used to convey a suggestion of selfishness in a bad sense. We think of
the hardship upon the man who is ousted, as much as of the benefit to
the man who gets in; or perhaps we think of it more. It suggests to us
that one man has been shut out for the benefit of his neighbour; and
that, of course, suggests envy, malice, and all uncharitableness. We
hold that such competition must generate ill-will. I used--when I was
intimately connected with a competitive system at the university--to
hear occasionally of the evil influences of competition, as tending to
promote jealousy between competitors. I always replied that, so far as
my experience went, the evil was altogether imaginary. So far from
competition generating ill-will, the keenest competitors were, as a
rule, the closest friends. There was no stronger bond than the bond of
rivalry in our intellectual contests. One main reason was, of course,
that we had absolute faith in the fairness of the competition. We felt
that it would be unworthy to complain of being beaten by a better man;
and we had no doubt that, in point of fact, the winners were the better
men; or, at any rate, were honestly believed to be the better men by
those who distributed honours. The case, though on a small scale, may
suggest one principle. So far as the end of such competitions is good,
the normal motives cannot be bad. The end of a fair competition is the
discovery of the ablest men, with a view to placing them in the
position where their talents may be turned to most account. It can only
be achieved so far as each man does his best to train his own powers,
and is prepared to test them fairly against the powers of others. To
work for that end is, then, not only permissible, but a duty. The
spirit in which the end is pursued may be bad, in so far as a man
pursues it by unfair means; in so far as he tries to make sham
performance pass off for genuine; or, again, in so far as he sets an
undue value upon the reward, as apart from the qualities by which it is
gained. But if he works simply with the desire of making the best of
himself, and if the reward is simply such a position as may enable him
to be most useful to society, the competition which results will be
bracing and invigorating, and will appeal to no such motives as can be
called, in the bad sense, selfish. He is discharging a function which
is useful, it is true, to himself; but which is also intrinsically
useful to the whole society. The same principle applies, again, to
intellectual activity in general. All genuine thought is essentially
useful to mankind. In the struggle to discover truth, even our
antagonists are, necessarily, our co-operators. A philosopher, as a man
of science, owes, at least, as much to those who differ from him, as to
those who agree with him. The conflict of many minds, from many sides,
is the essential condition of intellectual progress. Now, if a man
plays his part manfully and honourably in such a struggle, he deserves
our gratitude, even if he takes the wrong side. If he looks forward to
the recognition by the best judges as one motive for his activity, I
think that he is asking for a worthy reward. He deserves blame, only so
far as his motives have a mixture of unworthy personal sentiment.
Obviously, if he aims at cheap fame, at making a temporary sensation
instead of a permanent impression, at flattering prejudices instead of
spreading truth; or, if he shows greediness of notoriety, by trying to
get unjust credit, as we sometimes see scientific people squabbling
over claims to the first promulgation of some trifling discovery, he is
showing paltriness of spirit. The men whom we revere are those who,
like Faraday or Darwin, devoted themselves exclusively to the
advancement of knowledge, and would have scorned a reputation won by
anything but genuine work. The fact that there is a competition in such
matters implies, no doubt, a temptation,--the temptation to set a
higher value upon praise than upon praiseworthiness; but I think it not
only possible that the competitors in such rivalries may keep to the
honourable path, but probable that, as a matter of fact, they
frequently,--I hope that I may say generally,--do so. If the fame at
which a man aims be not that which "in broad rumour lies," but that
which "lives and spreads aloft in those pure eyes and perfect witness
of all-judging Jove," then I think that the desire for it is scarcely
to be called a last infirmity--rather, it is an inseparable quality of
noble minds. We wish to honour men who have been good soldiers in that
warfare, and we can hardly wish them to be indifferent to our homage.
