.
“That is all I have to say about the moral side of the Feminist people.
Their claim for equal freedom with man in other respects is far more
pleasant to notice. And it comes to this:
“Since the mass of women is just the same as the mass of men, in the
name of Humanity, why should not the woman mass have the same freedom
in affairs as the man, politically and socially?
[Sidenote: Social and Political]
“Why should the women of the nation not be free to expand their mental
and bodily energy in every social and political path in which the men
expand it?
“Certainly they ought. But they can’t.
“They could, in a nation whose units were individuals; they can’t, in a
nation whose units are homes.
“Every woman is a potential or actual queen-bee. Her duty is to found a
hive, not to make honey. Like a man, she has only a limited quantity of
energy.
“The little nation of the hive or home, which is, in very fact, the
nation itself writ small, makes vast calls upon the man’s energy and
the woman’s. Here alone is the national life as distinct from the
national affairs.
“It is the germinal spot and centre of all national activity; it is
the primary school of all morality; and it is the supreme province of
the woman. Here she is a world Builder.
“This is her kingdom. Her duties here are not only family, but
national. There are no humble duties in a home: they are all great and
national duties, directly determining the advancement of the world.
Like all great duties, they imply great outputs of energy, self-denial,
and restraint, and it is impossible for her to use her energies
effectively in two directions. She cannot be at the hub of the wheel
and the tire both at the same time. In other words, she cannot be at
home and in parliament or the law courts, or the council chambers of
the nation, or the studios or dentists’ parlours at one and the same
time.
“‘_Woman must be free to create her own conduct and to seek her own
experiences for self-development_,’ runs another dictum of our Feminist
sage.
“In the home she is only free to create her own conduct in a manner
conducive to the well-being of the home. If she swerves from this law,
she is a defaulter and an enemy to good. The same may be said of her
freedom in self-development.
“Certainly she must be free to develop herself, and so must the man be
free to develop himself.
“But the man who develops his muscles in golf at the expense of
his business time and energy is a slacker and a defaulter and a
home-injurer. And the woman who develops her political instincts or her
mind power at the expense of her home time and energy is the same.”
[Sidenote: The World-Builders]
“It seems to me,” said my audience, “that you look on women as though
they were all married and with household duties to perform.”
“I look on women as though they were all married women, or women
preparing to enter that state. No other women are of any account at all
as world-builders.
“They may be delightful, charming, pleasant, true women in every way,
but if they are not married they are not true women-factors in the
progress of the world. Simply because they have no hand in the physical
building of the future.
“The child is the future made visible and concrete. When you lay your
finger on a child you are touching not flesh only, but future ages.
“The unmarried woman-genius may influence the art or the thought of
her time; the labourer’s wife who produces a bouncing boy that lives
has produced the future. More than that, she has sent forth her own
attributes to dwell in the future. More than that, by her care and
education of that child she is laying the foundation for vast world
effects.
“That is the woman’s triumphant position in the scheme of things. She
is a partner in world-building, and the duties lying on her share of
the partnership are patent and obvious to the meanest intelligence.
“They are both moral and material, and they imply in their performance
one supreme virtue: self-sacrifice. Not freedom to develop according to
inclination; not freedom to alter her morals; not freedom to imitate
the worst faults of men; but slavery in the interests of her children,
her husband, and her home.
“And what happy people these slaves are! Just as happy as the
men-slaves who, under the dominion of good conduct, love, and the hive
instinct, often work themselves to death, like the bees, that others
may live and prosper.
“But, as you say, all women cannot be mothers. Yet it is essential that
the mothers of the nation should be protected at all costs from the
disease which lurks under the specious word ‘Feminism.’”
“They have come a long journey together, the Man and the Woman, and all
through that long journey across the ages they have been leading the
child by the hand.
“And if the wicked and blasphemous people who talk of sex-hate had but
the scientific and poetic perception enabling them to see those three
grand and mysterious figures as they are on the shores of Time, we
would be spared, perhaps, from the poisonous blight of sexisms.”
“You are so positive,” said she, “that I often haven’t dared to
interrupt you, and you talk so quickly that all you have said, though I
understood it at the time, is now a jumble in my mind.”
“I am positive, because there is no use at all in being negative.
People who believe in what they say are usually positive—even though
they may be wrong.
“If I have talked too quickly, I shall write out what I have said and
send it to you; then you can pick it to pieces as much as you please.”
