injurious to society, and if it is the law of nature that the fittest
shall survive, the extremely wealthy are not the fittest, for through
the centuries they do not survive. The extremely wealthy are dying out,
for they do not have children enough to maintain their numbers. It is
our duty so to shape our policy as to relieve the commonwealth of
possible dangers from both extreme wealth and extreme poverty. They are
twin evils; extreme wealth indicates extreme poverty, as mountains
indicate valleys. Wealth, corruption, and despotism, are grouped
together in history, as liberty has been grouped with equality,
simplicity, hardihood, the mountain and the wilderness.
Great wealth is timid, narrow-minded, and opposed to reform, its method
of opposition being corruption, and these characteristics are
intensified in hereditary wealth. Wealth everywhere gives power to
monopolize the face of the earth, and thus establish a hereditary
nobility; for the landlords of millions of acres are the most
substantial and formidable lords that society knows, and nowhere in the
world have there been greater opportunities to establish such an
aristocracy, which may be able to buy and sell the aristocracy of
Europe. Our present national wealth, which is about one thousand dollars
per capita, represents not the increased wealth of the masses but the
enormous accumulations of a few. Our gain of about two thousand millions
annually, does it represent the prosperity or the decline of the
republic? If it is but aggregation of wealth, it is a decline, it is
corpulence instead of strength.
Our social system has the elements of decay already as conspicuous as in
the tuberculous patient. Invention increases the power of wealth instead
of increasing the resources of manhood, for wealth absorbs and uses
machinery and diminishes the relative value of the man by making him a
machine attendant. In leather work he sinks from the independent
shoemaker, safe in the patronage of his neighbors, to the mere tenth of
a shoemaker who if dislodged from the factory is helpless. The
independence of the hunter and the farmer is fast disappearing.
Population is gathering in cities, and the country becoming the home of
tenant farmers or day laborers on large estates. The middle class is
declining, and society becoming slowly an aggregation of capitalists and
employers, an unhealthy social condition, premonitory of struggles and
conflicts that were not possible fifty years ago. At this moment a
strike of 150,000 is threatened. But it is not merely the laboring
classes, for all classes are threatened by our present dangerous system
which is running on to sure destruction, like a locomotive let loose and
flying wildly over the railroad. If there were no other formidable
danger, the trust or syndicate is in itself a fatality. When a thousand
millions enter the field they enter as master, in the Standard Oil
fashion. They can buy out or crush out, as they may choose, every
competitor in the field they may seize. There is _not a single form of
industry_ which they cannot monopolize, and where the monopoly is
established, demand what prices they please for that which they alone
can supply. Can we imagine the conventional brother Jonathan held down
by the throat with iron grip, and his pockets open to the holder, or
will he rebel before the grip is fastened? He does not seem aware how
well it is fastened upon him already; but something decisive will be
done long before a syndicate senate can rule the entire country. Ten
years more will introduce the struggle. The struggle must come, for
plutocracy is advancing to universal absorption, and labor is becoming
defiant, and well it may, for the COMMONWEALTH represents _not money but
man_, and when plutocracy, absorbing ninety-five per cent. of the
nation's wealth, assumes the practical government, the commonwealth with
a firm hand will thrust it aside; but will it be a peaceful change, will
the conquerors yield to the conquered? As the vampire bat fans its
sleeping victims while absorbing their life blood, the advocates of
capital deny that there is any such thing as plutocracy, or anything
going on but the natural legitimate and healthful development of trade;
and the medical corporations called colleges in seizing a stern monopoly
of the healing art, assure us that it is only for the benefit and
protection of the dear people who have not sense enough to distinguish
between a successful and an unsuccessful doctor, and have so
unpardonable a partiality for those who cure them cheaply without
college permission. There is nothing too small for monopoly to grasp,
not even the cheap dispensing of established remedies from the
druggist's counter.
It is a just and patriotic sentiment which looks with apprehension upon
the great and irresponsible power developed by extreme wealth, which
lifts the wealthy far above society, enabling them to indulge in
profligate luxury, and to squander in a single evening's pleasure (or
display without pleasure) an amount that would make life prosperous to a
hundred suffering families, or on a single piece of architectural
splendor, enough to complete the education of the entire youth of a
city--wealth enabling them to rival the despots of Europe in social
ostentation, while almost within hearing of their revelry, ten or twenty
thousand are suffering from want of employment, want of health, want of
education, want of industrial skill, which society did not give them,
suffering the slow death that comes through debility, emaciation, and
disease, from toil and poverty, the sufferer being sometimes a woman in
whom all the virtues have blossomed only to perish in the chilling
atmosphere of poverty.[16] This may be utterly senseless talk to those
in whom the sentiment of brotherhood is dead, but it expresses
sentiments to which millions respond, and it is refreshing to see that
these statements, which at last have found free expression through THE
ARENA, are also beginning to find a home in the minds of public leaders,
whose voices will compel attention. I allude to the philanthropic
expressions of the Emperor of Germany, and to the language of Mr.