We may add, then, that a competition need not be demoralising when the
competitors have lofty aims and use only honourable means. When,
passing from purely intellectual aims, we consider the case, say, of
the race for wealth, we may safely make an analogous remark. If a man's
aim in becoming rich is of the vulgar kind; if he wishes to make an
ostentatious display of wealth, and to spend his money upon
demoralising amusement; or if, again, he tries to succeed by quackery
instead of by the production of honest work, he is, of course, so far
mischievous and immoral. But a man whose aims are public-spirited, nay,
even if they be such as simply tend to improve the general comfort; who
develops, for example, the resources of the country, and introduces new
industries or more effective modes of manufacture, is, undoubtedly, in
fact conferring a benefit upon his fellows, and may, so far, be doing
his duty in the most effectual way open to him. If he succeeds by being
really a more efficient man of business than his neighbours, he is only
doing what, in the interests of all, it is desirable that he should do.
He is discharging an essential social function; and what is to be
desired is, that he should feel the responsibility involved, that he
should regard his work as on one side the discharge of a social
function, and not simply as a means of personal aggrandisement. It is
not the fact that he is competing that is against him; but the fact,
when it is a fact, that there is something discreditable about the
means which he adopts, or the reward that he contemplates.
This, indeed, suggests another and a highly important question--the
question, namely, whether, in our present social state, his reward may
not be excessive, and won at too great a cost to his rivals. And,
without going into other questions involved, I will try to say a
little, in conclusion, upon this, which is certainly a pressing
problem. Competition, I have suggested, is not immoral if it is a
competition in doing honest work by honourable means, and if it is also
a fair competition. But it must, of course, be added, that fairness
includes more than the simple equality of chances. It supposes, also,
that there should be some proportion between the rewards and the
merits. If it is simply a question between two men, which shall be
captain of a ship, and which shall be mate, then the best plan is to
decide by their merits as sailors; and, if their merits be fairly
tried, the loser need bear no grudge against the winner. But when we
have such cases as sometimes occur, when, for example, the ship is cast
away, and it becomes a question whether I shall eat you or you shall
eat me, or, let us say, which of us is to have the last biscuit, we get
one of those terrible cases of temptation in which the strongest social
bonds sometimes give way under the strain. The competition, then,
becomes, in the highest degree, demoralising, and the struggle for
existence resolves itself into a mere unscrupulous scramble for life,
at any sacrifice of others. That, it is sometimes said, is a parallel
to our social state at present. If I gave an excessive prize to the
first boy in a school and flogged the second, I should not be doing
justice. If one man is rewarded for a moderate amount of forethought by
becoming a millionaire, and his unsuccessful rivals punished by
starvation or the workhouse, the lottery of life is not arranged on
principles of justice. A man must be a very determined optimist if he
denied the painful truth to be found in such statements. He must be
blind to many evils if he does not perceive the danger of dulling his
sympathies by indifference to the fate of the unsuccessful. The rich
man in Clough's poem observes that, whether there be a God matters very
little--
For I and mine, thank somebody,
Manage to get our victual.
But, even if we are not very rich, we must often, I think, doubt
whether we are not wrapping ourselves in a spirit of selfish
complacency when we are returning to a comfortable home and passing
outcasts of the street. We must sometimes reflect that our comfort is
not simply a reward for virtue or intelligence, even if it be not
sometimes the prize of actual dishonesty. To shut our eyes to the mass
of wretchedness around us is to harden our hearts, although to open our
hands is too often to do more harm than good. It is no wonder that we
should be tempted to declaim against competition, when the competition
means that so many unfortunates are to be crowded off their narrow
standing-ground into the gulf of pauperism.
This may suggest the moral which I have been endeavouring to bring out.
Looking at society at large, we may surely say that it will be better
in proportion as every man is strenuously endeavouring to play his
part, and in which the parts are distributed to those best fitted to
play them. We must admit, too, that for any period to which we can look
forward, the great mass of mankind will find enough to occupy their
energies in labouring primarily for their own support, and so bearing
the burden of their own needs and the needs of their families. We may
infer, too, that a society will be the better so far as it gives the
most open careers to all talents, wherever displayed, and as it shows
respect for the homely virtues of industry, integrity, and forethought,
which are essential to the whole body as to its constituent members.
