Civilization and the Unemployed.
Where Civilization fails is in not providing men and women with
sufficient work. In the Stone Age man was, one imagines, kept busy. When
he was not looking for his dinner, or eating his dinner, or sleeping off
the effects of his dinner, he was hard at work with a club, clearing the
neighbourhood of what one doubts not he would have described as aliens.
The healthy Palaeolithic man would have had a contempt for Cobden
rivalling that of Mr. Chamberlain himself. He did not take the incursion
of the foreigner "lying down." One pictures him in the mind's eye:
unscientific, perhaps, but active to a degree difficult to conceive in
these degenerate days. Now up a tree hurling cocoa-nuts, the next moment
on the ground flinging roots and rocks. Both having tolerably hard
heads, the argument would of necessity be long and heated. Phrases that
have since come to be meaningless had, in those days, a real
significance.
When a Palaeolithic politician claimed to have "crushed his critic," he
meant that he had succeeded in dropping a tree or a ton of earth upon
him. When it was said that one bright and intelligent member of that
early sociology had "annihilated his opponent," that opponent's friends
and relations took no further interest in him. It meant that he was
actually annihilated. Bits of him might be found, but the most of him
would be hopelessly scattered. When the adherents of any particular Cave
Dweller remarked that their man was wiping the floor with his rival, it
did not mean that he was talking himself red in the face to a bored
audience of sixteen friends and a reporter. It meant that he was
dragging that rival by the legs round the enclosure and making the place
damp and untidy with him.
Early instances of "Dumping."
Maybe the Cave Dweller, finding nuts in his own neighbourhood growing
scarce, would emigrate himself: for even in that age the politician was
not always logical. Thus _roles_ became reversed. The defender of his
country became the alien, dumping himself where he was not wanted. The
charm of those early political arguments lay in their simplicity. A
child could have followed every point. There could never have been a
moment's doubt, even among his own followers, as to what a Palaeolithic
statesman really meant to convey. At the close of the contest the party
who considered it had won the moral victory would be cleared away, or
buried neatly on the spot, according to taste: and the discussion, until
the arrival of the next generation, was voted closed.
All this must have been harassing, but it did serve to pass away the
time. Civilization has brought into being a section of the community
with little else to do but to amuse itself. For youth to play is
natural; the young barbarian plays, the kitten plays, the colt gambols,
the lamb skips. But man is the only animal that gambols and jumps and
skips after it has reached maturity. Were we to meet an elderly bearded
goat, springing about in the air and behaving, generally speaking, like a
kid, we should say it had gone mad. Yet we throng in our thousands to
watch elderly ladies and gentlemen jumping about after a ball, twisting
themselves into strange shapes, rushing, racing, falling over one
another; and present them with silver-backed hair-brushes and
gold-handled umbrellas as a reward to them for doing so.
Imagine some scientific inhabitant of one of the larger fixed stars
examining us through a magnifying-glass as we examine ants. Our
amusements would puzzle him. The ball of all sorts and sizes, from the
marble to the pushball, would lead to endless scientific argument.
"What is it? Why are these men and women always knocking it about,
seizing it wherever and whenever they find it and worrying it?"
The observer from that fixed star would argue that the Ball must be some
malignant creature of fiendish power, the great enemy of the human race.
Watching our cricket-fields, our tennis-courts, our golf links, he would
conclude that a certain section of mankind had been told off to do battle
with the "Ball" on behalf of mankind in general.
"As a rule," so he would report, "it is a superior class of insect to
which this special duty has been assigned. They are a friskier, gaudier
species than their fellows.
Cricket, as viewed from the fixed Stars.
"For this one purpose they appear to be kept and fed. They do no other
work, so far as I have been able to ascertain. Carefully selected and
trained, their mission is to go about the world looking for Balls.
