PRESENT CHANGES OF CHARACTER.
Having now seen how the fluctuations of amendment or deterioration
of character, are subject to the same common laws as those of the
variation of physical structure, we are in a position to see more
clearly the effect of gradual changes around us in England. Emigration
has been very active in the past three generations, and immigration has
recently become important. The loss of the earliest emigrants who moved
for religious and political reasons affected the national character
very little; there was plenty of solid character remaining in England,
and the removal of the more disputatious elements gave added strength
to those who continued at home. The compulsory emigration of convicts
was similarly a gain by removing those who were most out of harmony
with the majority. Happily those whose characters made it most irksome
to them to comply with the legal formulae of life at home, were just
those best suited for the type of a new country, less restrained and
more varied, with greater scope for enterprise. So far there had been
a gain by removal of the two extreme types. But then succeeded a most
serious movement of the voluntary selection of persons who thought that
their energies would have a better and more remunerative scope in the
colonies. This implied a draining away of those who had intelligence
to choose a more promising career, energy to break with their
present life and start afresh, and who possessed most adaptability,
self-reliance, and hopefulness. All of these qualities are greatly
needed at home for a prosperous population; and the incessant natural
selection from the general mass, and removal of those who had most
of such qualities, must have produced a serious effect on the home
population. We see in England undoubtedly a lessening of sturdiness
as a whole, and the deficiency of the abilities which have been most
exported. There is a general outcry about the lack of adaptability in
business; and the general want of self-reliance is shown by all the
grandmotherly legislation which is sought and granted. At first we
succeeded in getting rid of some amount of less desirable stock along
with the capable stock; but in later years most countries will not
admit any but good stock, and we lose the valuable examples of national
character without any compensation. The drain of capacity from the
nation is a most serious feature of life in England; and how far the
prominence of the "submerged tenth," and the large proportion who live
only a week's remove from starvation, is due to the lowering of the
standard of capacity by the emigration of the more capable, is a very
important question. The same consideration applies to Ireland in a far
more acute form, as the emigration has been of much larger proportions.
A large immigration into England has recently grown up. So far as this
is of more energetic men, who see their way to win over our heads,
they should be welcomed. The German who comes to England to establish
factories and exploit the English market is at least a gain to the
country, as it is far better he should do this in England rather than
expend all that energy and management out of England. The trade and
manufacture of England have been largely built up by immigrations of
Flemings, Huguenots, Dutch, French, and now Germans, who have each
contributed to our capacity for work. In commercial business the
foreign influence is strong. In north-west London one-tenth of the
private residents are of German origin. A movement is going on quite
comparable to other great race movements of past history; but it only
affects the upper classes, and not the hand-labourer. Beside this there
is the large movement of the lowest and most depressed mass of European
humanity, from the sink of poverty in Poland and Western Russia. It is
essentially a bad stock, one of the lowest in Europe; and the large
proportion of criminal cases arising among these immigrants shows how
undesirable they are. To allow such a low type free settlement in
England, after draining the capable Englishmen to the colonies, makes a
serious danger of a national collapse under a sudden pressure of some
new circumstances, which might arise by trade or warfare.
Some other consequences which flow from recent changes will be dealt
with in the fourth chapter in considering the effects of small causes.
The low type of character prevailing in all classes in England at
present needs to be fully recognised. No doubt there has been in
past centuries more external coarseness, and this detail strikes the
attention of many people because it differs from their own present
convention. But mere directness and plainness of speech is quite
immaterial compared with the essentials of working power of mind and
body, and the capacity for intelligent interests. Some centuries ago,
when men thought more about the quality of their actions, sloth was
ranked as one of the seven deadly sins. But now, in place of regarding
it as anything wrong, there is an elaborate system of compulsory sloth;
it is enforced by heavy penalties, and drilled into the character by
example and self-interest. One man is forbidden to lay more than three
hundred bricks a day, another forbidden to make more than so many glass
dishes, another forbidden to attend to more than one machine. In every
trade where a selfish short-sighted policy has gained its way, there
is this system, which is doing inconceivable harm to character. The
compulsory glorification of sloth is the most deleterious misfortune
that can happen to a nation. The wreck of wars, pestilence and famine,
will leave a more hopeful prospect than that of a people sunk in
organised sloth.
