Obviously, Man must find some better solution of this problem than

ants and bees. How Man has at various periods attempted to solve it we

shall study later. But before leaving natural environment, we have a

lesson to learn from the moral qualities which the two lines of

divergence have respectively developed--the qualities of the solitary

carnivore and those of the communistic bee.

We may be helped by observing the habits of herding animals that are

neither so fierce as the lion nor so servile as the ant. For although

it has of late been the fashion to justify our existing capitalistic

system by exaggerating the extent to which competition exists in

Nature, careful study reveals that though competition does prevail

between different species, it is the exception rather than the rule

between individuals of the same species. Nature has proceeded along

two lines of development: one of mutual struggle, and another of

mutual aid. Thus we find even carnivora, such as the hyena and the

wolf, herding for the purpose of the chase; even foxes and bears have

been seen to herd; eagles, kites, and pelicans notoriously associate

to this end. Practically all herbivora herd more or less permanently,

the permanence of the herd depending apparently upon the mildness or

the ferocity of the sexual instinct. In the case of the elk, the stag,

the bull, and the horse, that fight for the female, and prevent the

weak from perpetuating the race, the herd breaks up into groups during

the rutting season; whereas, in the case of apes and monkeys that

herd, the herd remains permanent.

Too little is known about the sexual relations of such animals as herd

permanently for any certain conclusions to be drawn from them, but it

can be said without fear of contradiction that Nature has succeeded

best through the combination of strength, selfishness, and ferocity

on the one hand, and that of intelligence, altruism,[202] and

servility on the other; for it is the lion and the tiger that dominate

the jungles of Asia; in Africa and South America it is the white ant.

These considerations lead us to conclusions of great importance, for

they enable us to trace the development of certain habits or instincts,

which, when we find them developed in Man, become lifted into virtues or

vices according to their nature and intensity. Thus solitude imposes

upon solitary animals habits of selfishness and self-reliance; the tiger

has no one to look to but himself for the satisfaction of the two great

animal needs--food and self-perpetuation; he is the Ishmaelite of the

animal kingdom; his hand is against everyone and everyone's hand is

against him. Whereas, community life imposes upon the ant habits of

docility and altruism; she works not for herself, but for her neighbors;

she is a natural slave, but a slave to a useful end--the common weal of

all.

To sum up: Natural environment has operated on animal life through the

principle of evolution or survival of the fittest in such a manner as

to develop physical organs and instinctive habits, both of which seem

to be necessary results. These physical organs and instinctive habits

depend for their nature and excellence upon two parallel systems:

According to one, the struggle for life has taken place not only

between one species and another, but also between individuals of the

same species; this has resulted in individual excellence, as in the

case of the lion and the tiger; and has developed habits of

selfishness, self-reliance and ferocity. According to the other, the

struggle for life has taken place mainly between one group and

another, and hardly at all between individuals of the same group, but

both the lives and the happiness of the individual are recklessly

sacrificed to it; this has resulted in collective excellence at the

expense of the individual; and has developed habits of docility and

altruism.

In the former, or competitive system, there is the greatest individual

freedom of action and the greatest individual satisfaction of animal

propensities, but there is the greatest individual risk, the few

survive at the expense of the many, and there is little or no social

satisfaction.

In the latter, or cooperative system, there is less individual

freedom, less satisfaction of animal propensities (indeed, sexual

appetite is left unsatisfied for all except one individual of each

sex, and at the expense of personal liberty for the female and for the

male of life itself), but there is least individual risk for the

workers, and most social satisfaction.

Intermediate systems partake of both the competitive and cooperative

plan, none of the intermediate systems, however, leading to supremacy,

and some of them resulting in degeneracy.

Such are the results of the unconscious action of natural environment

on living things.

We are now in a position to study the actual and possible results of

the conscious action of an artificial environment on Man.

Sec. 2. HUMAN ENVIRONMENT

Before studying the possible effects upon Man of an artificial

environment, consciously and deliberately created by him with the

definite purpose of attaining the maximum of human perfection and

happiness, we must be clear as to the actual effects upon man of the

artificial environment in which he finds himself. And first we must

give its full value to the fact that the environment in which we live

is in great part artificial, that it is the product not of Nature

only, but also of Art.

We have seen that the lower animals, prior to the advent of Man, were

the necessary product of the natural environment. We have now to study

how Man has modified the face of the world, as regards them and

himself, by the application thereto of Art.

The most obvious and striking change effected by Art on human life is

in relation to climate.

There is geologic evidence that the forefathers of Man in what is

called the Miocene Period, while not so intellectual as Man, were of a

far higher type than any living ape; the head, for example, indicates

a superior structure.[203] Now, the Miocene Period was exceptionally

warm. The bones of the so-called troglodytes are found in the caves of

the Dordogne with other vegetable and animal remains that indicate a

tropical temperature. This was followed by the glacial epoch, which

substituted for tropical conditions those now existing in the Arctic

zone. The troglodyte had to choose between the alternatives; he had to

flee to the tropics before the cold wave from the North, or to resist

the cold by recourse to Art. It is probable that he did both; some

did the one, and the rest the other; some fled to the tropics and

degenerated there into the existing anthropoid apes; the rest invented

weapons with which to slay fur-bearing animals, to strip them of their

skins, and convert the skins into clothing; used the shelter furnished

by natural caves, and eventually discovered the way to produce a

flame. This last Promethean gift was probably the first of the great

human inventions. When Man discovered how to produce and utilize fire

he became superior to climate.

This discovery produced an amazing consequence; for it seems certain

that our race made its first strides towards civilization in tropical

countries; but that progress in the Arts, by enabling Man to inhabit

colder and more bracing climates, permitted an increase in his power

to resist not only climate, but all the other natural conditions

hostile to his improvement; and so we find the Northern races

gradually subduing those of the South, and demonstrating the great

rule _that man's progress is secured, not by yielding to natural

environment, but by resisting it_.

The key to human progress in the past, and the probable key to human

progress in the future, is the faculty of Man to resist Nature; and

this faculty is twofold. Intelligence is the more obvious of the two

elements. But intelligence is not sufficient of itself. Intelligence

must be coupled with the power of self-restraint. For although

intelligence is the light which can guide men toward perfection, it is

useless unless accompanied by the willingness and power to follow the

light.

What avails it to the millionaire to know that he can by the

intelligent use of his millions alleviate the misery of the poor, if

he lacks the willingness and power to apply this knowledge?

What avails it to us to know that by substituting cooperation for

competition in the production of the necessaries of life, poverty can

be annihilated, if we have not the willingness and the power to effect

the substitution?

What avails it to a drunkard to know that drink is the cause of his

misery, if he has not the power to refuse it?

In man's struggle with climate, intelligence seems to play the

principal role, but there is also a spirit of resistance, in strong

contrast with submission that characterizes the lower animals. In

other arenas the power of self-control plays a still more conspicuous

part. There is probably no institution in which man differs more from

the lower animals than in that of marriage; and none more

characterized by self-control. If we compare the promiscuous

intercourse that prevails between the sexes in troops of apes, with

the fidelity that characterizes the highest types of marriage in our

most highly civilized communities, we cannot but be struck, not only

with the enormous gap between the two, but with the dominant role

played in development from the lower to the higher type by the power

of self-control. The passionate propensity that condemns the fiercer

carnivora to solitude, and reduces even the docile bee to a wholesale

massacre of one of the two sexes, has been so controlled in our

civilization that we find men and women not only living in the closest

proximity without violating the marriage vow, but even consecrating

themselves to life-long chastity out of respect for a religious

scruple.