THE END
NOTE TO PART I OF THE BOOK
In my experience, judging from the men I have met in life and the men
whose lives I have read about, the really strong men of the world have
been men of strong belief—and mostly men with a strong belief in a
personal God.
Faith is a very wonderful thing, call it what you please. There is in
Faith an enormous dynamic energy the origin of which, analyse it as
much as I will, leaves me utterly baffled and bewildered.
One might say that it is an orientation of the mind, a pointing of all
the thoughts in one definite direction by which the mind, as a machine,
gains harmony which is expressed in power of action, and I believe the
co-ordination of the functions of the mind under a common governing
belief does, in part, explain the miraculous power conferred on men by
Faith.
Also one might say that the mind capable of great faith is essentially
a positive mind, a direct mind, and a constructive mind.
Also one might say a great many things, and yet leave the foundation of
the question as deeply involved in darkness as ever, and the mind of a
Newman, a Gladstone, or a Cromwell the same towering mystery.
But the fact remains clear that the man without belief in something
above and beyond this world, or in something _in_ this world, some
tide, or core, or essence of which his own little life is a part, loses
the alliance of that power which we indicate in the word Faith.
There is no doubt at all that the western world has lost power, and
that England is losing power daily by the steady loss of Faith.
The crude, hard faith in a personal God which is vanishing from among
us is a dynamic force that is passing away, and it is being replaced by
what?
It is being replaced by a good many excellent things: by an increase
of tolerance and sympathy; an increased consideration for the
oppressed, and a re-valuation of all the considerations that come under
the title Justice; but all these and many more good things that have
sprung to growth in the universal mind leave the individual mind still
lacking Faith.
Darwinism it was that struck the first real blow at a personal God, and
men, in their minds at least, have nearly extinguished the chemical
hell.
And Darwinism, destroying the old rigid, childlike faith, handed the
world not Atheism, but a new Faith, which the world never seems to have
grasped.
The Faith in a world ever progressing toward the good.
Once you have grasped the great truth that your life is a part of this
miracle of growth, as long as you conform as far as in you lies to the
growth of good in yourself, you will have a Faith that will fill you
with new force.
And it is a faith that no one can refuse, for its teaching is written
across the rocks and the stars, and so plainly that a child can read
it, once it is pointed out to him.
Appendices
APPENDIX A
I have said very little about Anarchism—merely mentioned it by name;
yet the inquiries I have made into this subject reveal an organisation
and a literature astonishing to the everyday mind. To use the words of
that ardent bibliophile, H. Bourdin:
“To most people the word Anarchy is evil-sounding, but it is not the
same to learned men and to collectors and lovers who acquire the desire
of accumulating documents for history’s sake.
“The Anarchist literature has not a determined origin, being not the
expression of a system invented and progressively elaborated, but the
negation of all systems, produced by the desire to batter down the
despotic in all its forms, the rules and duty imposed by prejudice or
by force, and to give impulse to the free development of humanity.
All acts which have been accomplished and all words which have been
pronounced in hatred of this constraint and in favour of this freedom
are consciously or unconsciously the production of Anarchy.
“It is astonishing when one glances at the huge quantity of literature
of all kinds which has been printed in the space of the last
half-century for the exposition of their ideal thought; no other party
or sect, for whatever cause they had to defend, can be compared to
this, except Christianity, which has taken about 2,000 years over it.
Consider the difficulty which they have met in publishing clandestinely
their periodicals, broadsides, etc., hunted by society as wild beasts;
domiciliary perquisitions destroyed their works, which were merely
their thoughts.”
M. Bourdin has courteously allowed me to inspect the huge library
of Anarchistical literature which he has collected, consisting of
journals, broadsides, pamphlets, volumes, songs, theatrical plays, etc.
To give you an idea of the extent and nature of the Anarchistical
press, I enumerate a few of the journals:
_L’Anarchie, Journal de l’Ordre_, May, 1850.
(In 1850, Anarchy had already a press.)
_Le Libertaire_, 1858–1861.
_L’Egalité_, 1869–1872.
_L’Internationale_, 1870–1873.
_La Révolution Sociale_, 1871–1872.
_L’Ami du Peuple_ (Liège), 1873–1875.
_Ni Dieu ni Maître_, 1880. (You see we are getting on in titles.)
_La Révolution Sociale_, 1880.
_Le Drapeau Noir_, 1883.
_L’Emeute_, 1883–1884.
_La Lutte_, 1883.
_Le Défi_, 1884.
_La Guerre Sociale_, 1885. (Brussels).
_La Révolte_, 1894.