And we may further say that the corresponding motives in the individual
cannot be immoral. A desire of independence, the self-respect which
makes a man shrink from accepting as a gift what he can win as a fair
reward, the love of fairplay, which makes him use only honest means in
the struggle, are qualities which can never lose their value, and which
are not the less valuable because in the first instance they are most
profitable to their possessors. Nothing which tends to weaken such
motives can be good; but while they preserve their intensity, they
necessarily imply the existence of competition in some form or other.
It is equally clear that competition by itself is not a sufficient
panacea. Whenever we take an abstract quality, personify it by the help
of capital letters, and lay it down as the one principle of a complex
system, we generally blunder. Competition is as far as possible from
being the solitary condition of a healthy society. It must be not only
a competition for worthy ends by honourable means, but should be a
competition so regulated that the reward may bear some proportion to
the merit. Monopoly is an evil in so far as it means an exclusive
possession of some advantages or privileges, especially when they are
given by the accidents of birth or position. It is something if they
are given to the best and the ablest; but the evil still remains if
even the best and ablest are rewarded by a position which cramps the
energies and lowers the necessity of others. Competition is only
desirable in so far as it is a process by which the useful qualities
are encouraged by an adequate, and not more than an adequate, stimulus;
and in which, therefore, there is not involved the degradation and the
misery on the one side, the excessive reward on the other, of the
unsuccessful and the successful in the struggle. Competition,
therefore, we might say, could be unequivocally beneficial only in an
ideal society; in a state in which we might unreservedly devote
ourselves to making the best of our abilities and accepting the
consequent results, without the painful sense in the background that
others were being sacrificed and debased; crushed because they had less
luck in the struggle, and were, perhaps, only less deserving in some
degree than ourselves. So long as we are still far enough from having
realised any such state; so long as we feel, and cannot but feel, that
the distribution of rewards is so much at the mercy of chance, and so
often goes to qualities which, in an ideal state, would deserve rather
reprobation than applause, we can only aim at better things. We can do
what in us lies to level some inequalities, to work, so far as our
opportunities enable us, in the causes which are mostly beneficial for
the race, to spread enlightenment and good feeling, and to help the
unfortunate. But it is also incumbent upon us to remember carefully,
what is so often overlooked in the denunciations of competition, that
the end for which we must hope, and the approach to which we must
further, is one in which the equivocal virtue of charity shall be
suppressed; that is, in which no man shall be dependent upon his
neighbour in such a sense as to be able to neglect his own duties; in
which there may be normally a reciprocity of good services, and the
reciprocity not be (as has been said) all on one side. There is a very
explicable tendency at present to ask for such one-sided reciprocity.
It is natural enough, for reasons too obvious to be mentioned, that
reformers should dwell exclusively upon the right of every one to
support, and neglect to point out the correlative duty of every one to
do his best to support himself. The popular arguments about "old-age
pensions" may illustrate the general state of mind. It is disgraceful,
people say, that so large a proportion of the aged poor should come to
depend upon the rates. Undoubtedly it is disgraceful. Then upon whom
does the disgrace fall? It sounds harsh to say that it falls upon the
sufferers. We shrink from saying to a pauper, "It serves you right".
That sounds brutal, and is only in part true. Still, we should not
shrink from stating whatever is true, painful though it may be. It
sounds better to lay all the blame upon the oppressor than to lay it
upon the oppressed; and yet, as a rule, the cowardice or folly of the
oppressed has generally been one cause of their misfortunes, and cannot
be overlooked in a true estimate of the case. That drunkenness,
improvidence, love of gambling, and so forth, do in fact lead to
pauperism is undeniable; and that they are bad, and so far disgraceful,
is a necessary consequence. In such cases, then, pauperism is a proof
of bad qualities; and the fact, like all other facts, must be
recognised. The stress of argument, therefore, is laid upon the
hardships suffered by the honest and industrious poor. The logical
consequence should be, that the deserving poor should become
pensioners, and the undeserving paupers. This at once opens the
amazingly difficult question of moral merit, and the power of poor-law
officials to solve problems which would certainly puzzle the keenest
psychologists. Suppose, for example, that a man, without being
definitely vicious, has counted upon the promised pension, and
therefore neglected any attempts to save. If you give him a pension,
you virtually tell everybody that saving is a folly; if you don't, you
inflict upon him the stigma which is deserved by the drunkard and the
thief. So difficult is it to arrange for this proposed valuation of a
man's moral qualities that it has been proposed to get rid of all
stigma by making it the right and duty of every one to take a pension.