Man has attained this result through the training of children by

parents in the family, of youth by masters in schools, and of adults

each by himself in the world at large.

Perhaps the most precious result of the institution of marriage is

the education furnished by the family which results from marriage. In

Greek life this education was the kernel of Greek religion. Every

family worshipped its own gods, and these gods were the shades of its

ancestors. Almost every duty in life resolved itself into a duty to

these shades; the duty to marry was but to ensure offspring who would

continue to minister to the deceased; the duty of chastity, and indeed

of morality in general, resolved itself into a duty to keep inviolable

the sacred flame upon the hearth.

The two virtues peculiarly stimulated by Greek religion were courage

in man and chastity in woman; these singularly correspond to the

qualities that characterize solitary carnivora--ferocity in the male

and compulsory fidelity in the female. They are the virtues that

attend individualism, and individualism so impregnated Greek

civilization that it prevented the Greek cities from ever combining

into a Greek nation, and ultimately left them a prey to the invader.

And those two individualistic virtues--courage and chastity--became

still more emphasized under the Roman rule in the soldier and the

vestal.

Christianity introduced a new element into civilized life; Christ

deprecated exhibitions of courage by inculcating humility; He tempered

the fierce demand for fidelity by bidding "him who was without sin

cast the first stone at her." The virtue He taught above all was the

virtue of Love; not love in the sense of natural affection, but love

in the sense of sacrifice; not love confined to the family, but love

extended from the family to the neighbor: "Love your neighbor as

yourself." And so under the dispensation of Christ all men, being the

children of a common Father, became as brothers one to another; the

early Christians carrying out this theory into practical life,

abandoned the acquisition of private wealth and brought all their

earnings into a common stock, giving to everyone according to his

need.

Unfortunately, the prosperity of the Church under Constantine

converted it into a political machine as unconscionable in its

methods, and as effectual in results, as the so-called rings which

govern many cities to-day. The Church forgot the virtues which it was

instituted to teach; and our Western civilization has ever since been

distracting us by encouraging the fighting virtues of the Roman

soldier on the one hand, and the altogether inconsistent humility of

the Christian saint on the other.

But men and women cannot live close to one another for centuries,

without having social virtues forced upon them; and while the

competitive system which prevails in our industrial and international

relations has stimulated the fighting qualities in us, the teaching of

Christ has preserved in our hearts ideas of happiness which have more

or less unconsciously created a tendency to replace competition by

cooperation wherever possible.

The joint effect of Roman and Christian rules of conduct has been to

substitute for the qualities that we observe in Nature--the lust and

ferocity of the carnivore and the servility of the ant--new qualities

altogether different, and in some respects almost opposite. For lust

has been replaced by a conception of the conjugal relation which

converts marriage into a sacrament; ferocity has yielded to the

courage of the medieval knight and the modern gentleman; servility

tends to disappear and be replaced by respect for laws; and fear has

been lifted by religion into reverence--"The fear of God is the

beginning of wisdom."

The fact that these virtues are held up to us as desirable and that we

are trained to conform thereto, is of dominating importance in

considering the character of human environment; and were there nothing

in human institutions to render the universal practice of these

virtues impossible, we should assuredly enjoy the happiness that must

result therefrom.

Unfortunately there are two reasons why we cannot practice these

virtues though we would:

We are divided into nations, each striving against all the rest to

secure for its citizens the largest possible share of the good things

of this world. Every nation is composed of individuals or families,

each engaged in a similar strife.

The first, the international conflict, gives rise to a peculiar virtue

called patriotism, which, in so far as it teaches a man to love the

country to which he belongs, and the people amongst whom he lives, is

altogether good, but in so far as it teaches him to hate and

occasionally slay those of other nations is altogether bad.

The second, the intranational conflict, gives rise to a quality which,

though not recognized as a virtue, should, if measured by the rewards it

receives, be assuredly regarded as the greatest of all--acquisitiveness;

for the fortunate few who possess this quality gather unto themselves

all the good things in the world at the expense of all the rest.

Let us briefly study each of these formidable obstacles to virtue and

happiness:

As regards the international conflict, the world is so large, and is

peopled by races of men so different, that it would be quite

impossible to include them all under the same government. The Red

Indian is incapable of adopting our civilization; he would rather die.

The Chinese has a conception of government so different from ours that

he has no word in his language for patriotism. The Oriental, who has

occupied the Danubian provinces for five centuries, is still so

foreign to us that he cannot live amongst Christians except either as

a conqueror in Turkey or a subject in Hindoostan.

So long as these differences exist, there must be separate nations;

and the smoke of international conflict must occasionally burst into a

flame.

Nevertheless, even to-day human effort can do much to diminish

occasions for war; witness the Tribunal of The Hague and the daily

multiplying treaties of arbitration; witness, too, the gradual

extension of solidarity between workingmen beyond national frontiers

and the growing disposition to organize regardless of them.

As regards the intranational conflict--between individuals belonging

to the same country--there is much more to be said, for although the

total elimination of occasions of conflict between citizens of the

same nation may still be far off, there is serious reason to believe

that a partial elimination of them is immediately possible, and may

constitute the most practical of all political programs, and the most

vital of all religious faiths. Indeed, a thorough understanding of the

problem presented by this intranational conflict is so indispensable

to its prosperous solution, that upon this understanding may be said

to depend the question whether our civilization is to degenerate.

The intranational conflict is mainly concerned with the acquisition of

wealth; and because this conflict has so far inordinately enriched a

few and impoverished the mass, it is the fashion for us to rail

against wealth.

But wealth is the necessary product of civilization, and like manure,

it is a benefaction when lightly distributed over the right place,

though a pest when heavily concentrated in the wrong. The wealthier a

community is the happier it ought to be. It is not wealth itself

which constitutes our grievance, but the method of its distribution.

Now the unequal distribution of wealth is mainly due to the system of

private property under which the few who have the gift of money-making

acquire large fortunes, while the many are left in comparative poverty

and even want.

Under this system, every man, instead of working for all, is working

only for himself, and he who has most acquisitiveness becomes master

of those who have less, society being by this single quality divided

into a series of classes or castes, at the top of which are a few

millionaires, and at the bottom the large contingent that after a life

of misery end their lives in the almshouse, the prison, or the lunatic

asylum--a contingent that has been determined by carefully prepared

statistics to constitute one-fifth of the entire population in the

richest country in the world.[204]

Private property has played an essential role in the slow

enfranchisement of the people. But just as the cocoon serves an

essential purpose in protecting the worm during its slow development,

but becomes a prison which the butterfly discards when it attains its

final freedom, so private property may turn out to have already served

its purpose if we can demonstrate ourselves so far developed as to be

fit to cast it aside.