Connected with this is the strange lack of thought and adaptability in
common matters of everyday life. The daily loss of time, and cost in
trivial matters, which affects thousands of persons, makes a heavy tax
on the whole. For instance, such a simple matter as putting the offices
of a terminal station at the ends of the platforms is still ignored
at many termini; the name of a station is often hard to find, and is
never once put up in most termini; the price of a ticket is often not
to be discovered; the right types of carriages are only now being
tried, after persevering in a wrong form for two generations. In the
streets the same lack of sense is seen in the immense omnibus system,
which is difficult to use, especially for strangers, owing to the lack
of numbered routes and conveyances. It has been officially decided
that the numbering of routes and omnibuses is beyond the powers of
the London County Council; and we must be compensated by the pleasing
reflection that something at least is too hard for that body. The
thoughtless edict however was enforced that every vehicle must carry a
white light in front, and all the distinctive colours of the tram-car
lights were abolished, causing great inconvenience at night. Even in
the most recent appliances the same dulness is shown; electric fans
are commonly placed where they only stir foul air, and not where they
draw in fresh or expel used air. The whole lighting system still throws
away two thirds of all its cost by lighting sky and walls as much as
streets. In every direction it seems hard to believe that five minutes'
thought has been given to matters costing thousands of pounds. If we
traced such a mixture of design and of chance in any other subject it
would lead to some curious speculations on the implied limitations of
the directing Intellect. And in private matters it is the same; the
extraordinary blunders and oversights in common trade work show that
the most obvious details have not had a minute's real thought given
to their arrangement. The result is an accumulation of difficulty and
muddle which cripples, if not destroys, the purpose of the work. This
persistent dulness, and incapacity for management and design, shows a
defect of character which is a heavy detriment to the whole community.
The pleasures of the public show the same low type as their business.
The illustrated papers that are read, apart from serious news, are a
revelation of the vacuity of the public mind, as the advertisements
are a testimony to its imbecility. The absence of any thoughts or
information that can enlarge the mind, or give it fresh insight or
understanding, and the fatuity of the illustrations, show the helpless
little round of common ideas of the well-to-do classes: while the
dishing up of legal filth for the lower classes, and the morbid love of
trivial accidents and catastrophes, shows terribly the mere animalism
which fills their horizon. The one subject on which most print is spent
is that which is absolutely futile, sport and games. Whether one group
of men, selected by mere accident, is a minute trifle more active than
another accidental group, is a matter of such utter insignificance that
it would seem impossible to suppose that anyone would turn the head to
see the result decided. Yet such questions absorb most of the interests
and spare thoughts and reading of a great part—perhaps the greater
part—of the population, just as the races of the circus swamped all
other interests of the decadent Roman. The results which they crave for
cannot possibly mean anything to the present or to the future, as the
selection is merely due to accidental causes. Even a lower depth is the
relative excellence of two horses which are completely unknown to the
persons who speculate on them. The utter waste of thought and print in
such interests is a form of insanity which is worse than a drug habit,
as it implies a hopeless atrophy of the mind to interests which would
help it or develop it.
The whole interest of betting on sport, and also of gambling, is
another evidence of an unwholesome condition. It implies a craving
for excitement apart from personal exertion, which is always a bane
to character; it involves the idea of gain apart from labour of mind
or body, which is demoralising to the sense of work; it results in
unearned fluctuations, which induce a wasteful habit; and it is based
on the essentially ungentlemanly principle of benefiting by the loss
of another, whereas all honourable gain is by the sharing of the
benefits of labour. If a large part of the public are determined on
deteriorating in this manner, it might be better for the community to
satisfy it by public lottery, where one party is the government, which
at least removes the last-named serious detriment to character. The
gaming at Monte Carlo is moral compared with promiscuous betting.
The objections to such forms of interest are perhaps too often urged by
moralists who wish to cause an alteration in the customs around them.
Even if we can care for the benefit of persons with such interests,
certainly we are not likely to make any difference to them by talking
on the subject. But as students of diseased society we may take a deep
interest in such forms of aberration as a pathologist may in a case
of cancer. And it is difficult to feel any particular wish to change
habits which so obviously belong to a bad stock that is hardly worth
improving. The best hope is that the unmitigated results of such mental
disease may quickly have full effect on the type, and result in its
extermination before a better class or better race. So far as cure
is possible, the most hopeful direction is by an increase of useful
and beneficial interests, which will make such vapid and senseless
amusements decay by mere disgust.
The distaste for work and craving for amusement extends beyond the
above limits in a manner very deleterious to character. It is a feature
of a decaying civilisation, as shown on the later Mykenaean frescoes,
and the rage for the circus in later Roman times. Besides the waste of
time and labour, it acts injuriously in producing a restless incapable
type of mind, brought more forward lately in motoring; and also by
creating a false social atmosphere, in which the business of life is
contemned and treated as a drudgery, instead of being a main subject of
interest and emulation. As the shrewd Carl Peters remarks on English
society, "Nobody can fail to be struck by its utter recklessness and
shallowness," and "an increasing objection to labour is noticeable
right through the British nation."