That might conceivably alter the praise, but it would surely not alter
the praiseworthiness. It must be wrong in me to take money from my
neighbours when I don't want it; and, if wrong, it surely ought to be
disgraceful. And this seems to indicate the real point. We may aim at
altering the facts, at making them more conducive to good qualities;
but we cannot alter or attempt to decide by laws the degree of praise
or blame to be attached to individuals. It would be very desirable to
bring about a state of things in which no honest and provident man need
ever fall into want; and, in that state, pauperism would be rightly
discreditable as an indication of bad qualities. But to say that nobody
shall be ashamed of taking support would be to ruin the essential
economic virtues, and to pauperise the nation; and to try to lay down
precise rules as to the distribution of honour and discredit, seems, to
me, to be a problem beyond the power of a legislature. I express no
opinion upon the question itself, because I am quite incompetent to do
so. I only refer to it as illustrating the difficulties which beset us
when we try to remove the evils of the present system, and yet to
preserve the stimulus to industry, which is implied in competition. The
shortest plan is to shut one's eyes to the difficulty, and roundly deny
its existence. I hope that our legislators may hit upon some more
promising methods. The ordinary mode of cutting the knot too often
suggests that the actually contemplated ideal is the land in which the
chickens run about ready roasted, and the curse of labour is finally
removed from mankind. The true ideal, surely, is the state in which
labour shall be generally a blessing; in which we shall recognise the
fact--disagreeable or otherwise--that the race can only be elevated by
the universal diffusion of public spirit, and a general conviction that
it is every man's first duty to cultivate his own capacities, to turn
them to the best possible account, and to work strenuously and heartily
in whatever position he has been placed. It is because I cannot help
thinking that when we attack competition in general terms, we are, too
often, blinding ourselves to those homely and often-repeated, and, as I
believe, indisputable truths, that I have ventured to speak to-day,
namely, on the side of competition--so far, at least, on the side of
competition as to suggest that our true ideal should be, not a state,
if such a state be conceivable, in which there is no competition, but a
state in which competition should be so regulated that it should be
really equivalent to a process of bringing about the best possible
distribution of the whole social forces; and should be held to be,
because it would really be, not a struggle of each man to seize upon a
larger share of insufficient means, but the honest effort of each man
to do the very utmost he can to make himself a thoroughly efficient
member of society.
SOCIAL EQUALITY.
The problem of which I propose to speak is the old dispute between
Dives and Lazarus. Lazarus, presumably, was a better man than Dives.
How could Dives justify himself for living in purple and fine linen,
while Lazarus was lying at the gates, with the dogs licking his sores?
The problem is one of all ages, and takes many forms. When the old
Puritan saw a man going to the gallows, "There," he said, "but for the
grace of God, goes John Bradford". When the rich man, entering his
club, sees some wretched tatterdemalion, slouching on the pavement,
there, he may say, goes Sir Gorgius Midas, but for--what? I am here and
he there, he may say, because I was the son of a successful
stock-jobber, and he the son of some deserted mother at the workhouse.
That is the cause, but is it a reason? Suppose, as is likely enough,
that Lazarus is as good a man as Midas, ought they not to change
places, or to share their property equally? A question, certainly, to
be asked, and, if possible, to be answered.