Gladstone, who shows that the necessity of philanthropic action on the
part of the wealthy is increased by their changed attitude, as they are
becoming more isolated from the people, and no longer take that friendly
personal interest in their tenants and employes of every grade, which
was formerly common. In this country, social ostentation is a great
power to increase this separation of ranks, and the book of Jacob A.
Riis, "How the Other Half Lives," ought to be studied by every wealthy
citizen as well as by reformers. Herbert Spencer, in a recent thoughtful
essay, refers to this increasing interest in social welfare thus: "He is
struck, too, by the contrast between the small space which popular
welfare then occupied in the public attention, and the large space it
now occupies, with the result that outside and inside Parliament, plans
to benefit the millions form the leading topics, and every one having
means is expected to join in some philanthropic effort." This is because
the millions demand it, and they who, like the writer, have for half a
century been interested in behalf of the millions, may now be listened
to.
[16] And society is still organized to ensure the perpetuation
of this poverty, no matter what the bounties of nature, or
what the increase of wealth by art and invention. The army
of the dissatisfied, the hungry, and the demoralized,
continually grows and becomes more dangerous. The President
of the National Home Association at Washington stated a few
months since that there were _sixty thousand boy tramps_ in
the United States.
The enormous wealth developed in our republic, in which a single city
holds a thousand millionaires, controls the press, controls legislation,
and teaches the ambitious to sell themselves to the wealthy who are the
controlling power. Under such influences arises that moral insensibility
which, in New York, could squander twenty millions on one building,
while half the children were out of school, and a large portion of the
insane were left wallowing in indecent filth, worse than that of a hog
pen, as shown in the Albany _Law Journal_.
In presenting these views, I am not assailing millionaires as men more
objectionable or censurable than any other class. It is not true that
the mere ability to gain wealth implies moral inferiority, for it
implies many substantial and honorable qualities. Reverse the social
ranks, give the wealth to the poor, and our condition would not be
improved, perhaps it would be much worse. The fault lies in our social
system of struggle and rivalry, and while that system generates, as it
always has, extreme wealth and extreme poverty, we must combat these two
evils, and to control them is the purpose of this essay. Whether a
better social system is possible that would PREVENT them, is not now
under consideration, but surely there must be a system which will make
unlimited wealth and unlimited poverty impossible, for such conditions
are incompatible with a permanent, peaceful, and prosperous republic. As
well might we expect a successful voyage from a ship with four-fifths of
its cargo on the upper deck, as from a republic top heavy with
millionaire capital. Can we believe that republics are forbidden by the
laws of progress and evolution; that they must, as Macaulay maintained,
come to a fatal crisis? I trust not. But does not our social system,
inherited from barbarism, built up on the hot ashes left where the fires
of war have desolated, necessarily develop that inequality which has
swept the great empires of antiquity to their doom. When all the wealth
of the nation has fallen into the possession of two per cent. of the
population, the period of danger has arrived. Five per cent. of our
population had, in 1880, absorbed four fifths of the national wealth,
and at present, according to the careful statistics of Mr. Shearman,
less than two per cent. hold seven tenths of our wealth, and are rapidly
advancing to nine tenths, their progress being assisted by the indirect
taxation which places the burden of government on the shoulders of
poverty. Popular ignorance of public affairs has tolerated this, and has
tolerated a financial system far worse, which has given capital all
possible advantage of labor. We are drifting in the rapids; how far off
is our Niagara? But labor is roused, and a change in our system of
taxation is imminent.
Unlimited wealth and unlimited poverty are the necessary results of the
warlike stage of progress, which develops the conquerors and the
conquered in the great battle of life. Unnumbered centuries of tribal
and international war have developed to high perfection the wolfish and
tigerish instincts of humanity. What is called peace is a state of
financial war. Beneath the smooth skin of the civilized man, we find the
wolf in undiminished vigor. The triumphant wolf rides in his chariot;
the conquered wolf sleeps in the open air along the alleys, wharves, and
streets; but what cares the wolf triumphant for that? for the 30,000
homeless in London? The policeman's club, or the bayonet, is the only
thing that keeps down riot and arson, and the uncertainty of the result
is all that hinders the French, German, and Russian wolves from turning
a continent into a pandemonium. Is Europe truly a civilized country? Not
if tried by an ethical standard. VON MOLTKE, the great man of Germany,
who has so recently passed away, considered war a _permanent_
institution.
