(A Paper in the _Daily Mail_, 1912.)
“This is a psychological question, a matter of mental states” (H. G.
Wells). It is. And in examining these mental states there are two, out
of many factors, on which I do not think too much emphasis can be laid,
not only because they are in themselves vital to the evil, but because
they both arise from the same prime underlying deficiency in our
national life.
The first is the influence on society at large produced by the great and
rapid growth of the fiduciary element in the conduct of commercial
enterprise and landed estates. The agent, the director, the manager, the
trustee, have almost entirely displaced the old-time owner, merchant,
and manufacturer, who did business by and for themselves.
A class has been created who, already in a state of professional
altruism, are impervious, and on the face of it rightly impervious, to
altruism of any other kind.
What large business nowadays is not conducted as a limited company by a
board of directors appointed and paid by the shareholders as trustees to
produce for them a maximum of profit? What large estate is not managed
by a paid agent on the same principle? And, however generous our
aspirations, which of us does not know the deflecting power of
trusteeship, rigidified, as it is, by law and by the sense that we are
paid for the performance of a job inimical to generosity? True—the
rates of wages and of rent come not under rules but under the broad
heading of policy; and, in deep reality, I suspect it to be equally true
that the maximum of generosity ministers _in the long run_ to the
maximum of stability and profit; nevertheless there can be no doubt
whatever that the trustee system not only befogs and deadens the human
relationship between employer and employed, but affords an overwhelming
support to our natural instinct to take the immediate view and line of
least resistance.
Broadly speaking, where there is trusteeship, as trusteeship is now
understood, there is no wide view of the relation of Capital to Labour
in the light of the good of Society as a whole; there is only a
faithful, cold-blooded, purblind service for the benefit of a _cestui
que trust_, who is himself freed from a sense of personal responsibility
and from all apparent need for a wide and human outlook. The trustee
system, if not already, will soon be universal, and I see no means of
counteracting its secret, dangerous, and irritating effect on the mind
of Labour, save by such process of education as shall soak the spirit of
the prosperous classes with an altogether larger and saner feeling of
the fundamental unity and interdependence of Society, with a good-will
so vastly increased that the shareholder and _cestui que trust_ shall no
longer require the director or trustee to consider them and them alone,
but bid him instead consider equally the interests of the employed. Such
a mood of altruism is now, roughly speaking, absent from the minds of
the prosperous classes; and to attain to it is a consummation that I
fear will never come about under our present system of education.
The second influence on which I would lay great emphasis is the state of
mind produced by our system of education in the young of the prosperous
classes at our private and public schools, and, to a less extent, at our
universities. Before dwelling on this let me suggest two truths. In
life, where a fortunate person is brought into contact with one less
fortunate, the first step towards cordial relationship must obviously
come from the fortunate. For human nature is happily so constituted that
the less fortunate feels ashamed to make advances which, liable to
misconstruction, are not compatible with self-respect. Every man of any
worth can test, indeed is testing, this truth continually in his own
life; it cannot indeed be doubted. Again, where advances are made by the
fortunate from sheer friendliness and without ulterior motive, they most
certainly evoke response in the same friendly spirit from all save
exceptional churls.
Now, since these primary truths concerning human nature underlie the
whole question of Labour Unrest, it becomes of the first importance to
consider how far the young of the prosperous classes are made actively
familiar with them. How far are the legions at our private and public
schools (those legions from whom the ranks of Capital are, in the main,
recruited) made to understand, and—more than understand—to _feel_ that
they are fortunate, that Labour is less fortunate, that they will have
to live their lives in interdependence with Labour, and that if they do
not make—out of a free and fine heart make—the first advances to
good-fellowship with less fortunate Labour, those advances can—by a
law, and a good law, of human nature—never be made? How far are they at
present brought up to see this? I would go so far as to say—hardly at
all. In my day at a public school—and I have no reason at all to hope
that, whatever be the exceptions, the general rule has greatly
changed—the Universe was divided into ourselves and “outsiders,”
“bounders,” “chaws,” “cads,” or whatever more or less offensive name
best seemed to us to characterise those less fortunate than ourselves.