Let us recall what role private property plays in our human

environment to-day:

It is the great stimulus which sets each one of us to work for

himself, and by working for himself to accumulate wealth that

contributes to the maintenance of all the rest. It furnishes (in

theory) a method under which the man who works most effectually gets

the highest reward.

Now, as it is essential in every community that every man should

contribute to the maintenance of all, and as justice seems to demand

that the workers should be rewarded according to results, it is

claimed that private property solves the problem of production in a

manner both effectual and just.

The competitive system, however, and the false notion of property to

which the competitive system gives rise by setting every man to work

for himself regardless of all the rest, prevents men from proceeding

upon the far more economical plan of cooperation.

Sec. 3. THE EFFECT OF THE COMPETITIVE SYSTEM ON TYPE

We have seen that under the law of evolution type tends to adapt

itself to environment. It must so adapt itself or perish. There is no

escape from this iron law. If the climate change from warm to cold,

animals must put on blubber or fur; if the climate change from cold to

hot, they must throw off blubber or fur. Those who adapt themselves to

the change survive; those who do not adapt themselves die.

So also, if in a given community the individual can secure the

necessaries of life only on the condition of outdoing his neighbor, it

is those who most successfully outdo their neighbors who prevail;

those who are outdone sink deeper and deeper into poverty and

ultimately join the irreclaimable fifth.

The effect, then, of the competitive system on type is to stimulate

the qualities that go to make up acquisitiveness; selfishness and all

the necessary results of selfishness--avarice, greed, envy, injustice,

hardness of heart.

It would be by no means fair to maintain that no man can be successful

in business who is not cursed with all these vices. On the contrary,

some of our greatest philanthropists have been successful business

men. But philanthropy sometimes results from the blessed principle of

reaction, under which vice, when it gets bad enough, creates a

revulsion against evil. Reaction, however, is the eddy in the stream;

and it is the stream and not the eddy that in the end counts.

The main, the essential, the inevitable result of private property is

to promote selfishness, for the competitive system creates an

artificial environment to which the human type must tend to conform.

This artificial environment not only promotes selfishness at large,

but tends to degrade every institution which man has invented in his

effort to advance. Among these institutions, the two which have sprung

from the noblest instincts in man, and ought most to tend to his

improvement, are Marriage and the Church. Yet both are demoralized by

the competitive system.

In the state of nature, animals tend to improve through sexual

selection. By sexual selection is meant the fight between males for

the female, the result of which is that the strongest males are the

ones that perpetuate the type.

In the artificial environment produced by private property, a very

different process is at work. Marriage tends to be determined by

wealth rather than fitness; and the wealthy tend to have few children

or none; whereas it is found that in the unwealthy classes, the

poorest have the most children. Well-to-do people protect themselves

and their families from poverty by prudence, whereas, those who

despair of escaping from poverty have no reason for refusing

themselves what is often almost their only satisfaction; and the

result is that while the houses of the rich tend to be desolate

through childlessness, those of the poor are crowded with the

offspring of despair.

The religious conception of Marriage that it is a sacrament has become

practically obsolete; particularly in this so among the rich, whose

daughters are annually offered for sale in the market of Mayfair as

shamelessly as not long ago were Circassian girls in that of

Istamboul.

The effect of private property on the Church is no less deplorable. It

costs money to maintain a church; and the more splendidly a church is

maintained the more money it costs. The priest has to live; bishops

indeed have to live in a certain state. The Church, then, must have

money. In some countries the Church secures money from the government,

and is driven thereby into the questionable field of politics; in

others, every individual church is thrown upon its own resources, and

has either to make its services attractive by ritual, or to depend for

its supplies upon one or two of the wealthy members of its

congregation. It is not surprising, then, that under this subjection

to wealth, Christians have abandoned the teaching of Christ, and

forgotten that in early days they sold all and gave to the poor,

contributed their earnings to a common stock, and resisted not evil

but overcame evil with good.

Yet the Church has rendered, and is still rendering, a priceless

service to man. Falter though she may, she has preserved for us the

Gospel of Christ.

The blame rests not with the Church, but with the artificial

environment which man has himself created, and to which he alone can

put an end--the environment that appeals to the selfishness of man,

and having made man selfish, insolently asserts that in no other

environment can he be otherwise.

Man will be what his environment makes him.

If the environment stimulates selfishness, man will be selfish. If it

stimulates unselfishness, he will be unselfish.

But man can by art so alter his environment that it will elicit the

noble in man, instead of the base.

Let us now sum up the difference between human and natural evolution,

and arrive at some conclusion regarding the part man has played, and

may still play, in his own advancement.

Sec. 4. BRIEF RESTATEMENT

Before the advent of man animal life prospered or degenerated

according as the natural environment was favorable to progress or

degeneration. The process of evolution was necessarily unconscious and

undeliberate.

With the advent of man a new force appeared upon the face of the

world, the power to modify the environment so as to make it serve

human needs, and accord with human intention.

Before the advent of man, selection was exercised by Nature or the

natural environment; since the advent of man it is man who has

selected and not Nature; animals dangerous and useless to man have

almost disappeared except in museums; and only those that are useful

to him are allowed to survive.

Climate is no longer paramount; man by the use of tools, clothing,

architecture, and other arts, contrives to-day to live in climates

which were once fatal to him.

By increase of knowledge man has acquired a control of the forces of

Nature, which makes him now a master where he was once a slave.

By increase of self-restraint--and self-restraint involves the

subjection of natural instincts--man has developed qualities which

permit of social existence unknown in any other race.

Without having lost the self-reliance that characterizes the solitary

carnivora, he has, by resisting Nature--by such artificial

institutions as that of marriage, and the education which results from

family relations--developed all the social virtues. Ferocity has been

tempered; lust has been reduced to subjection; in the place of the one

we now see courage; in the place of the other chastity; craft is

growing into wisdom; fear into reverence. He has substituted for the

standard of Nature the standard of Morality, and the substitution of

the standard of Morality for the standard of Nature has permitted men

and women to live in the same community safe from the ferocity that

drives the larger carnivora to solitude, and from the massacre and

mutilation which characterize such natural communities as those of

bees.

When from this point of view we compare man with the lower animals, so

immense is his progress that we are tempted to believe perfection

within the reach of his attainment.

Two things, however, suffice to keep alive evil in man:

While at almost every point he has so moulded his own environment as

to eliminate the vices that characterize the rest of the animal

kingdom, in two respects the predatory system still prevails:

The international conflict keeps nations in perpetual competition with

one another, and this periodically forces them to war; and the

intranational conflict keeps individuals in perpetual conflict with

one another, and stimulates all the vices which most interfere with

human happiness.

The international conflict seems doomed to continue so long as man

remains separated by racial antipathies and commercial interests.

Efforts are being made to diminish occasions for war to the utmost

possible, by bringing all races to recognize and aim at the same

social ideal. But there would still remain ample occasion for war so

long as men are kept in competition by conflicting commercial

interests. The task first in importance and time, therefore, seems to

be to eliminate as much as is advisable the commercial and industrial

conflict, which has been already pointed out to be the great

intranational obstacle to human perfection and happiness.

