Alexandria, and how presently the collapse of the slave- holding
civilizations and the clouds of religious intolerance and absolutist
government darkened the promise of that beginning. The light of
fearless thinking did not break through the European obscurity again
effectually until the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. We have tried
to show something of the share of the great winds of Arab curiosity and
Mongol conquest in this gradual clearing of the mental skies of Europe.
And at first it was chiefly material knowledge that increased. The
first fruits of the recovered manhood of the race were material
achievements and material power. The science of human relationship, of
individual and social psychology, of education and of economics, are
not only more subtle and intricate in themselves but also bound up
inextricably with much emotional matter. The advances made in them
have been slower and made against greater opposition. Men will listen
dispassionately to the most diverse suggestions about stars or
molecules, but ideas about our ways of life touch and reflect upon
everyone about us.
And just as in Greece the bold speculations of Plato came before
Aristotle’s hard search for fact, so in Europe the first political
enquiries of the new phase were put in the form of “Utopian” stories,
directly imitated from Plato’s _Republic_ and his _Laws_. Sir Thomas
More’s _Utopia_ is a curious imitation of Plato that bore fruit in a
new English poor law. The Neapolitan Campanella’s _City of the Sun_
was more fantastic and less fruitful.
By the end of the seventeenth century we find a considerable and
growing literature of political and social science was being produced.
Among the pioneers in this discussion was John Locke, the son of an
English republican, an Oxford scholar who first directed his attention
to chemistry and medicine. His treatises on government, toleration and
education show a mind fully awake to the possibilities of social
reconstruction. Parallel with and a little later than John Locke in
England, Montesquieu (1689-1755) in France subjected social, political
and religious institutions to a searching and fundamental analysis. He
stripped the magical prestige from the absolutist monarchy in France.
He shares with Locke the credit for clearing away many of the false
ideas that had hitherto prevented deliberate and conscious attempts to
reconstruct human society.
The generation that followed him in the middle and later decades of the
eighteenth century was boldly speculative upon the moral and
intellectual clearings he had made. A group of brilliant writers, the
“Encyclopædists,” mostly rebel spirits from the excellent schools of
the Jesuits, set themselves to scheme out a new world (1766). Side by
side with the Encyclopædists were the Economists or Physiocrats, who
were making bold and crude enquiries into the production and
distribution of food and goods. Morelly, the author of the _Code de La
Nature_, denounced the institution of private property and proposed a
communistic organization of society. He was the precursor of that
large and various school of collectivist thinkers in the nineteenth
century who are lumped together as Socialists.
What is Socialism? There are a hundred definitions of Socialism and a
thousand sects of Socialists. Essentially Socialism is no more and no
less than a criticism of the idea of property in the light of the
public good. We may review the history of that idea through the ages
very briefly. That and the idea of internationalism are the two
cardinal ideas upon which most of our political life is turning.
CARL MARX
CARL MARX
_Photo: Linde & Co._
The idea of property arises out of the combative instincts of the
species. Long before men were men, the ancestral ape was a proprietor.
Primitive property is what a beast will fight for. The dog and his
bone, the tigress and her lair, the roaring stag and his herd, these
are proprietorship blazing. No more nonsensical expression is
conceivable in sociology than the term “primitive communism.” The Old
Man of the family tribe of early palæolithic times insisted upon his
proprietorship in his wives and daughters, in his tools, in his visible
universe. If any other man wandered into his visible universe he
fought him, and if he could he slew him. The tribe grew in the course
of ages, as Atkinson showed convincingly in his _Primal Law_, by the
gradual toleration by the Old Man of the existence of the younger men,
and of their proprietorship in the wives they captured from outside the
tribe, and in the tools and ornaments they made and the game they slew.
Human society grew by a compromise between this one’s property and
that. It was a compromise with instinct which was forced upon men by
the necessity of driving some other tribe out of its visible universe.
If the hills and forests and streams were not _your_ land or _my_ land,
it was because they had to be our land. Each of us would have
preferred to have it _my_ land, but that would not work. In that case
the other fellows would have destroyed us. Society, therefore, is from
its beginning a _mitigation of ownership_. Ownership in the beast and
in the primitive savage was far more intense a thing than it is in the
civilized world to- day. It is rooted more strongly in our instincts
than in our reason.