In this wolfish stage of human development, altruism is almost unknown,
except as an eccentricity. It is safe to say, as a general rule to which
there are not many exceptions, that _no man is fit to be entrusted with
any more than he needs for his own comfortable existence_. Every dollar
beyond that sum is wasted in his hands. He has not the faintest
conception that he is a trustee of all such wealth, responsible to
heaven for its use. As he cannot consume it, he can but squander it to
gratify his vanity, and lift himself to a position from which he can, or
thinks he can, look down upon his fellows. The leading idea of the
average citizen is to construct a palace that will cost ten, twenty,
fifty, or a hundred times as much as the residence that would be amply
sufficient and pleasant.[17] His talent for the destruction of wealth
grows by indulgence, and thus the millions that the financial conquerors
have won from the conquered are thrown into the blazing flame of
ostentation, and might as well be thrown into a literal conflagration.
Such is the humanity with which we have to deal at present. Wealth, no
matter who holds it, does not restrain the destruction of the resources
of the commonwealth, but the growl of the suffering millions may, and
may lead to a recognition of the grand truth that everything beyond the
demands of human comfort is a sacred trust for humanity, and with the
millions thus aroused, I believe it may be possible to introduce laws
which will gradually change the entire condition of society, and leave
in this broad land neither an American prince nor an American beggar--a
change which will be a greater forward movement than that of 1776.
[17] Nob Hill, in San Francisco, is crowned with five huge
buildings in imitation of foreign palaces, utterly unfit
for private residences, which may possibly sometime be
utilized for public purposes. They but illustrate the crazy
ostentation of selfish wealth. Can it be possible, as
stated by the St. Joseph _Herald_, that "George Vanderbilt
is building a genuine old-fashioned mediæval baronial
castle at Asheville, N. C., at a cost of $10,000,000"?
The leading purpose of such legislation will be the controlling of that
lawless selfishness, which wantonly destroys all in which the community
is interested; which on the prairies exterminates the buffalo, in the
mountains and forests destroys the timber, bringing on as a consequence
the drouth, floods, and desolate barrenness, under which a large part of
the old world is suffering; which would exterminate the seals if
government did not interfere, and would infect every city with
pestilential odors of offensive manufactories; which would destroy the
people's national money for the benefit of private bankers, and pervert
all the powers of government for the benefit of monopoly and organized
speculation.
May we not look to that struggle for justice which to-day assumes the
forms of Nationalism, Farmers' Alliance, People's Party, Knights of
Labor, and Land Nationalization, to accomplish this purpose and
emancipate the present from the barbarian ideas of the past?
(_To be concluded in July Arena._)
HAS SPENCER'S DOCTRINE OF INCONCEIVABILITY DRIVEN RELIGION INTO THE
UNKNOWABLE?
BY REV. T. ERNEST ALLEN.
[Illustration: (signed) Cordially yours, Ernest Allen]
The service rendered to humanity by Mr. Herbert Spencer in the
elaboration of the Synthetic Philosophy, should command the admiration
and gratitude of all broad-minded men. There are certain fallacies in
the argument by which Religion is relegated into the "Unknowable,"
however, to which it will be the purpose of this essay to call the
reader's attention. If Religion really be, by its very nature,
unknowable, it follows that as man grows in intelligence, the extent to
which it occupies his thought will tend to diminish towards final
extinction. It is a thoroughly wholesome state of affairs that, like all
things which claim our consideration, Religion should again and again be
compelled to step into the arena to vindicate its right to hold sway
over humanity. Nor is the attitude of many minds which places Religion
upon the defensive, unreasonable, or the outgrowth of a perverse spirit,
but, on the contrary, it results from the questionings of those eager to
find the truth and anxious to "prove all things" and cast error aside.
Let us see if Religion can withstand the fierce onslaught, threatening
its very life, which Mr. Spencer makes in his "First Principles" (pp.
3-123).
Our author's first attempt is to "form something like a general theory
of current opinions," so as neither to "over-estimate nor under-estimate
their worth." As a special case from the examination of which he hopes
to derive a general method, he traces the evolution of government from
the beginning until now. It is held that no belief concerning government
is wholly true or false; "each of them insists upon a certain
subordination of individual actions to social requirements.... From the
oldest and rudest idea of allegiance, down to the most advanced
political theory of our own day, there is on this point complete
unanimity." He speaks of this subordination as a postulate "which is,
indeed, of self-evident validity," as ranking "next in certainty to the
postulates of exact science." As the result of his search for "a
generalization which may habitually guide us when seeking for the soul
of truth in things erroneous," he concludes: "This method is to compare
all opinions of the same genus; to set aside as more or less
discrediting one another those various special and concrete elements in
which such opinions disagree; to observe what remains after the
discordant constituents have been eliminated, and to find for the
remaining constituent that abstract expression which holds true
throughout its divergent modifications."