Now the intranational conflict has been seen to result from our

industrial system. This, as at present organized, is an artificial

creation of man; indispensable though it may have been to the gradual

evolution of the race, it has always acted, and must always act to

keep alive in man the very quality--selfishness--the elimination of

which is most essential to the happiness of a community, and the

absence of which particularly characterizes natural communities such

as those ants and bees.

While, then, man has resisted and in great part subdued Nature in the

physical world by science, and in a world which he has himself

created--the moral world--by self-restraint, he has added to this

artificial environment two institutions which tend to counterbalance

the advantages already secured. These are national governments that

create international conflict, and an industrial system that creates

intranational conflict; and we are confronted with the problem whether

these two hothouses of crime, hatred, selfishness and vice, can be

dispensed with.

Science affords us the encouraging hope that they can. It points out

that man has already suppressed many of the most merciless effects of

the natural environment; that by virtue of the power through which he

can in great part create and certainly modify his own environment, he

may still further push on the work of civilization if he will but

recognize that the real enemy to human happiness is hatred and the

real friend to it solidarity; and if he will return to the Gospel of

Christ, which economic conditions have so far compelled him to

disregard.

Before closing the study of evolution it is proper to point out that

we are now in a position to dispose of the contention that, because

natural evolution proceeds upon the principle of the survival of the

fittest, therefore human evolution must proceed upon the same lines.

This is the argument that millionaires and individualists set up

against those who believe in the possibility of diminishing human

misery by reducing the occasions for human conflict.

It is totally false.

Man has demonstrated his ability to resist Nature and to progress

along lines that are diametrically opposed to those of natural

evolution. The whole fabric of human civilization is an answer to the

millionaire's argument. The natural principle of the survival of the

fittest is no longer at work. Man has put an end to it. The lion and

the tiger no longer reign in the jungle nor the white ant in the

Pampas. Man, alone, determines which animals shall live and which

shall disappear. The weak in our own race no longer perish; mercy

comes to their rescue. The strong are no longer the only ones to

perpetuate the type; marriage protects the weak husband in his marital

rights as well as the strong. Climate no longer determines survival;

man has made himself master of climate, and indeed works most

effectually to-day in latitudes which at an earlier stage were peopled

only by savages.

At every point where man touches Nature he has reversed the natural

process.

The unfit no longer perish, the fit no longer alone survive. Man is no

longer the necessary result of the natural environment: _he makes his

own environment_; and if he be wise enough he can so modify it as to

modify himself with it. When, if ever, he so modifies it as to

eliminate those elements in it which stimulate vice, then he will have

realized the word of the Gospel, "Ye are Gods."

Sec. 5. CAN HUMAN NATURE BE CHANGED BY LAW?

It is currently urged and has become a sort of maxim that human nature

cannot be changed by law. Not only is this quoted by the bourgeois in

his argument against the Socialist, but even Henry George has fallen

into this error. Indeed, it is this error that prevented Henry George

from adopting Socialism and left him the distinguished founder of an

inadequate philosophy. For the most superficial knowledge of history

will suffice to demonstrate its untruth. Human nature has already been

profoundly changed by law; by the institution of marriage, by

education, by property. This has already been sufficiently discussed

to make it unnecessary further to comment on it.[205] It does not,

however, seem sufficient to point out the profound modification of

human nature by law in the past in order to persuade the bourgeois

that humanity can still further be modified by law in the future; for

a thousand instances can be quoted of efforts to change human nature

by law that have failed, and it is argued very illogically that

because in many instances they have failed, they must always fail.

Then, too, there remains in the minds of all influenced by Herbert

Spencer, the profound error that society is an organism and must be

allowed to grow; whereas on the contrary, a very little study

demonstrates that society differs from an organism in essential

points.[206]

No society can exist without some law of association. The law may be a

natural one, as in the case of myxomycetes; or it may be an artificial

one, as in the case of the United States constitution; or it may be

both, as indeed is the case in every human society.

This law of association is called "government." Strictly speaking, in

a political sense government means only that law of association which

is promulgated and enforced by the supreme power of the state; but

human society is controlled by a double system of laws--one written,

whether in judicial decisions or in express statute, and the other not

written, because it resides in the mass of the citizens under

conditions which baffle description. This last is imperfectly rendered

in the English word "custom," is more definitely expressed in the

French word _moeurs_, and is admirably conveyed by Horace in the words

Quid leges sine moribus

Vanae proficiunt?

The essential characteristic of custom is that, however controlling it

may be in fact, it does not enjoy the sanction of legislative

enactment or executive decree; indeed, it often arises out of

opposition to law; as where in the Western states game laws remain

unenforced, because public opinion supports the ranchman's defence of

necessity; and sometimes again where, though a law be in itself

proper, a community declines to avail itself of the law, as in the

custom that discredited divorce in the early Roman Republic.

Now, the importance of this moral or sometimes immoral sense that

makes custom independently of law, must not be underestimated--for it

is in many respects superior to law for evil or for good; and it

differs from law in the essential fact that it grows almost

imperceptibly, whereas law, in the strict sense of the word, is the

result of judicial decision or legislative enactment--both acts of

deliberation--or so purporting to be. The question naturally arises

then whether, in so far as society develops along the line of custom,

it does not follow the process of growth rather than that of

construction.

It is impossible to deny that custom and public opinion are in a

continual state of change; the varying fortunes of political parties

sufficiently testify to this; but how far these variations are in

civilized communities due to unconscious growth and how far to

conscious effort it is not easy to determine. Suffice it to point out

that, while opposing forces such as egotism and philanthropy, do

continually tend to mould opinion under conditions that baffle

inquiry, there are conscious forces at work which are quite as

powerful and could be made more so. Chief amongst these is education;

and in the word "education" are included not our schools and

universities alone, but all the educating influences of the day--the

press, the stage, music, literature, and art. That all these are

engaged in moulding public opinion--some in bringing popular

government into contempt, some in relaxing public morals, some in

holding up low ideals, some in indulging luxurious tastes, while they

could be doing just the opposite of all these things--there is no

doubt.

The existence of these things is mentioned here because failure to

mention them would have left the discussion incomplete. Enough has

been said to indicate that there are great forces at work in society

which to-day escape the control of government, and that it is not easy

to say how far they operate after the haphazard fashion of Nature and

how far subject to the deliberate purpose of man. Whatever be the

conclusion, it is certain that so far as they are left to Nature's

guidance they will result in Nature's handiwork; whereas so far as

they are controlled by human wisdom they will bear the fruits of that

wisdom.

In conclusion, therefore, associations of individuals are

characterized in primitive forms of life by unconsciousness; but as

the individuals develop, these associations seem to become deliberate

rather than unconscious, until in man they not only seem deliberate

but are so.

The history of human society shows that when it has been allowed to

grow unconsciously the development has been in the same direction as

under the predatory system of Nature; that is to say, institutions

have been moulded to benefit individuals presenting the combination of

strength and craft best fitted to survive in the artificial

environment which the strong and crafty created to that end. When

conditions produced by this system of growth under the spur of egotism

were replaced by one of construction under the guidance of wisdom,

there was progress.