_L’Antipatriote_, 1899. (Cat out of the bag.)
_Le Tocsin_, 1892–1894.
_La Débâcle_, 1893.
_L’Insurgé_ (Lyons), 1893.
_Le Cyclone_ (Buenos Aires), 1895–1896.
_La Cravache_, 1898.
_Le Cravacheur_, idem.
_Le Cri de Révolte_, 1898–9.
_Les Crimes de Dieu_, 1898.
_La Bastille_, 1902–3.
_Germinal_, 1904–1910.
_L’Anarchie_, 1905.
_L’Anarchiste_, 1907.
_L’Action Directe_, 1907–1908.
_La Mère Peinard_, 1908.
_La Révolution_, 1909.
_Les Révoltés_, 1909.
_La Bataille Syndicaliste_, 1911.
_The Anarchist_ (Glasgow), 1912.
And these are only a few of the journals in the great Bourdin
collection.* I have only mentioned some of the French journals
devoted to the cause; there are English and German as well, and there
are sure to be Russian and Spanish and Italian journals to match.
* This collection is for sale, I believe.
It is a big movement. Give me the literature of a movement, and I will
feel its pulse and tell you about its constitution. The literature of
Anarchism tells that it is very much alive.
What is Anarchism? It is really unconstructive Socialism and
Syndicalism.
The Anarchists want to destroy society as it is, and let Human Nature
ramp on the remains.
The Socialist wants to destroy society, and build it again on an
anti-Human-natural plan.
The Syndicalist wants to destroy the Business World and to erect a new
business world on an unbusinesslike basis.
Of the three, I prefer Anarchy.
It is the only one of the three dreams based on common-sense, for it
frankly aims at Anarchy, and Anarchy is exactly what it would get were
it to succeed.
* * * *
I have said “The three dreams,” and though I have permitted myself
to sneer at some points in the philosophy of some of these dreamers,
I have no sneers at all to expend on their energy, and on their
wholeheartedness. They are all trying to express something, and that
something is the Poverty and the Misery of the world.
Socialism, Syndicalism, and Anarchism are all one voice speaking in
different tones.
And that voice is growing and must be answered, not by Repression, but
by Philosophy.
The world is not all wrong, but it is not all right. Man is speaking
in no uncertain tones, and he wants some reply more apposite to his
argument than the glib chirrup of Pippa.
APPENDIX B
A PASSAGE FROM HAECKEL*
Under the title of _Design in the Living Organism_, the famous
embryologist, Carl Ernst Baer, published a work in 1876 which, together
with the article on Darwinism which accompanied it, proved very
acceptable to our opponents, and is still much quoted in opposition to
evolution. It was a revival of the old teleological system under a new
name, and we must devote a line of criticism to it. We must premise
that, though Baer was a scientist of the highest order, his original
monistic views were gradually marred by a tinge of mysticism with the
advance of age, and he eventually became a thorough dualist. In his
profound work on _The Evolution of Animals_ (1828), which he himself
entitled _Observation and Experiment_, these two methods of
investigation are equally applied. By careful observation of the
various phenomena of the development of the animal ovum, Baer succeeded
in giving the first consistent presentation of the remarkable changes
which take place in the growth of the vertebrate from a simple
egg-cell. At the same time, he endeavoured, by far-seeing comparison
and keen reflection, to learn the causes of the transformation, and
to reduce them to general constructive laws. He expressed the general
result of his research in the following thesis: “The evolution of
the individual is the story of the growth of individuality in every
respect.” He meant that “the one great thought that controls all the
different aspects of animal evolution is the same that gathered the
scattered fragments of space into spheres, and linked them into solar
systems. This thought is no other than life itself, and the words and
syllables in which it finds utterance are the varied forms of living
things.”
* This translation from Haeckel’s “The Riddle of the
Universe” is taken from an edition published by The
Rationalist Press in England, and Harper & Brothers in the
United States of America, Copyright 1900, to whom grateful
acknowledgment is made for permission for its use in this
volume.
Baer, however, did not attain to a deeper knowledge of this great
genetic truth and a clearer insight into the real efficient causes
of organic evolution, because his attention was exclusively given to
one-half of evolutionary science, the science of the evolution of the
individual, embryology, or, in a wider sense, ontogeny. The other half,
the science of the evolution of species, phylogeny, was not yet in
existence, although Lamarck had already pointed out the way to it in
1809. When it was established by Darwin in 1859, the aged Baer was no
longer in a position to appreciate it; the fruitless struggle which he
led against the theory of selection clearly proved that he understood
neither its real meaning nor its philosophic importance. Teleological
and, subsequently, theological speculations had incapacitated the
aging scientist from appreciating this greatest reform of biology.