In the natural savage and in the untutored man to-day there is no
limitation to the sphere of ownership. Whatever you can fight for, you
can own; women-folk, spared captive, captured beast, forest glade,
stone-pit or what not. As the community grew, a sort of law came to
restrain internecine fighting, men developed rough-and-ready methods of
settling proprietorship. Men could own what they were the first to
make or capture or claim. It seemed natural that a debtor who could
not pay should become the property of his creditor. Equally natural was
it that after claiming a patch of land a man should exact payments from
anyone who wanted to use it. It was only slowly, as the possibilities
of organized life dawned on men, that this unlimited property in
anything whatever began to be recognized as a nuisance. Men found
themselves born into a universe all owned and claimed, nay! they found
themselves born owned and claimed. The social struggles of the earlier
civilization are difficult to trace now, but the history we have told
of the Roman Republic shows a community waking up to the idea that
debts may become a public inconvenience and should then be repudiated,
and that the unlimited ownership of land is also an inconvenience. We
find that later Babylonia severely limited the rights of property in
slaves. Finally, we find in the teaching of that great revolutionist,
Jesus of Nazareth, such an attack upon property as had never been
before. Easier it was, he said, for a camel to go through the eye of a
needle than for the owner of great possessions to enter the kingdom of
heaven. A steady, continuous criticism of the permissible scope of
property seems to have been going on in the world for the last
twenty-five or thirty centuries. Nineteen hundred years after Jesus of
Nazareth we find all the world that has come under the Christian
teaching persuaded that there could be no property in human beings.
And also the idea that a man may “do what he likes with his own” was
very much shaken in relation to other sorts of property.
But this world of the closing eighteenth century was still only in the
interrogative stage in this matter. It had got nothing clear enough,
much less settled enough, to act upon. One of its primary impulses was
to protect property against the greed and waste of kings and the
exploitation of noble adventurers. It was largely to protect private
property from taxation that the French Revolution began. But the
equalitarian formulæ of the Revolution carried it into a criticism of
the very property it had risen to protect. How can men be free and
equal when numbers of them have no ground to stand upon and nothing to
eat, and the owners will neither feed nor lodge them unless they toil?
Excessively—the poor complained.
To which riddle the reply of one important political group was to set
about “dividing up.” They wanted to intensify and universalize
property. Aiming at the same end by another route, there were the
primitive socialists—or, to be more exact, communists—who wanted to
“abolish” private property altogether. The state (a democratic state
was of course understood) was to own all property.
It is paradoxical that different men seeking the same ends of liberty
and happiness should propose on the one hand to make property as
absolute as possible, and on the other to put an end to it altogether.
But so it was. And the clue to this paradox is to be found in the fact
that ownership is not one thing but a multitude of different things.
It was only as the nineteenth century developed that men began to
realize that property was not one simple thing, but a great complex of
ownerships of different values and consequences, that many things (such
as one’s body, the implements of an artist, clothing, toothbrushes) are
very profoundly and incurably one’s personal property, and that there
is a very great range of things, railways, machinery of various sorts,
homes, cultivated gardens, pleasure boats, for example, which need each
to be considered very particularly to determine how far and under what
limitations it may come under private ownership, and how far it falls
into the public domain and may be administered and let out by the state
in the collective interest. On the practical side these questions pass
into politics, and the problem of making and sustaining efficient state
administration. They open up issues in social psychology, and interact
with the enquiries of educational science. The criticism of property
is still a vast and passionate ferment rather than a science. On the
one hand are the Individualists, who would protect and enlarge our
present freedoms with what we possess, and on the other the Socialists
who would in many directions pool our ownerships and restrain our
proprietory acts. In practice one will find every gradation between
the extreme individualist, who will scarcely tolerate a tax of any sort
to support a government, and the communist who would deny any
possessions at all. The ordinary socialist of to-day is what is called
a collectivist; he would allow a considerable amount of private
property but put such affairs as education, transport, mines,
land-owning, most mass productions of staple articles, and the like,
into the hands of a highly organized state. Nowadays there does seem
to be a gradual convergence of reasonable men towards a moderate
socialism scientifically studied and planned. It is realized more and
more clearly that the untutored man does not co-operate easily and
successfully in large undertakings, and that every step towards a more
complex state and every function that the state takes over from private
enterprise, necessitates a corresponding educational advance and the
organization of a proper criticism and control. Both the press and the
political methods of the contemporary state are far too crude for any
large extension of collective activities.
But for a time the stresses between employer and employed and
particularly between selfish employers and reluctant workers, led to a
world-wide dissemination of the very harsh and elementary form of
communism which is associated with the name of Marx. Marx based his
theories on a belief that men’s minds are limited by their economic
necessities, and that there is a necessary conflict of interests in our
present civilization between the prosperous and employing classes of
people and the employed mass. With the advance in education
necessitated by the mechanical revolution, this great employed majority
will become more and more class-conscious and more and more solid in
antagonism to the (class- conscious) ruling minority. In some way the
class-conscious workers would seize power, he prophesied, and
inaugurate a new social state. The antagonism, the insurrection, the
possible revolution are understandable enough, but it does not follow
that a new social state or anything but a socially destructive process
will ensue. Put to the test in Russia, Marxism, as we shall note
later, has proved singularly uncreative.