It is often answered, and is most simply answered, by saying that all
men ought to be equal. Dives should be cut up and distributed in equal
shares between Lazarus and his brethren. The dogma which embodies this
claim is one which is easily refuted in some of the senses which it may
bear, though in spite of such refutations it has become an essential
part of the most genuine creed of mankind. The man of science says,
with perfect truth, that so far from men being born equal, some are
born with the capacity of becoming Shakespeares and Newtons, and others
with scarcely the power of rising above Sally the chimpanzee. The
answer would be conclusive, if anybody demanded that we should all be
just six feet high, with brains weighing sixty ounces, neither more nor
less. It is also true, and, I conceive, more relevant, that, as the man
of science will again say, all improvement has come through little
groups of men superior to their neighbours, through races or through
classes, which, by elevating themselves on the shoulders of others,
have gained leisure and means for superior cultivation. But equality
may be demanded as facilitating this process, by removing the
artificial advantages of wealth. It may be taken as a demand for a fair
start, not as a demand that the prizes shall be distributed
irrespectively of individual worth. And, whether the demand is rightly
or wrongly expressed, we must, I think, admit that the real force with
which we have to reckon is the demand for justice and for equality as
somehow implied by justice. It is easy to browbeat a poor man who wants
bread and cheese for himself and his family, by calling his demands
materialistic, and advising him to turn his mind to the future state,
where he will have the best of Dives. It is equally easy to ascribe the
demands to mere envy and selfishness, or to those evil-minded agitators
who, for their own wicked purposes, induce men to prefer a guinea to a
pound of wages. But, after all, there is something in the demand for
fair play and for the means of leading decent lives, which requires a
better answer. It is easy, again, to say that all Socialists are
Utopian. Make every man equal to-day, and the old inequalities will
reappear to-morrow. Pitch such a one over London Bridge, it was said,
with nothing on but his breeches, and he will turn up at Woolwich with
his pockets full of gold. It is as idle to try for a dead level, when
you work with such heterogeneous materials, as to persuade a
homogeneous fluid to stand at anything but a dead level. But surely it
may be urged that this is as much a reason for declining to believe
that equal conditions of life will produce mere monotony, as for
insisting that equality in any state is impossible. The present system
includes a plan for keeping the scum at the surface. One of the few
lessons which I have learnt from life, and not found already in
copy-books, is the enormous difficulty which a man of the respectable
classes finds in completely ruining himself, even by vice,
extravagance, and folly; whereas, there are plenty of honest people
who, in spite of economy and prudence, can scarcely keep outside of the
workhouse. Admitting the appeal to justice, it is, again, often urged
that justice is opposed to the demand for equality. Property is sacred,
it is said, because a man has (or ought to have) a right to what he has
made either by labour or by a course of fair dealings with other men. I
am not about to discuss the ultimate ground on which the claim to
private property is justified, and, as I think, satisfactorily
established. A man has a right, we say, to all that he has fairly
earned. Has he, then, a right to inherit what his father has earned? A
man has had the advantage of all that a rich father can do for him in
education, and so forth. Why should he also have the father's fortune,
without earning it? Are the merits of making money so great that they
are transmissible to posterity? Should a man who has been so good as to
become rich, be blessed even to the third and fourth generation? Why,
as a matter of pure justice, should not all fortunes be applied to
public uses, on the death of the man who made them? Such a law, however
impolitic, would not be incompatible with the moral principle to which
an appeal is made. There are, of course, innumerable other ways in
which laws may favour an equality of property, without breaking any of
the fundamental principles. What, for example, is the just method of
distributing taxation? A rich man can not only pay more money than a
poor man, in proportion to his income, but he can, with equal ease, pay
a greater proportion. To double the income of a labourer may be to
raise him from starvation to comfort. To double the income of a
millionaire may simply be to encumber him with wealth by which he is
unable to increase his own pleasure. There is a limit beyond which it
is exceedingly difficult to find ways of spending money on one's own
enjoyment--though I have never been able to fix it precisely. On this
ground, such plans as a graduated income-tax are, it would seem,
compatible with the plea of justice; and, within certain limits, we do,
in fact, approve of various taxes, on the ground, real or supposed,
that they tend to shift burdens from the poor to the rich, and, so far,
to equalise wealth. In fact, this appeal to justice is a tacit
concession of the principle. If we justify property on the ground that
it is fair that a man should keep what he has earned by his own labour,
it seems to follow that it is unjust that he should have anything not
earned by his labour. In other words, the answer admits the ordinary
first principle from which Socialism starts, and which, in some
Socialist theories, it definitely tries to embody.