Society is controlled by two forces: one which it consciously set up

for itself, called "government"; one which is unconsciously operating

through the silent struggle of natural and non-natural motives in the

individual lives of every one of us. The latter to a great extent

escapes the control of government; but in so far as society does

consciously create its own institutions, it ought to be engaged in the

process of construction and in the conscious effort towards

self-improvement. To this extent society is not an organism, and _a

fortiori_ government is not an organism either.

Society, then, is not an organism.

It differs from an organism in the following essential particulars:

The units of an organism have no individual existence; they are parts

essential to the whole and exist for the sake of the whole.

The units of a society have an individual existence; and, in the case

of human society, do not exist for the sake of the society, but

society for the sake of the individual.

Not only have the units of a society each an individual existence, but

they have each an individual will, an independent consciousness, and,

all except Materialists will add, an individual soul. The units of an

organism are conspicuously without any of these essential attributes.

But society, though not itself an organism, is an association of

organisms. And although human society seems to resemble a machine more

than an organism, the legislator cannot for a moment afford to forget

that the parts of his machine are not inanimate inorganic matter, but

organic living beings, endowed with the faculties of consciousness and

will--and above all alive to pleasure and sensitive to pain. Nor can

he afford to forget that the efficacy of all laws depends ultimately

upon the consent of those upon whom they are to operate; and that

therefore no law can be effectual that is not supported by public

opinion. Now, public opinion is the result of all the forces acting in

the social field, unconscious as well as conscious; so that while the

aim of the legislator should be to replace unconscious growth so far

as is possible by conscious construction, he commits a fatal error if

he fails to recognize that men and women are to-day actuated as to

nine-tenths of their thoughts and deeds by habit, and many--perhaps

the majority of them--incapable of conscious deliberate self-restraint

at all. Legislation therefore that seeks suddenly to exact of the

public a greater capacity for self-restraint than it is capable of,

cannot but prove ineffectual; and ineffectual legislation is bad,

because it tends to bring legislation into contempt. Prohibition

furnishes a good illustration of this principle: in those States in

which Prohibition is supported by public opinion it operates

advantageously; where it is not so supported it operates only as an

instrument of blackmail. Obviously Prohibition has diminished crime

and improved social conditions in some States, whereas every attempt

to force it or anything approaching to it upon the city of New York

has resulted in the corruption of the police engaged in enforcing it,

or in prompt punishment for the political party responsible for its

enactment. The helplessness of mere laws to eradicate defects of

temperament is one of the facts which tend to support the theory of

_laissez faire_; but the argument that because under certain

conditions legislation is inadequate, therefore legislation is always

inadequate, is too obviously illogical to need refutation. It could

hardly have received a moment's consideration had it not been

bolstered by pseudo-scientific conclusions drawn from an alleged

identity between society and organisms. But even if society were an

organism, this argument would still be incorrect; just as incorrect as

though it were contended that because under certain conditions

medicine is inadequate, medicines must always be avoided. Were society

as subtle and difficult to treat as the human bodies of which it is

composed, it would still be the duty of the legislator to study the

one, just as the physician studies the other, with a view to

determining the limits as well as the extent of his resources.

But society is not an organism; on the contrary, the more human and

civilized it is, the less it conforms to unconscious growth and the

more it yields to intelligent purpose. That it is composed of

organisms, however, sets a limit to the wisdom of interference which

it is of paramount importance that we should carefully define.

These limits seem roughly to be marked out by two essential factors:

one is the purpose of legislation--or justice, the other is the

obstacles to legislation--or national character. Government in aiming

at justice has to recognize defects of character. The justice which

can be attained in one community could not be attempted in another;

that which could be attained in one community in one stage of its

development, it would have been folly to attempt at an earlier one.

The approach to perfection in social conditions depends essentially

upon the approach to perfection attained by the individuals of which

the society is composed.

How nearly a government can attain perfection depends, then, upon the

individual character of those subject to it; and how nearly the

individual character can attain perfection depends to a great extent

upon the government to which it is subjected. These two factors cannot

be treated apart; one is a function of the other. Just as a physician

has in treating a patient to consider the hygienic conditions which

surround him, and the peculiarities of constitution which may make a

sudden change of these conditions injurious, so a legislator in

framing laws for a community and thus changing the conditions of its

environment, has to consider the temperament of the community and its

fitness to undergo the proposed change. This is one of the limits that

Nature puts to legislation, and it is upon a just apprehension of it

that the wisdom of legislation depends.

Although the extent to which legislation can modify nature depends

largely upon the individuals who compose the community, there are,

nevertheless, certain rules that can be laid down applicable by and

large, to the whole community.

When a trainer desires to subdue a wild beast, the first thing he does

is to diminish his rations. So long as the carnivorous passions of the

lion are kept whetted all attempt to control him fails. Or to use a

more homely illustration, when we want to break a high-spirited colt,

his supply of oats is lowered. To give such an animal an unlimited

amount of oats and then to seek to control him with a powerful harness

would be a mistake. If the harness left him free to move at all, he

would kick the harness to pieces. Every trainer knows that if a horse

is refractory, the first thing to be done to give him habits of

docility is to reduce his rations of grain and to feed him on a less

stimulating diet.

This simple and universally admitted principle is, however, singularly

neglected in our social and political institutions. These proceed upon

the opposite plan; that is to say, they whet the appetite of man to

the utmost by offering the largest rewards to the most crafty, the

most greedy, the most dishonest, and the most merciless of men, and

then legislatures, for the most part elected by these very men, are

expected to control their craft, greed, dishonesty, and

mercilessness.

Thus while the competitive system, by making money the main object of

human existence, drives men to gambling and crime, we maintain an

elaborate system of police courts, penitentiaries, and prisons for

suppressing these things, although the experience of all recorded

history demonstrates that these methods are totally ineffectual. By

overworking our wage-earners, we give them an insatiable thirst for

drink; we entrust the sale of liquor to private individuals; we give

these last the keenest motive for forcing the sale of liquor on a

community alas, too eager to buy it, and then we attempt by the

license system to control drunkenness. We leave our currency, which is

the lifeblood of our industrial system, in the hands of men entitled

under our law to consider this currency a mere method of increasing

their private wealth; we offer to these men monopolies of

transportation, of water, of gas, from which they can make gigantic

fortunes and through which they can control our politics, and then we

expect the very legislatures they control, the very legislators they

elect, and the very officers they appoint, to control them. Obviously,

if we begin by putting our legislature into the hands of the men whose

interest it is to use that legislature to exploit us, we ought not to

be surprised if the laws enacted by these legislatures fail to "change

human nature."

If, however, these appetites were never awakened, or if they were only

sufficiently tolerated to produce healthy activity; if the

"brotherhood of man" ceased to be a formula and became a fact; if men

were educated from the cradle to believe that cooperation resulted in

more economy, liberty, and happiness than competition; if cooperative

habits were created so that men instinctively cooperated with one

another instead of fighting with one another, can it be doubted that

the laws enacted to produce this change in our human conditions would

have a profound effect upon human nature?

The natural environment has produced the lion, the tiger, and the ape.

The artificial or human environment has produced man. But man is still

a competitive animal. The next step that we have to take is still

further so to modify our artificial environment as to make him a

cooperative animal; to suppress the excessive competition that to-day

promotes hatred, leaving enough to spur activity; to introduce enough

cooperation to create habits of mutual helpfulness, yet not so much as

to suppress individual initiative.