Whenever they find a Ball they set to work to kill it. But the vitality
of these Balls is extraordinary. There is a medium-sized, reddish
species that, on an average, takes three days to kill. When one of these
is discovered, specially trained champions are summoned from every corner
of the country. They arrive in hot haste, eager for the battle, which
takes place in the presence of the entire neighbourhood. The number of
champions for some reason or another is limited to twenty-two. Each one
seizing in turn a large piece of wood, rushes at the Ball as it flies
along the ground, or through the air, and strikes at it with all his
force. When, exhausted, he can strike no longer, he throws down his
weapon and retires into a tent, where he is restored to strength by
copious draughts of a drug the nature of which I have been unable to
discover. Meanwhile, another has picked up the fallen weapon, and the
contest is continued without a moment's interruption. The Ball makes
frantic efforts to escape from its tormentors, but every time it is
captured and flung back. So far as can be observed, it makes no attempt
at retaliation, its only object being to get away; though,
occasionally--whether by design or accident--it succeeds in inflicting
injury upon one or other of its executioners, or more often upon one of
the spectators, striking him either on the head or about the region of
the waist, which, judging by results, would appear, from the Ball's point
of view, to be the better selection. These small reddish Balls are
quickened into life evidently by the heat of the sun; in the cold season
they disappear, and their place is taken by a much larger Ball. This
Ball the champions kill by striking it with their feet and with their
heads. But sometimes they will attempt to suffocate it by falling on it,
some dozen of them at a time.
"Another of these seemingly harmless enemies of the human race is a small
white Ball of great cunning and resource. It frequents sandy districts
by the sea coast and open spaces near the large towns. It is pursued
with extraordinary animosity by a florid-faced insect of fierce aspect
and rotundity of figure. The weapon he employs is a long stick loaded
with metal. With one blow he will send the creature through the air
sometimes to a distance of nearly a quarter of a mile; yet so vigorous is
the constitution of these Balls that it will fall to earth apparently but
little damaged. It is followed by the rotund man accompanied by a
smaller insect carrying spare clubs. Though hampered by the prominent
whiteness of its skin, the extreme smallness of this Ball often enables
it to defy re-discovery, and at such times the fury of the little round
man is terrible to contemplate. He dances round the spot where the ball
has disappeared, making frenzied passes at the surrounding vegetation
with his club, uttering the while the most savage and bloodcurdling
growls. Occasionally striking at the small creature in fury, he will
miss it altogether, and, having struck merely the air, will sit down
heavily upon the ground, or, striking the solid earth, will shatter his
own club. Then a curious thing takes place: all the other insects
standing round place their right hand before their mouth, and, turning
away their faces, shake their bodies to and fro, emitting a strange
crackling sound. Whether this is to be regarded as a mere expression of
their grief that the blow of their comrade should have miscarried, or
whether one may assume it to be a ceremonious appeal to their gods for
better luck next time, I have not as yet made up my mind. The striker,
meanwhile, raises both arms, the hands tightly clenched, towards the
heavens, and utters what is probably a prayer, prepared expressly for the
occasion."
The Heir of all Ages. His Inheritance.
In similar manner he, the Celestial Observer, proceeds to describe our
billiard matches, our tennis tournaments, our croquet parties. Maybe it
never occurs to him that a large section of our race surrounded by
Eternity, would devote its entire span of life to sheer killing of time.
A middle-aged friend of mine, a cultured gentleman, a M.A. of Cambridge,
assured me the other day that, notwithstanding all his experiences of
life, the thing that still gave him the greatest satisfaction was the
accomplishment of a successful drive to leg. Rather a quaint commentary
on our civilization, is it not? "The singers have sung, and the builders
have builded. The artists have fashioned their dreams of delight." The
martyrs for thought and freedom have died their death; knowledge has
sprung from the bones of ignorance; civilization for ten thousand years
has battled with brutality to this result--that a specimen gentleman of
the Twentieth Century, the heir of all the ages, finds his greatest joy
in life the striking of a ball with a chunk of wood!
Human energy, human suffering, has been wasted. Such crown of happiness
for a man might surely have been obtained earlier and at less cost. Was
it intended? Are we on the right track? The child's play is wiser. The
battered doll is a princess. Within the sand castle dwells an ogre. It
is with imagination that he plays. His games have some relation to life.
It is the man only who is content with this everlasting knocking about of
a ball. The majority of mankind is doomed to labour so constant, so
exhausting, that no opportunity is given it to cultivate its brain.
Civilization has arranged that a small privileged minority shall alone
enjoy that leisure necessary to the development of thought. And what is
the answer of this leisured class? It is:
"We will do nothing for the world that feeds us, clothes us, keeps us in
luxury. We will spend our whole existence knocking balls about, watching
other people knocking balls about, arguing with one another as to the
best means of knocking balls about."
Is it "Playing the Game?"
Is it--to use their own jargon--"playing the game?"
And the queer thing is this over-worked world, that stints itself to keep
them in idleness, approves of the answer. "The flannelled fool," "The
muddied oaf," is the pet of the people; their hero, their ideal.
But maybe all this is mere jealousy. Myself, I have never been clever at
knocking balls about.