The teleological observations which he published against it in his
_Species and Studies_, in his eighty-fourth year, are mere repetitions
of errors which the teleology of the dualists has opposed to the
mechanical or monistic system for more than 2,000 years. The “telic”
idea, which, according to Baer, controls the entire evolution of the
animal from the ovum is only another expression for the eternal “idea”
of Plato, and the _entelecheia_ of his pupil, Aristotle.
Our modern biogeny gives a purely physiological explanation of the
facts of embryology, in assigning the functions of heredity and
adaptation as their causes. The great biogenetic law, which Baer
failed to appreciate, reveals the intimate causal connection between
the _ontogenesis_ of the individual and the _phylogenesis_ of its
ancestors; the former seems to be a recapitulation of the latter.
Nowhere, however, in the evolution of animals and plants do we find any
trace of design, but merely the inevitable outcome of the struggle for
existence, the blind controller, instead of the provident God, that
affects the changes of organic forms by a mutual action of the laws of
heredity and adaptation. And there is no more trace of “design” in the
embryology of the individual plant, animal, or man. This _ontogeny_
is but a brief epitome of _phylogeny_, an abbreviated and condensed
recapitulation of it, determined by the physiological laws of heredity.
Baer ended the preface to his classical _Evolution of Animals_ (1828)
with these words: “The palm will be awarded to the fortunate scientist
who succeeds in reducing the constructive forces of the animal body
to the general forces or life-processes of the entire world. The tree
has not yet been planted which is to make his cradle.” The great
embryologist erred once more. That very year, 1828, witnessed the
arrival of Charles Darwin at Cambridge University (for the purpose of
studying theology!)—the “fortunate scientist,” who richly earned the
palm thirty years afterward by his theory of selection.
In the philosophy of history—that is, in the general reflections which
historians make in the destinies of nations and the complicated course
of political evolution—there still prevails the notion of a “moral
order of the universe.” Historians seek in the vivid drama of history
a leading design, an ideal purpose, which has ordained one or other
race or State to a special triumph, and to dominion over the others.
This teleological view of history has recently become more strongly
contrasted with our monistic view in proportion as monism has proved
to be the only possible interpretation of inorganic nature. Throughout
the whole of astronomy, geology, physics, and chemistry there is no
question to-day of a “moral order,” or a personal God, whose “hand hath
disposed all things in wisdom and understanding.” And the same must be
said of the entire field of biology, the whole constitution and history
of organic nature, if we set aside the question of man for the moment.
Darwin has not only proved by his theory of selection that the orderly
processes in the life and structure of animals and plants have arisen
by mechanical laws without any preconceived design, but he has shown
us in the “struggle for life” the powerful natural force which has
exerted supreme control over the entire course of organic evolution for
millions of years. It may be said that the struggle for life is the
“survival of the fittest,” or the “victory of the best”; that is only
correct when we regard the strongest as the best (in a moral sense).
Moreover, the whole history of the organic world goes to prove that,
besides the predominant advance toward perfection, there are at all
times cases of retrogression to lower stages. Even Baer’s notion of
“design” has no moral feature whatever.
Do we find a different state of things in the history of peoples, which
man, in his anthropocentric presumption, loves to call “the history of
the world”? Do we find in every phase of it a lofty moral principle
or a wise ruler guiding the destinies of nations? There can be but one
answer in the present advanced stage of natural and human history: No.
The fate of those branches of the human family, those nations and races
which have struggled for existence and progress for thousands of years,
is determined by the same “eternal laws of iron” as the history of the
whole organic world which has peopled the earth for millions of years.
Geologists distinguish three great epochs in the organic history of
the earth, as far as we can read it in the monuments of the science of
fossils—the primary, secondary, and tertiary epochs. According to a
recent calculation, the first occupied at least 34,000,000, the second
11,000,000, and the third 3,000,000 years. The history of the family
of vertebrates, from which our own race has sprung, unfolds clearly
before our eyes during this long period. Three different stages in
the evolution of the vertebrate correspond to the three epochs: the
_fishes_ characterised the primary (palæozoic) age, the _reptiles_ the
secondary (mesozoic), and the _mammals_ the tertiary (cænozoic). Of
the three groups the fishes rank lowest in organisation, the reptiles
come next, and the mammals take the highest place. We find, on nearer
examination of the history of the three classes, that their various
orders and families also advanced progressively during the three epochs
toward a higher stage of perfection. May we consider this progressive
development as the outcome of a conscious design or a moral order
of the universe? Certainly not. (Certainly yes. Progression toward
the benign is the core of all morality.—H. de V. S.) The theory of
selection teaches us that this organic progress, like the earlier
organic differentiation, is an inevitable consequence of the struggle
for existence. (Struggle for improved conditions.—H. de V. S.)