SCIENCE IN THE COAL MINE
SCIENCE IN THE COAL MINE
Portable Electric Loading Conveyor
_Photo: Jeffrey Manufacturing Company, Columbus, Ohio_
Marx sought to replace national antagonism by class antagonisms;
Marxism has produced in succession a First, a Second and a Third
Workers’ International. But from the starting point of modern
individualistic thought it is also possible to reach international
ideas. From the days of that great English economist, Adam Smith,
onward there has been an increasing realization that for world-wide
prosperity free and unencumbered trade about the earth is needed. The
individualist with his hostility to the state is hostile also to
tariffs and boundaries and all the restraints upon free act and
movement that national boundaries seem to justify. It is interesting to
see two lines of thought, so diverse in spirit, so different in
substance as this class-war socialism of the Marxists and the
individualistic free-trading philosophy of the British business men of
the Victorian age heading at last, in spite of these primary
differences, towards the same intimations of a new world-wide treatment
of human affairs outside the boundaries and limitations of any existing
state. The logic of reality triumphs over the logic of theory. We
begin to perceive that from widely divergent starting points
individualist theory and socialist theory are part of a common search,
a search for more spacious social and political ideas and
interpretations, upon which men may contrive to work together, a search
that began again in Europe and has intensified as men’s confidence in
the ideas of the Holy Roman Empire and in Christendom decayed, and as
the age of discovery broadened their horizons from the world of the
Mediterranean to the whole wide world.
To bring this description of the elaboration and development of social,
economic and political ideas right down to the discussions of the
present day, would be to introduce issues altogether too controversial
for the scope and intentions of this book. But regarding these things,
as we do here, from the vast perspectives of the student of world
history, we are bound to recognize that this reconstruction of these
directive ideas in the human mind is still an unfinished task—we cannot
even estimate yet how unfinished the task may be. Certain common
beliefs do seem to be emerging, and their influence is very perceptible
upon the political events and public acts of to-day; but at present
they are not clear enough nor convincing enough to compel men
definitely and systematically towards their realization. Men’s acts
waver between tradition and the new, and on the whole they rather
gravitate towards the traditional. Yet, compared with the thought of
even a brief lifetime ago, there does seem to be an outline shaping
itself of a new order in human affairs. It is a sketchy outline,
vanishing into vagueness at this point and that, and fluctuating in
detail and formulæ, yet it grows steadfastly clearer, and its main
lines change less and less.
CONSTRUCTIONAL DETAIL OF THE FORTH BRIDGE
CONSTRUCTIONAL DETAIL OF THE FORTH BRIDGE
_Photo: Baker & Hurtzig_
It is becoming plainer and plainer each year that in many respects and
in an increasing range of affairs, mankind is becoming one community,
and that it is more and more necessary that in such matters there
should be a common world-wide control. For example, it is steadily
truer that the whole planet is now one economic community, that the
proper exploitation of its natural resources demands one comprehensive
direction, and that the greater power and range that discovery has
given human effort makes the present fragmentary and contentious
administration of such affairs more and more wasteful and dangerous.
Financial and monetary expedients also become world-wide interests to
be dealt with successfully only on world-wide lines. Infectious
diseases and the increase and migrations of population are also now
plainly seen to be world-wide concerns. The greater power and range of
human activities has also made war disproportionately destructive and
disorganizing, and, even as a clumsy way of settling issues between
government and government and people and people, ineffective. All
these things clamour for controls and authorities of a greater range
and greater comprehensiveness than any government that has hitherto
existed.
But it does not follow that the solution of these problems lies in some
super-government of all the world arising by conquest or by the
coalescence of existing governments. By analogy with existing
institutions men have thought of the Parliament of Mankind, of a World
Congress, of a President or Emperor of the Earth. Our first natural
reaction is towards some such conclusion, but the discussion and
experiences of half a century of suggestions and attempts has on the
whole discouraged belief in that first obvious idea. Along that line
to world unity the resistances are too great. The drift of thought
seems now to be in the direction of a number of special committees or
organizations, with world-wide power delegated to them by existing
governments in this group of matters or that, bodies concerned with the
waste or development of natural wealth, with the equalization of labour
conditions, with world peace, with currency, population and health, and
so forth.