This effort does not involve any sudden revolution in our development;

it is only an intelligent continuation of the process already begun.

We have diminished the ferocity of the carnivora in men; we have still

further to diminish it without impairing courage. If we keep in mind

that the object of political effort should be to diminish unhappiness

and increase happiness, we shall conclude that this can best be done

by continuing to develop along this line; by eliminating the eagerness

created by the competitive system that makes success indispensable,

not only to luxury and comfort, but to health and life; and that by

modifying our institutions in the direction indicated in the foregoing

pages, we shall not only secure a larger measure of happiness, but we

shall so modify type as to change habits and change ideals.

In a word, Science teaches us that we are and must be creatures of our

own environment. History teaches us that we have moulded and can mould

our own environment. By this inestimable power, man can determine the

development of the human type. By maintaining existing conditions, we

shall continue to produce the type of grasping millionaires that the

community at large in its heart abhors. Whereas, by modifying the

environment by the substitution of cooperation for competition in the

measure above described, we shall create a type that humanity has set

up in all its poetry, music, and art, as the type to be desired,

respected, and loved.

Sec. 6. SUMMARY

In conclusion let us briefly summarize the scientific argument for

Socialism free from the explanations with which in a first

presentation of this subject it was necessary to encumber the text.

Evolution prior to the advent of man was an unconscious and therefore

indeliberate adaptation of function to environment through the

survival of the fittest and the corresponding destruction of the less

fit. Herbert Spencer and his school have been misled by this fact into

a glorification of the competitive system which seemed to them the

most conspicuous factor in the improvement of type. This school

altogether fails to take account of two facts of the utmost

importance:

Development under purely natural conditions--prior to the advent of

man--by no means proceeded alone along competitive lines. It also

proceeded along cooperative lines, so that while the lion, the tiger,

and the ape are the prevailing types in certain regions, in others the

prevailing type is the white ant.

The other equally important fact is that whereas evolution under

purely natural conditions--before the advent of man--was unconscious,

indeliberate, and merciless, since the advent of man it has become

conscious, deliberate, and merciful, to such an extent that in almost

every essential particular, development has reversed the process that

preceded the advent of man. Before the advent of man, animals were not

only the victims of the forces of nature, but also their necessary

result. Only those animals survived that were able to adapt themselves

to changes of environment. The rest perished. And they adapted

themselves to changes of environment mainly by developing new organs

to that end. For example, the camel develops pads under its feet to

protect them from the burning sands, and a reservoir in its alimentary

canal to furnish water during its wanderings in the desert; the

hairless hide of the tropical elephant becomes covered with thick

curly wool when found in the Arctic zone.

When, however, man appears upon the face of the earth, all this order

changes. The survival of animals in the world is no longer determined

by changes of climate or changes of environment; the survival of the

fittest is no longer determined by Nature. It is determined by Art--by

Man. The animals beneficial to man survive; the animals detrimental to

man perish. Again, man is no longer the victim of the forces of

Nature; he has become in great part master of them. The flame that

raged uncontrollably over the forest and plain, man now puts under his

kettle to make his tea; the torrent that devastated the valleys, man

now dikes and distributes in irrigating ditches, transforming deserts

into green fields. The fitful flash of the lightning in the heavens

man conducts along a little wire and converts into the steady glow of

the incandescent lamp. Nor does man any longer adapt function to

environment. The Esquimau of the Arctic regions has not developed a

thick curly fur; he has clothed himself in the furs of other animals;

the Arab of the desert has not developed pads under his feet or a

reservoir in his alimentary canal; he rides and loads water on the

back of the camel already so provided. Man is no longer the necessary

result of natural environment; he makes his own environment. Wherever

he goes, he makes a climate of his own. In the tropics, he builds

houses to protect himself from the heat, and creates an artificial

cold by punkahs, electric fans, and the manufacture of ice. In winter,

he creates another climate by building houses to protect himself from

the cold, heating them with a furnace and lighting them with gas and

electricity. Most important of all, by the control of man over

environment, he can determine not only his own destiny, but also the

destiny of generations to come. He can by preserving the competitive

conditions that exist, go on developing the base type that is now the

necessary result of these conditions--the type that seeks happiness

regardless of the happiness of others, such as our oil kings and

railroad kings, steel kings and other so-called captains of industry.

By substituting cooperation for competition, he can, on the contrary,

develop a noble type that seeks happiness through the happiness of

others, such as the settlement worker and the Little Sister of the

Poor, with, however, this amazing difference: that whereas to-day

those who rejoice in social service for its own sake are for the most

part humble and obscure, and those who use social service for their

own advancement are wealthy and illustrious, in a cooperative

commonwealth the genius that now goes into competitive business will

be drawn into the service of the cooperative commonwealth. The present

alliance between ability and craft will be broken up and a new

partnership encouraged between ability, wisdom, and unselfishness.

The fact that all life must adapt itself to environment has been felt

from the earliest dawn of civilization. Plato stated it in the

Republic. If justice is to be attained, according to Plato it can only

be attained under a just form of government. The whole history of man

since the days of Plato has demonstrated that every change in the

condition of man can be traced as the direct result of change of

environment--economic, political, ethical, and religious. The

demonstration that this not only is so but must be so was left to

science. And the contribution of science to Socialism is the

demonstration of the fact that man can create his own environment--can

take those elements in competition which are good and eliminate those

which are bad--can take those elements in cooperation which are good

and eliminate those which are bad; and by thus constructing his

environment through wisdom and art, determine whether the type

perpetuated by this environment is to be noble or base.

FOOTNOTES:

[198] "Principles of Sociology," p. 414.

[199] "Government or Human Evolution," Vol. II, p. 181.

[200] "Essays on Evolution and Ethics," "Essays on Science and

Morals," and "Struggle for Existence in Human Society."

[201] "Government or Human Evolution," Vol. I, p. 239.

[202] The word "altruism" is used instead of the more familiar word

"unselfishness" to avoid the criticism of those who contend that there

is no such thing as unselfishness. It is true that we are all selfish

in the sense that we are all seeking happiness for ourselves; but

selfishness can be defined as the search for happiness regardless of

the happiness of others, and altruism as the search for happiness

through the happiness of others.

[203] Lyell, Sir Charles, "Principles of Geology," 1872, Vol. I,

Chapter X, p. 201.

[204] This conclusion is arrived at by Charles Booth in a statistical

work which commands the approval of all authorities of whatever shade

of political opinion.

[205] Book III, Chapter V.

[206] "Introduction to the Study of Sociology." Herbert Spencer,

Chapter III.

CHAPTER V

ETHICAL ASPECT OF SOCIALISM

The ethical aspect of Socialism is a practical continuation of the

argument of the last chapter, and brings us to the crowning glory of

Socialism: that it alone can and does reconcile the conflict between

science, economics, and religion.