It is true that we applied the name mainly to the lower ranks of Capital
rather than to actual Labour, but this was only because we lived so far
away from industrial workers that we never even thought of them. Such
working folk as we actually came into personal contact with we never
dreamed of associating with any such offensive thought in our minds or
speech on our tongues; but, generally, the working man did not exist for
us except as a person outside, remote, and almost inimical. From our
homes, touched already by this class feeling, caught up from political
talk by chance overheard, we went to private schools, where the teaching
of manners, mainly under clerical supervision, effectually barred us
from any contaminating influence; so that if by chance we encountered
the “lower class” boy we burned to go for him and correct his “cheek.”
Thence we were passed into the great “caste” factory, a public school,
where the feeling became, by mere process of being left to itself, as
set and hard as iron. It is true that a levelling process went on among
the boys themselves, so that a duke’s son was no more accounted of than
a stockbroker’s, but nevertheless all learned to consider themselves
“the elect.” Of ten public schoolboys, seven have come from
“caste-”infected homes and private schools, and have active prejudice
already. The remaining three may still be open-minded or indifferent; of
these, two will infallibly follow the sway of the herd instinct; one may
perhaps develop a line of his own, or adhere to the influence of a home
inimical to “caste,” and become a “smug” or Radical. In result, failing
definite sustained effort to break up a narrow “caste” feeling, the
public school presents a practically solid phalanx of the fortunate,
insulated against real knowledge of, or sympathy with, the less
fortunate. This phalanx marches out into the professions, into business,
into the universities, where, it is true, some awaken to a sense of
wider values—but not too many. From the point of view of any one who
tries to see things as they are, and see them as a whole, there is
something terrific about this automatic “caste” moulding of the young.
And in the present condition of our country it is folly, and dangerous
folly, to blink it.[6]
For all my love of my old school, for all my realization of the fact
that her training equips her children with certain qualities invaluable
to public life and public service, I do feel that she and all her
sisters are disserving the national welfare by refraining from really
active and resolute attempt to destroy the bad side of “caste” feeling.
They let it grow of its own momentum through the herd instinct till it
blinds the eyes and blunts the feelings of those who, being fortunate,
must by the laws of human nature make the first advances toward
friendship with the less fortunate, if those advances are to be made at
all; and must make them not because to neglect them is dangerous, but
out of brotherly feeling and a real hearty wish to give all the help
they can to such as are not so lucky as themselves. I do not mean that
our public schools and universities are consciously refraining. They are
not, and their very unconsciousness in the matter is half the danger.
And I do not say that there are no masters, or dons, conscious of the
danger and trying their best to remove it, but I do say there are not
nearly enough. A few swallows do not make a summer.
Since, in relation to the foregoing, four objections, at all events, are
bound to be made, let me make them myself, and answer them too. First:
It is not the public school and ’varsity man who is lacking in sympathy
and good-will towards Labour; it is the self-made capitalist, or the
grammar school man. The truth is that, with exceptions, they all are
lacking. But the defect is more dangerous and insidious within “the
caste” than without; for not only is “the caste” homogeneous, and far
more influential in every way, but it veils its lack of sympathy in this
very pretension of having sympathy. Next it will be said: “You accuse us
of lack of sympathy! But we would gladly be sympathetic, if they would
only let us!” Now this in the main is a perfectly genuine belief in
members of “the caste” when they have once gone out into life and rubbed
off the rawness of youthful hostility and prejudice. But it is the
genuine belief of people only passively inclined to friendship; in other
words, the belief of the fortunate not imbued with a spirit sufficiently
high and generous to take, from the best motives, _active_ steps towards
friendship with the less fortunate.
Further it will be said: “But Labour is not really less fortunate than
ourselves—it has freedom from cares, responsibilities, and expenses,
such as we can never know; in fact, we are not sure that it is not
really the more fortunate class.” Well! Apart from the fact that not one
in ten thousand of “the caste” would change places with an industrial
worker, there is this answer: “On your hypothesis, evolution, which is
‘caste’s’ main justification, is absurd and our system is standing on
its head. If, indeed, you require Labour to consider itself at least as
fortunate as yourselves, you must set to work at once and revalue
everything, alter every present ideal in your social life, and annul the
importance of property. Are you prepared to do this?” Finally it will be
objected: “It may be as you say, but the evil is implicit and
inevitable, for everything possible is already done by our educational
authorities to counteract a narrow ‘caste’ spirit and imbue the children
of the fortunate with a brotherly feeling towards the less fortunate.”