What did Mr. Spencer discover by the application of his method to
government? A postulate which he announces to be of "self-evident
validity," an "unquestionable fact"--that is all! His method is a
statement of the process of abstraction. Very useful though it is in
determining what one or more predicates may be affirmed of many objects
of thought which differ widely otherwise or in revealing truths, as he
points out, respecting which men can by no possibility disagree, it
cannot assist us in discriminating between true and false "discordant
constituents," for which purpose a simple method would be helpful.
Certainly this is not the method which gave us the most "advanced
political theory" of the day! The fact is, that when used, as Mr.
Spencer suggests, it shrivels the total content of any subject under
consideration, down to the one truth lying at the foundation of the most
primitive theory. In the case of Religion, he alleges that the one point
upon which there is entire unanimity between the most divergent creeds,
between the lowest fetichism and the most enlightened Christianity, is
this: "That there is something to be explained." An interesting piece of
information, surely! Yes, but "the Power which the Universe manifests to
us is utterly inscrutable." Over against this, we have the magnificent
superstructure of modern Science, erected by the employment of methods
quite other than the one which he esteems competent to overthrow
Religion.
The postulate, a straight line may be drawn between two points, while it
makes a geometry possible, reveals nothing as to the properties of
lines; so, in the present case, the proposition resulting from the
process of abstraction, "there is something to be explained," affirms
that, at least _à priori_, Religion is possible, but decides nothing as
to the truth or falsity of unnumbered statements which millions of
people have believed for centuries to belong to the domain of Religion.
This method does not and cannot discredit Religion.
"Religious ideas of one kind or another," says Mr. Spencer, "are almost
universal.... We are obliged to admit that, if not supernaturally
derived, as the majority contend, they must be derived out of human
experiences, slowly accumulated and organized.... Considering all
faculties," under the evolutionary hypothesis, "to result from
accumulated modifications caused by the intercourse of the organism with
its environment, we are obliged to admit that there exist in the
environment certain phenomena or conditions which have determined the
growth of the feeling in question, and so are obliged to admit that it
is as normal as any other faculty.... We are also forced to infer that
this feeling is in some way conducive to human welfare.... Positive
knowledge does not and never can fill the whole region of possible
thought. At the utmost reach of discovery there arises, and must ever
arise, the question--what lies beyond?... Throughout all future time, as
now, the human mind may occupy itself, not only with ascertained
phenomena and their relations, but also with that unascertained
something which phenomena and their relations imply. Hence if knowledge
cannot monopolize consciousness--if it must always continue possible for
the mind to dwell upon that which transcends knowledge; then there can
never cease to be a place for something of the nature of Religion; since
Religion under all its forms is distinguished from everything else in
this, that its subject matter is that which passes the sphere of
experience." Religion is "a constituent of the great whole; and being
such must be treated as a subject of Science with no more prejudice than
any other reality."
It will suit our present purpose to divide the cognitive faculties into
intuitive and non-intuitive. If I rightly understand Mr. Spencer, when
he says of the subject matter of Religion that it "passes the sphere of
experience," he means that the content of Religion results from the
action of the non-intuitive faculties upon material furnished by the
intuitive faculties, and not from the immediate action of the latter
upon environment. For the sake of the argument, I will grant this
position. In order that mankind may build up sciences in which it
reposes such confidence, the action of the non-intuitive faculties must
be trusted, for it is only through such action that sciences can ever be
constructed from the materials of experience. Granting, then, the
general trustworthiness of mental operations, the mind cannot abstract
_out of_ human experiences what was not already in them; cannot evolve
what was not involved. The separation of the true from the false in
Religion, then, must be accomplished, as in the case of Science, by
verifying the intuitions and going repeatedly over the chains of
reasoning which lead to the conclusions farthest removed from
intuitions, to guard as much as possible against error. Thus, because
drawn out from given data, certain conclusions will embody to-day what
is true in Religion, and later, with an enlarged experience, more or
less modified conclusions will express what will then be seen to be
true. This is in accord with the general law of evolution which holds
for Science. From the present point of view, Mr. Spencer seems to concur
in the above, since he says of religious ideas, that "to suppose these
multiform conceptions" to "be one and all _absolutely_ groundless,
discredits too profoundly that average human intelligence from which all
our individual intelligences are inherited."