Sec. 1. THE CONFLICT BETWEEN SCIENCE AND RELIGION

Science produces convictions founded on fact. Religion imposes

convictions founded on faith. If Religion confines itself to matters

of faith--to the supernatural--it need not come into conflict with

Science. But when it trespasses on the realms of Science--when it

begins to deal with matters of fact--it creates a conflict with

Science in which Science must in the end be victorious. Thus when the

Church ventured to make it a matter of faith that the sun revolves

around the earth, it might secure the recantation of Galileo, but it

had in the end to yield before the demonstrations of astronomy.

This element of conflict between the church and the state is

disappearing and is bound entirely to disappear. The church is more

and more confining itself to supernatural matters which are properly

within the domain of faith. So long as it does this, it need not clash

with Science.

There is, however, another occasion of conflict between Science and

Religion more modern than the former and more real: The doctrine of

evolution in attacking the theory of special creation needed at one

time to attack the existence of God; and as interpreted by Herbert

Spencer and his school, gave rise to the doctrine that "because, on

the whole, animals and plants have advanced in perfection of

organization by means of the struggle for existence and the consequent

'survival of the fittest,' therefore men in society, men as ethical

beings, must look to the same process to help them towards

perfection."[207]

This notion, which Huxley describes as the fallacy that at that time

pervaded the so-called "ethics of evolution," raised an issue not only

with the church, but with the fundamental principles of religion. For

if, in fact, the blind process of evolution proceeding through the

survival of the fittest and the destruction of the unfit, was the only

process to which man could look for his development, then there is no

need of a God, and what is far more important, there is no need for

either human responsibility or human effort. Now the church, however

much its sects may differ in other matters, has always been united in

teaching not only the existence of a God, but the responsibility of

man to God, and a duty of man to make the effort necessary to comply

with his commandments. It is to the pages of Huxley that we must turn

to see this Spencerian fallacy refuted.

Huxley pointed out that a gardener in growing things beautiful and

useful to man proceeded in violation of the principles of evolution.

The characteristic feature of what he calls the "cosmic process," that

is to say, evolution _prior_ to the advent of man, "is the intense

and unceasing competition of the struggle for existence." The

characteristic of evolution since the advent of man is "_the

elimination of that struggle_ by the removal of the conditions which

give rise to it."[208]

The immense importance of these considerations is that they

demonstrate no less important a fact than that Man is to-day the

selecting agent and not Nature; and Man, by replacing evolution by Art

converts things which in the domain of Nature are not edible, such as

kale, into things which under Art become edible, such as cabbage.

But let us now take up the story as told by Huxley:

"Let us now imagine that some _administrative authority, as far

superior in power and intelligence to men, as men are to their cattle,

is set over the colony, charged to deal with its human elements_ in

such a manner as to assure the victory of the settlement over the

antagonistic influences of the state of nature in which it is set

down. He would proceed in the same fashion as that in which the

gardener dealt with his garden. In the first place, he would, as far

as possible, put a _stop to the influence of external competition_ by

thoroughly extirpating and excluding the native rivals, whether men,

beasts, or plants. And our administrator would select his human

agents, with a view to his ideal of a successful colony, just as the

gardener selects his plants with a view to his ideal of useful or

beautiful products.

"In the second place, in order that no struggle for the means of

existence between these human agents should weaken the efficiency of

the corporate whole in the battle with the state of nature, he would

make arrangements by which each would be provided with those means;

and would be relieved from the fear of being deprived of them by his

stronger or more cunning fellows. Laws, sanctioned by the combined

force of the colony, would restrain the self-assertion of each man

within the limits required for the maintenance of peace. In other

words, the cosmic struggle for existence, as between man and man,

would be rigorously suppressed; and _selection, by its means, would be

as completely excluded as it is from the garden_.

"At the same time, the obstacles to the full development of the

capacities of the colonists by other conditions of the state of nature

than those already mentioned, would be removed by the creation of

artificial conditions of existence of a more favorable character.

Protection against extremes of heat and cold would be afforded by

houses and clothing; drainage and irrigation works would antagonize

the effects of excessive rain and excessive drought; roads, bridges,

canals, carriages, and ships would overcome the natural obstacles to

locomotion and transport; mechanical engines would supplement the

natural strength of men and of their draught animals; hygienic

precautions would check, or remove the natural causes of disease. With

every step of this progress in civilization, the colonists would

become more and more independent of the state of nature; more and

more, their lives would be conditioned by a state of art. In order to

attain his ends, the administrator would have to avail himself of the

courage, industry, and cooperative intelligence of the settlers; and

it is plain that the interest of the community would be best served by

increasing the proportion of persons who possess such qualities, and

diminishing that of persons devoid of them. In other words, by

_selection directed towards an ideal_.

"Thus the administrator might look to the establishment of an earthly

paradise, a true garden of Eden, in which all things should work

together towards the well-being of the gardeners; within which the

cosmic process, the coarse struggle for existence of the state of

nature, should he abolished; in which that state should be replaced by a

state of art; where every plant and every lower animal should be adapted

to human wants, and would perish if human supervision and protection

were withdrawn; where men themselves should have been selected with a

view to their efficiency as organs for the performance of the functions

of a perfected society. And this ideal polity would have been brought

about, not by gradually adjusting the men to the conditions around them,

but by creating artificial conditions for them; not by allowing the free

play of the struggle for existence, but by excluding that struggle; and

by substituting selection directed towards the administrator's ideal for

the selection it exercises."[209]

And this is not confined to physical things, but is extended to moral.

"_Social progress_," he says, "_means a checking of the cosmic process

at every step and the substitution for it of another, which may be

called the ethical process_; the end of which is not the survival of

those who may happen to be the fittest, in respect of the whole of the

conditions which obtain, but of those who are ethically the

best."[210] And this leads to the final conclusion:

"As I have already urged, the practice of that which is ethically

best--what we call goodness or virtue--involves a course of conduct

which, in all respects, is opposed to that which leads to success in

the cosmic struggle for existence. In place of ruthless self-assertion

it demands self-restraint; in place of thrusting aside, or treading

down all competitors, it requires that the individual shall not merely

respect, but shall help his fellows; its influence is directed, _not

so much to the survival of the fittest, as to the fitting of as many

as possible to survive_. It repudiates the gladiatorial theory of

existence. It demands that each man who enters into the enjoyment of

the advantages of a polity shall be mindful of his debt to those who

have laboriously constructed it; and shall take heed that no act of

his weakens the fabric in which he has been permitted to live."[211]

Further on, he repeats:

"Let us understand, once for all, that the ethical progress of society

depends, not on imitating the cosmic process, still less in running

away from it, but in combating it."[212]

And later on:

"I see no limit to the extent to which intelligence and will, guided

by sound principles of investigation, and organized in a common

effort, may modify the conditions of existence, for a period longer

than that now covered by history. _And much may be done to change the

nature of man himself._ The intelligence which has converted the

brother of the wolf into the faithful guardian of the flock ought to

be able to do something towards curbing the instincts of savagery in

civilized men."[213]

And in a note Huxley emphasizes the extent to which human nature has

been already modified by pointing to the fact that sexual instinct has

been suppressed between near relations.[214]

Huxley's demonstrations that the happiness of man can only be attained

by the limitation of competition, by deliberate institutions to that

effect, and by conscious efforts to create an environment that will

tend to develop the ethical qualities of men, put an end to the last

serious occasion for conflict between Science and Religion; for it

results in the same theories of human responsibility, and the same

appeals to human effort, that it has been the role of the church to

preach from the beginning.