The answer to this is simply: “Has everything been done? Has anything
like everything been done? For example, is the danger of this narrow
‘caste’ spirit ever taken into account in the appointment of these same
educational authorities?”
Besides being “snobs” in the best sense of that word, boys are
high-spirited, generous, and malleable creatures. Let any fair-minded
man of “the caste” ask himself: “What sustained and really ‘felt’ effort
did he encounter from his own teachers in school and college days to
turn that high spirit, and generosity, and malleability of his into a
state of mind that regarded his good fortune as a thing to be held in
trust to share to the full with the less fortunate?” A few will answer
truly: “Yes, I have met with such effort.” But how few!
Again, then, I am brought to the point of saying: There is a general
absence of active and sustained effort to produce in the young of the
prosperous classes this “good-will” state of mind; to change such
general absence of effort into a general presence of effort is a
consummation that will never, I think, be reached under our present
system of education.
Both these influences, then, contributing to Social Unrest—the one
produced by the increasing presence of the fiduciary element, and the
other by the unchecked growth of a narrow “caste” spirit—lead us to the
same prime underlying deficiency in our national life, the lack of right
purpose in our education. They happen to be both incident to Capital,
but it is probable that influences incident to Labour, of which I
hesitate to speak, since I cannot from personal experience and feeling,
may also in measure be traced to the same underlying deficiency in our
education.
No national improvement can come from outside. It must come from within,
from gradually improved feeling in the body politic. To hope for growth
without this improvement is to hope that a man shall raise himself from
the ground by the hair of his own head. But improved feeling has no
chance of spreading throughout the body politic without that machinery
of infection which we know by the name of education. Therefore education
is the most sacred concern, indeed the only hope, of a nation.
How do we now treat our education—this sacred thing, this only hope? In
regard to the classes, its direction and control are left entirely to
the haphazard beck and call of each separate school or college, without
conformity to or guidance from any professed national aim, principle, or
ideal. In regard to the masses, it is the concern of a Department of
State, just as are Trade, the Post Office, or the Navy, and is treated,
not as a spiritual matter underlying all else, but as a material affair.
The spiritual side of education is supposed to be the concern of the
religious bodies; but if we are quite honest we have to confess that the
religious bodies have no longer sufficient hold on classes or masses to
inspire in either such wide mutual good-will and sense of service as
will forward any real improvement in the relations between Capital and
Labour, between the fortunate and less fortunate classes. The religious
bodies, let us say, have tried their best, but, since our last state is
worse than our first, they must be considered to have failed. Their
influence, indeed, is too incoherent and dispersed, pervasive here and
there, but without either the centrality or force to promote in us a
great national change towards that essence of Christianity—mutual
good-will and sense of service. There is no longer, I am afraid, hope in
that direction.
Deep down, we know all this, but we have not yet bestirred ourselves to
find out what it is that we are trying to do with our civilization, or
indeed whether we are trying to do anything except just keep our heads
above water from hour to hour.
And we have not yet bestirred ourselves, partly because we are still
breathless and uncertain after that long and tremendous struggle within
us between Science and Orthodox Religion, which has torn the wings off
both, and partly because we are paralysed by the word Democracy. We dare
not move for fear of endowing education with too much authority. There
may, of course, be another and far more deadly reason why we have not
bestirred ourselves. We may be too far gone to devise any improved
standard or machinery of education, too flaccid to impart, or even to
desire to impart, to our education that spiritual quality, that devotion
to an ideal, which is our only hope. If so, we must resign ourselves to
a desperate Class struggle, as to some bitter, poisonous tonic, from
which we may perhaps gain strength to deal with our disease, but of
which we may take too much and die. Personally—being, as they say, a
pessimist—I prefer to think that all is not yet lost; that we are still
capable of expressing in the form of a faith the aspiration towards
Perfection that does, that must, lie inarticulate within us; still
capable of finding machinery, and men to work it, that shall drive this
faith into the very heart of all classes.