The world may discover that all its common interests are being managed
as one concern, while it still fails to realize that a world government
exists. But before even so much human unity is attained, before such
international arrangements can be put above patriotic suspicions and
jealousies, it is necessary that the common mind of the race should be
possessed of that idea of human unity, and that the idea of mankind as
one family should be a matter of universal instruction and
understanding.
For a score of centuries or more the spirit of the great universal
religions has been struggling to maintain and extend that idea of a
universal human brotherhood, but to this day the spites, angers and
distrusts of tribal, national and racial friction obstruct, and
successfully obstruct, the broader views and more generous impulses
which would make every man the servant of all mankind. The idea of
human brotherhood struggles now to possess the human soul, just as the
idea of Christendom struggled to possess the soul of Europe in the
confusion and disorder of the sixth and seventh centuries of the
Christian era. The dissemination and triumph of such ideas must be the
work of a multitude of devoted and undistinguished missionaries, and no
contemporary writer can presume to guess how far such work has gone or
what harvest it may be preparing.
Social and economic questions seem to be inseparably mingled with
international ones. The solution in each case lies in an appeal to
that same spirit of service which can enter and inspire the human
heart. The distrust, intractability and egotism of nations reflects
and is reflected by the distrust, intractability and egotism of the
individual owner and worker in the face of the common good.
Exaggerations of possessiveness in the individual are parallel and of a
piece with the clutching greed of nations and emperors. They are
products of the same instinctive tendencies, and the same ignorances
and traditions. Internationalism is the socialism of nations. No one
who has wrestled with these problems can feel that there yet exists a
sufficient depth and strength of psychological science and a
sufficiently planned-out educational method and organization for any
real and final solution of these riddles of human intercourse and
cooperation. We are as incapable of planning a really effective peace
organization of the world to-day as were men in 1820 to plan an
electric railway system, but for all we know the thing is equally
practicable and may be as nearly at hand.
No man can go beyond his own knowledge, no thought can reach beyond
contemporary thought, and it is impossible for us to guess or foretell
how many generations of humanity may have to live in war and waste and
insecurity and misery before the dawn of the great peace to which all
history seems to be pointing, peace in the heart and peace in the
world, ends our night of wasteful and aimless living. Our proposed
solutions are still vague and crude. Passion and suspicion surround
them. A great task of intellectual reconstruction is going on, it is
still incomplete, and our conceptions grow clearer and more
exact—slowly, rapidly, it is hard to tell which. But as they grow
clearer they will gather power over the minds and imaginations of men.
Their present lack of grip is due to their lack of assurance and exact
rightness. They are misunderstood because they are variously and
confusingly presented. But with precision and certainty the new vision
of the world will gain compelling power. It may presently gain power
very rapidly. And a great work of educational reconstruction will
follow logically and necessarily upon that clearer understanding.
LX
THE EXPANSION OF THE UNITED STATES
The region of the world that displayed the most immediate and striking
results from the new inventions in transport was North America.
Politically the United States embodied, and its constitution
crystallized, the liberal ideas of the middle eighteenth century. It
dispensed with state-church or crown, it would have no titles, it
protected property very jealously as a method of freedom, and—the exact
practice varied at first in the different states—it gave nearly every
adult male citizen a vote. Its method of voting was barbarically crude,
and as a consequence its political life fell very soon under the
control of highly organized party machines, but that did not prevent
the newly emancipated population developing an energy, enterprise and
public spirit far beyond that of any other contemporary population.
Then came that acceleration of locomotion to which we have already
called attention. It is a curious thing that America, which owes most
to this acceleration in locomotion, has felt it least. The United
States have taken the railway, the river steamboat, the telegraph and
so forth as though they were a natural part of their growth. They were
not. These things happened to come along just in time to save American
unity. The United States of to-day were made first by the river
steamboat, and then by the railway. Without these things, the present
United States, this vast continental nation, would have been altogether
impossible. The westward flow of population would have been far more
sluggish. It might never have crossed the great central plains. It
took nearly two hundred years for effective settlement to reach from
the coast to Missouri, much less than halfway across the continent.
The first state established beyond the river was the steamboat state of
Missouri in 1821. But the rest of the distance to the Pacific was done
in a few decades.
If we had the resources of the cinema it would be interesting to show a
map of North America year by year from 1600 onward, with little dots to
represent hundreds of people, each dot a hundred, and stars to
represent cities of a hundred thousand people.
For two hundred years the reader would see that stippling creeping
slowly along the coastal districts and navigable waters, spreading
still more gradually into Indiana, Kentucky and so forth. Then
somewhere about 1810 would come a change. Things would get more lively
along the river courses. The dots would be multiplying and spreading.
That would be the steamboat. The pioneer dots would be spreading soon
over Kansas and Nebraska from a number of jumping-off places along the
great rivers.