These various forms of a low type of character are on the increase, and
it does not seem at all likely that they will be checked, except by
great disasters which remove the less capable part of the population,
and compel the rest to adopt a more energetic mode of life.
Among the various movements which are by some expected to benefit
character, the communistic ideals have enthusiastic support. But it
must be remembered that all such types of society tend to repress
ability. If any form of communism is to succeed there must be a fixed
minimum of labour compulsory on each member; and it is certain that
human nature will take the minimum limit as all that need be done. The
tendency will be to drag down all energy to the speed of the weakest.
Moreover, if there is to be any private _peculium_ outside of the share
of common produce, the able man will at once rise into a capitalist; if
no private _peculium_ is tolerated it is certain that ability will be
driven out to other lands, or to other lines of life where communism
cannot be enforced. It must always be kept in view that mediocrity
hates ability, wherever it comes into comparison or competition; and
in a uniform community, mediocrity must be dominant, and ability
persecuted.
Again the communistic type tends to repress variation and diversity
by making everyone subject to the control of the dull average; and
this repression is most fatal to due advance by natural selection of
beneficial variation. We may see in France how a centralised management
by the State accompanies the lack of enterprise in affairs. It is
notorious that in business the French will not spend freely on creating
new openings and encouraging new demand. Probably the habit of mind and
the type of government act and react by one intensifying the other.
Where we can study an actual working system of communism in such a
climate as our own, we see that it only succeeded by some elaborate
and very forcible regulations. To outsiders, ignorant of the machine,
the less advanced states of society are generally supposed to be very
simple, and to leave a large amount of liberty. On the contrary,
whenever a barbaric or savage society is really understood, the
complexity which is essential to its success is seen to be even greater
than among ourselves. The movement of society has been from an earlier
complexity of special restriction, to a later generalised simplicity.
The whole of northern Europe appears to have had a very similar system
of communal organisation, which has been mainly brought to light by the
researches of Dr. Seebohm. The peace was kept by making every relation
of a man responsible for his actions; either wounding in any degree,
or murder, had to be compounded for by fines extending even to distant
cousins, which were payable to the similar relations of the injured
or murdered man. The immediate male relatives, father, son, brother,
and first cousin, were responsible for two-thirds of the blood money,
and other relations to the fifteenth degree made up the remainder.
Thus the criminal law was communal in a full sense; and injuries were
fully compensated in a manner which made every man his brother's keeper
in a real communism. How would modern admirers of communism like to
undertake the responsibilities of making up for the misdeeds of every
relative? Yet that is an essential part of communal duties.
The poor-law system, as revealed in the Norse laws, was that all
the poorer men were bound to do a certain amount of work for their
chief, like the payment of taxes at present, which amounts now to
more than a month's work in the year. In return the chief was bound
to see that they were insured against extreme-poverty or distress.
They were free to accumulate wealth if they had the ability to do so,
but their bargains and marriages had to be ratified by the chief in
order to safeguard them from the follies of incapacity. When a man
wished to resign this position of insurance against misfortune there
was no objection to his independence, and he could do so on paying
a small fee, and having a feast with the chief and witnesses. But if
after that he played the fool, and his family came to naught, no one
was responsible for them, as he had resigned his insurance. There
was but one course left, a wide grave in the churchyard received the
whole family alive, and only the one who survived longest had the
right to live at the cost of his chief afterwards. Such was the price
of communal support; and this decisive treatment, even in Christian
times, ensured the sturdiness of the hardy Norseman, by effectively
weeding the incapable. This was the practical working of the communal
system which did not check ability, and which succeeded in our
climate in past times. It needed a fuller organisation of penalties
and obligations than our present individualism; and whether any
communism could permanently succeed with less compulsion may gravely
be doubted. In using the terms Socialism and Communism they are taken
here in their widest sense, as referring to all the courses opposed to
individualism. Such is the general usage of our language at present,
and we cannot restrict these terms solely to extreme views, as some of
their advocates would wish. Moreover, it is the influence of views on
practical life that we are considering, and not an ideal state which
never has been realised, and probably never can be put in practice.