At all events, I refuse to believe that we cannot do a good deal more
with education as a solvent of our troubles than we have done hitherto.
The main and obvious difficulty—one might say the only real
difficulty—in education, as in all the affairs of life, is to find the
men; and to find the men we can only make use of machinery which is
acceptable to a democratic age. Yes, we cannot now go outside Democracy,
and that is something to be profoundly grateful for. The only trouble
with Democracy is that it is slow and inarticulate. And I do not feel
that the democratic principle—in which I believe as much as any
man—will ever do itself justice until it discovers some quicker way
than it yet has of shaping out of itself its spiritual essence, some
swifter way of extracting from itself and utilizing for its own service
the highest aspiration and finest feeling within it. It has succeeded on
the whole fairly well in discovering and making use of its best business
and administrative minds; but so far it has regarded spirituality as
completely outside its province and deliberately left it to religious
bodies that have no longer, nationally speaking, a real hold on us, and
are professedly autocratic. In fact, Democracy at present—and not only
here but in America—offers the spectacle of a man running down a road
followed at a more and more respectful distance by his own soul.
Can our education any longer be safely treated in this casual way, be
safely left to Churches from whose hand it has too far slipped; be
safely left as to the Classes to chance and to vested interests; as to
the Masses to mere business management?
Should we not rather trust it coherently and as a whole to the finest
spirits and broadest minds in the country; to spirits that can be relied
on to hold, and to minds that can be relied on to apply, a really high
ideal; relied on, too, _to select and train the best men available for
the propagation of that Ideal_? If by some democratic process we could
sift out these minds from among us, and endow them with wholesale powers
of selection, appointment, and training of teachers, we should have
established a sort of endless band on which might travel a perpetual
vitalizing current of the best feeling within us. To find these finest
spirits and broadest minds we might conceivably use the existing
representative machinery of Parliament, or some reformed representative
system; or we might institute a special straining and sifting process,
by means of plebiscite within plebiscite, till we were reasonably sure
of arriving at the men best fitted to be entrusted with a high, coherent
plan of education. We have, then, to found and place under their
guidance a great training college, wherein the higher leaders of
education may be imbued with the new spirit, trained in the new
standards, and pass out, as posts fall vacant, to the headship of
schools and colleges. And if it be objected, as it certainly will, that
this is to constitute a too rigid spiritual bureaucracy, the answer is
two-fold: This is the plan on which you order all your political, your
material life, without regarding it as in the least dangerous or
undemocratic. And, secondly, you have at present exactly the same
bureaucratic methods of appointment in education, only they are
exercised in a hole-and-corner manner, quite incoherently, and _without
any democratic check at all_.
There is no revolution in this idea, and it will certainly prove no
immediate or quack remedy. It is, in few words, a suggestion that we
should adopt for spiritual things, for states of mind, the method that,
roughly speaking, we have found works best in material matters.
Democracy will never really flourish till it has taken charge, and that
right heartily, of its own spirituality.
Life itself is the best education in spirituality a nation gets. But the
plea here is only for better machinery to express and direct the
experience and latent good-will which is implicit within the nation, and
is not now brought out into the light for the nation’s service. We are
living in a parched field under which there is plenty of water, but we
have sunk no well, put up no pumping gear, with which to make our
pasture green. Is the notion that we can still do this a preposterous
dream, a mere presumptuous counsel of perfection?
We have at present an air charged with trouble; if we are not to shut
our eyes, fold our hands, and drift, all that we do must be in the
direction of improving our state of mind. But there is no way of
improving a state of mind save by fertilizing it with the faith and
good-will of a higher mind. Our machinery for doing this has failed us.
Indeed, nationally speaking, we no longer have any such machinery. What
more useful efforts, then, can we make than efforts in the direction of
discovering a new machinery? And the finer the spirits, the broader the
minds, we place in charge thereof, the greater power we give them,
always subject to the safeguard of election, the more we may hope to
emerge gradually from our sinister situation.
-----
[6] Many think the war will alter all this. I only wish I did.—J. G.