Thousands of beautiful and remarkable species of animals and plants
have perished during those 48,000,000 years, to give place to stronger
competitors, and the victors in this struggle for life were not always
the noblest or most perfect forms in a moral sense. (No, but they were
the best condition-builders.—H. de V. S.)
It has been just the same with the history of humanity. The splendid
civilisation of classical antiquity perished because Christianity,
with its faith in a loving God and its hope of a better life beyond
the grave, gave a fresh, strong impetus to the soaring human mind. The
Papal Church quickly degenerated into a pitiful caricature of real
Christianity, and ruthlessly scattered the treasures of knowledge
which the Hellenic philosophy had gathered; it gained the dominion
of the world through the ignorance of the credulous masses. In time
the Reformation broke the chains of this mental slavery, and assisted
reason to secure its right once more. But in the new, as in the
older period, the great struggle for existence went on in its eternal
fluctuation, with no trace of a moral order.
And it is just as impossible for the impartial and critical observer
to detect a “wise providence” in the fate of individual human beings
as a moral order in the history of peoples. Both are determined with
iron necessity by a mechanical causality which connects every single
phenomenon with one or more antecedent causes. Even the ancient Greeks
recognised _ananke_, the blind _heimarmene_, the fate “that rules
gods and men,” as the supreme principle of the universe. Christianity
replaced it by a conscious Providence, which is not blind, but sees,
and which governs the world in patriarchal fashion. The anthropomorphic
character of this notion, generally closely connected with belief in
a personal God, is quite obvious. Belief in a “loving Father,” who
unceasingly guides the destinies of 1,500,000,000 men on our planet,
and is attentive at all times to their millions of contradictory
prayers and pious wishes, is absolutely impossible; that is at once
perceived on laying aside the coloured spectacles of “faith” and
reflecting rationally on the subject.
As a rule, this belief in Providence and the tutelage of a “loving
Father” is more intense in the modern civilised man—just as in the
uncultured savage—when some good fortune has befallen him: an escape
from peril of life, recovery from a severe illness, the winning of the
first prize in a lottery, the birth of a long-delayed child, and so
forth. When, on the other hand, a misfortune is met with, or an ardent
wish is not fulfilled, “Providence” is forgotten. The wise ruler of the
world slumbered—or refused his blessing.
In the extraordinary development of commerce in the nineteenth century
the number of catastrophes and accidents has necessarily increased
beyond all imagination; of that the journal is a daily witness.
Thousands are killed every year by shipwreck, railway accidents, mine
accidents, etc. Thousands slay one another every year in war, and the
preparation for this wholesale massacre absorbs much the greater part
of the revenue in the highest civilised nations, the chief professors
of “Christian charity.” And among these hundreds of thousands of annual
victims of modern civilisation strong, industrious, courageous workers
predominate. Yet the talk of a “moral order” goes on.
Since impartial study of the evolution of the world teaches us that
there are no definite aim and no special purpose to be traced in it,
there seems to be no alternative but to leave everything to “blind
chance.” This reproach has been made to the transformism of Lamarck and
Darwin, as it has been to the previous systems of Kant and Laplace;
there are a number of dualist philosophers who lay great stress on it.
It is, therefore, worth while to make a brief remark upon it.
One group of philosophers affirms, in accordance with its teleological
conception, that the whole cosmos is an orderly system, in which every
phenomenon has its aim and purpose; there is no such thing as chance.
The other group, holding a mechanical theory, expresses itself thus:
The development of the universe is a monistic mechanical process, in
which we discover no aim or purpose whatever (except that it is ever
growing toward the good.—H. de V. S.): what we call design in the
organic world is a special result of biological agencies; neither in
the evolution of the heavenly bodies nor in that of the crust of our
earth do we find any trace of a controlling purpose (O blindness!
before the wonder of development.—H. de V. S.)—all is the result of
chance. Each party is right—according to its definition of chance.