A favourite idea has been that the New Testament teaching favours
communism. To many such an authority would be decisive; and those who
would not accept it as authoritative, must consider that the teaching
is at least that of men who had such an instinctive knowledge of human
nature, and such sympathy with the springs of action, that their views
have held Western man more firmly than any other system. The first
point to notice in looking at the teaching, is that it was given to
a very severely selected group of persons. The early disciples were
one of the hardest-weeded bodies of men that ever existed, like the
Huguenots or the Quakers; ready perception, hearty conscientiousness,
and a will to do right at all costs were the first qualifications,
and incessant persecution from various sides weeded out all those who
had no deep root of character. To such a body temporary communism was
almost a need of existence at starting; all the causes and characters
which would ordinarily make it a failure were weeded out, and such a
highly selected group might safely benefit by a system which depended
on self-abnegation. But so soon as the Church spread, no trace of
communism remained; and even in general altruism the injunctions
referred only to the Church and not to the world. The teaching was
"Bear ye one another's burdens"; not, bear the burdens of the Roman
rabble, but only those of the stringently weeded community. The one
saying which survived most strongly of all the Gospel teaching, and is
repeated oftenest, is, "To him that hath shall be given, and from him
that hath not shall be taken away even that which he seemeth to have."
The full benefit of capacity and its utmost gains, and the direst
losses of incapacity, are the main principle that is inculcated.
In another point of view the parable of the prodigal son is sometimes
felt to inculcate the ignoring of failure in life, and the permitting
of follies to have no effect on the position of a person. The prodigal
son among us is too often allowed to go on draining the resources on
which his brethren rightfully have a claim. But the father in the
parable, who had divided the family property already, was not intending
to give anything more to the prodigal, however penitent he might be;
forgiveness might be his, but the other brother was reassured at once
by the formal declaration, "All that I have is thine." The greatest
penitence, and the fullest forgiveness after it, will not give the
prodigal a farthing beyond those rights which he has already misused.
Another appeal has been made, to a comparison with nature, in favour of
communism. It is asked why we should be struggling like the carnivora,
instead of peacefully browsing in amity like herbivora. But it would
be hard to find a more intense example of competition than that among
the cattle. Look at the skeleton of a bull, and see how every rib is
broadened out into an armour plating for its vitals, each rib lapping
over the other, so that no opening can be found for the point of its
adversary's horn. None but those thus proof against goring have ever
survived the desperate struggle of the strongest. In place of the
artificial paddocks, where man has placed a single bull to lord the
herd, look at the tragedy of the wild cattle, where the dispossessed
chief of the Chillingham breed mopes apart in sullen anger, a Saturn
dethroned and banished by the Jupiter who now leads the race. Then
reflect how competition is more bitter and more intense in the bovine
commune than among any individualistic carnivora.
The communistic view appears to tend to fatalism. This is practically
seen for instance in Tolstoi's _Peace and War_, where the gigantic
movements of the French and Russian hosts are looked on as inherent in
the millions of people, and not originating in the leaders. And the
habit of looking to the commune as the source of action will naturally
tend toward a sense of the impossibility of altering the determination
of a whole people, and the powerlessness of the individual against such
forces. Now nothing more surely undermines activity and initiative than
a fatalistic view. It saps the whole springs of action, and destroys
the spirit of advance and improvement. In this aspect therefore we
again see how injurious the communistic ideal is to solid character.
The recent growth of "municipalising" enterprises is another outcome
of this spirit. The principle of it seems to be to absorb any public
business which appears profitable, whether conveyance, supplies of
material, or contracting for public work. Apart from the fact that
only strong personal interest in management will make such enterprises
profitable, there is also the inherent objection to the bad management
which clings to the atrophy of mind of officials, as such; but there is
also another serious influence upon character, which we should notice.
The energy and initiative needed to start and work improvements, which
is the essential source of profit in business, is easily suppressed or
driven away. Many an enterprise which would succeed well is set aside
because of the risks or the trouble of starting it, many another is
left alone owing to little deterring causes; and if the great incentive
of the possibility of large profits on some schemes, to compensate for
the risks of many failures, is cut away by a municipality having the
right of seizure of whatever succeeds, the whole enterprising character
is cut down at the roots, to the immense injury of the nation at large.
Supposing that some public enterprise makes 20 per cent. profit to its
shareholders, the people who use it are certainly better off, or they
would leave it alone, and the profit is no loss to the community, as
it merely means so much transferred from one pocket to another, and
none wasted. But if such enterprises are choked at the roots by fear
of seizure, the whole community suffers. Who will care to develop
suburbs by starting electric trams when the whole can be seized in
twenty-one years, so soon as it begins to repay the risks incurred?
This short-sighted grasping system has held England back behind most
civilised countries, and been a gigantic public loss, not only by
hindering specific enterprises, but more by thwarting most valuable
characteristics.