The general law of causality, taken in conjunction with the law of
substance, teaches us that every phenomenon has a mechanical cause;
in this sense there is no such thing as chance. Yet it is not only
lawful, but necessary, to retain the term for the purpose of expressing
the simultaneous occurrence of two phenomena, which are not causally
related to each other, but of which each has its own mechanical cause,
independent of that of the other. Everybody knows that chance, in this
monistic sense, plays an important part in the life of man and in the
universe at large. That, however, does not prevent us from recognising
in each “chance” event, as we do in the evolution of the entire
cosmos, the universal sovereignty of nature’s supreme law, _the law of
substance_.
A NOTE ON THE PASSAGE FROM HAECKEL
I do not suggest, _I affirm_, with the support of all science at my
elbow and all reason at my side, that the world in its development has
exhibited only one constant direction, and that direction is toward
what we call the good or, in other words, progression toward the
complex.
That the development of forms by natural selection is only a part of
the real business of the universe, whose mighty labours have, from the
very beginning of earthly things, been directed toward one distant
ideal.
What is the Ideal? Who knows? We only know that on the covering
directions of the sealed orders, which man may not open till he is fit
to read them, are the words: Advancement, Love, Mercy, Kindliness,
Protection, and every other word which the mind of man has marshalled
under that mysterious and general term, The Good.
Blind matter carried those sealed orders in its body and the first
fishes carried them under their fins, the first claw was made to catch
them and to carry them through ferocious times, till the hand of the
first monkey seized them. “Advancement” was the only word on the cover
then; but, age after age, hitherto invisible directions began to
appear letter by letter, till “Love” stood out, and “Mercy,” and all
those other words that form the basis of Progress.
Accident and the stress of growth have sometimes obliterated those
words for years and centuries. Civilisations have misinterpreted
some of those words and barbarisms have rubbed them out, schools of
Religions and schools of thought have meddled with them and altered
them, yet they have always returned, and not only returned, but brought
other words with them.
The aim and object of life, Haeckel, are the carriage of those sealed
orders, and the implicit obedience of the directions that appear age by
age on their envelope, till, who knows, some day the word “Open” may be
found there, and some glimpse of the great Ideal be permitted to the
eyes of man.
APPENDIX C
THE MYSTERY OF ANALOGY AND SIMILE
My companion likened the present-day world to a big head with the
brains on the outside. The idea is absolutely just; we have even
the two hemispheres of the brain in the eastern and western world.
In future years, when telegraphy and telephony are more highly
developed—and, who knows, telepathy also—the idea will even be more
true than it is to-day.
In this connection: have you ever considered the deep mystery that lies
in Analogy?
In the universe of mind and matter, why do we see the same idea
repeated in widely different forms. The whole world of structure is a
world of plagiarism. The skull and a nut are the structural outcome
of the same idea, so are the cockle and the almond—but imitations of
structure are nothing to the fact that root ideas, like that governing
the structure of the vertebrates, strike upward into the worlds of
thought and action. We have vertebrates in businesses, business with
brains, spinal cords, sympathetic nervous systems all complete. In
states, armies, and more vaguely in philosophies, policies, and all
structures of thought, whether they be theories, or poems, or plays, or
novels, the vertebrate idea is found.
Why is the life history of a man so extraordinarily like the life
history of a nation, and the story of a man’s day a little poetical
simile of a man’s life?
Why does the poetical simile satisfy the mind when, for instance, we
talk of a sea that smiles, or compare a sunset to the fading of a
fortune?
Is it because we have struck, half-unconsciously, on the key to the
riddle of the universe; that the conditions upon which the universe
of mind and matter clings, as snow clings to branches and twigs, are
exceedingly few—are derived from the same trunk and strike upward,
through the material and spiritual world, just as tree branches and
twigs strike upward through denser and lighter layers of air.
The main trellis or branch conditions that run through everything are
the conditions of Life, Death, Growth, and Decay. These are the four
master branches. All others are the twigs subsidiary and derived from
these. Think, if you can find a conception of the mind, exclusive of
mathematical concepts, that does not embody these four in its essence,
and is not, in fact, the child of these. And yet, these four are only
one. For death is complementary to life; it is the absolutely faithful
shadow of life. Nay, it is life itself, for life is perpetual change,
and the essence of death is not death, but change.
And growth, what is it?—change; and decay, what is it?—change.
Change, then, is the one master idea, the trunk from which all ideas
spring—and what is the soul of change?—motion.
And what is motion?—it is the soul of the Universe.
End of Project Gutenberg's The New Optimism, by Henry De Vere Stacpoole