I have quoted from "Evolution and Ethics" because to my mind this

essay and its prolegomena make Huxley the founder of Scientific and

Ethical Socialism. It is true that he himself repudiates this. To him

Socialism is impossible because of what he describes as "the mighty

instinct of reproduction."[215] He points out that we cannot apply to

superfluous or defective human beings the system of extirpation which

gardeners apply to superfluous and defective vegetables and weeds.

I have already answered the objection to Socialism on the ground of

overproduction.[216] But Huxley never had presented to him the modern

idea of Socialism herein described. He speaks of the "elimination of

competition." It never occurred to him that the evils of competition

could be eliminated without eliminating competition. Candor, however,

compels me to admit that I do not think any presentation of the most

modern form of Socialism would at all have converted Professor Huxley.

There were two subjects upon which he could not speak without getting

into a temper: Gladstone and Socialism.

When I met him, I was not myself a Socialist. Indeed, I did not become

a Socialist until after Huxley died. My impressions, therefore, of him

were not affected by a prejudice in favor of Socialism. On the

contrary, I still regarded Socialism as impractical; I still believed

it to be absurd. It was only after months of labor in attempting to

utilize the "considerable fragments of a constructive creed"[217]

which Professor Ritchie found in Professor Huxley's pages, that I was

driven to a study of the Socialism to which I was utterly opposed, and

found in it the only solution to the contradictions which blurred even

the lucid pages of Huxley's works. And the contradictions in Huxley

are not difficult to find. Nothing could be more pessimistic than what

seems to be the climax of his argument in "Evolution and Ethics":

"The theory of evolution encourages no millennial anticipations. If,

for millions of years, our globe has taken the upward road, yet, some

time, the summit will be reached and the downward route will be

commenced. The most daring imagination will hardly venture upon the

suggestion that the power and the intelligence of man can ever arrest

the procession of the great year."[218]

And yet, on the very next page, he closes this essay with a note of

the serenest optimism:

"So far, we all may strive in one faith towards one hope."[219] And

the keynote of his attitude towards this subject is to be found in a

passage in which he "thinks it unjust to require a crossing-sweeper in

Piccadilly to tell you the road to Highgate; he has earned his copper

if he had done all he professes to do and cleaned up your immediate

path"; and a little later where he "shudderingly objects to the

responsibility of attempting to set right a world out of joint."

Now Socialists have the audacity to maintain that it is not beyond the

intelligence of the crossing-sweeper of Piccadilly to know and tell

the road to Highgate, and that the time has come when no one has a

right to "shudderingly object to the responsibility of attempting to

set right a world out of joint."

Huxley builded better than he knew; and in spite of his detestation of

Socialism it was he who built its strongest and most enduring

foundation; for unanswerable as may be the economic argument in favor

of Socialism, it might take centuries to prevail if there were not an

equally strong scientific and ethical argument for it.

The moment that Huxley recognizes that it is by the "elimination of

competition," or shall we say the "limitation of competition," by

substituting human selection for natural selection, and directing

selection towards an ideal that man is to progress and develop, he has

recognized the scientific basis of Socialism; and when he points out

that Science teaches self-restraint, human responsibility, human

effort, not so much the "survival of the fittest" as fitting as many

as possible to survive, he has reconciled Science and Religion.

It is probable that one of the reasons why Huxley took a pessimistic

view of the future was that he despaired of finding a solution to the

economic struggle. I cannot forget the melancholy with which he said

one day: "I am informed that England keeps its control of the market

of cotton goods by a difference in cost of production of a farthing

per yard. How long can this last?" But Huxley only gave a part of the

scientific argument for Socialism. For the other part we have to turn

from the pages of Huxley to those of Karl Marx.

One of the most important services Karl Marx rendered humanity was the

demonstration of the predominating influence of economics in the

development of man, in the determining of our custom, character, and

conduct.

The economic conception of history is described by F. Engels as

follows:

"The materialist conception of history starts from the principle that

production, and next to production the exchange of its products, is

the basis of every social system; that in every society arising in

history the allotment of products, and with it the division of society

into classes or ranks, depends upon what is produced, how it is

produced, and how when produced it is exchanged. Accordingly the

ultimate causes of all social changes and political revolutions are

not to be looked for in the heads of men, in their growing insight

into eternal truth and justice, but in changes of the methods of

production and exchange; they are to be looked for not in the

philosophy, but in the economy of the epoch in question."[220]

Before elaborating this conception of history, it may be well to point

out one or two elements of confusion in the terms in which it is

stated. It is described as the "materialist conception of history,"

and for this reason many people imagine that the admission of this

theory means the exclusion of the ideal. This is a profound error due

to a misunderstanding of the use of the word "materialist." This word

does not necessarily imply that the only proper conception of history

is a materialistic one in the sense that it excludes the operation of

ideals; but only that material conditions have played a predominating

role in determining ideas.

The admission, however, must be made that this explanation is by no

means admitted by all Socialist writers. Indeed the very language used

by Engels is inconsistent with it. He says "they are not to be looked

for in the philosophy, but in the economy of the epoch in question."

If, however, Mr. Engels were alive to-day and were challenged as to

whether in fact he meant by this phrase to exclude philosophy

altogether, I think he would answer in the negative. What he meant to

say, I think, was that the ultimate causes of all social changes and

political revolutions are to be looked for in the economy of the epoch

rather than in its philosophy. And this, I think, with some limitation

is true, for the philosophy of every period is to a large extent

determined by its economic conditions.

To this general statement there are, however, notable exceptions. Some

men either by the adequacy of their means or the smallness of their

needs, are lifted entirely above economic conditions, so that they can

reason abstractly without regard to economic conditions. This probably

is true of almost every philosopher that has made his mark. It is

impossible to read the words of Christ, of Plato, Aristotle, St.

Thomas Aquinas, Carlyle, Emerson, and Tolstoi without being impressed

by the fact that they soared far above all economic considerations.

On the other hand, economic conditions had a controlling influence on

the whole philosophy of Ruskin. His first contact with life was while

travelling with his father, who sold sherry to wealthy county

families, and approached their mansions by way of the butler's pantry.

This impregnated Ruskin with a cult for aristocracy. It made it

impossible for him to consider popular government without impatience.

Economic conditions too had put their mark so ineffaceably on the mind

of Huxley that although in his criticism of Herbert Spencer he

destroyed the principal philosophic bulwark of capitalism, he could

not talk on Socialism without irritation.

Thus although men as great as Ruskin and Huxley were unable to rise

above the slavery of the economic conditions in which their minds had

been formed, others are so constituted as to be able to discuss ethics

without any regard to economic conditions whatever. There is, however,

no doubt as to the dominating influence of economic conditions in

determining the average mental attitude.

Man had two dominating appetites--for food and for perpetuation; and

of these, because that for perpetuation is fitful whereas that for

food is continuous, the latter is the more determining of the two.

There is hardly an act in a man's life which is not determined by the

needs of food in the first place and the search for food in the

second. This is admitted by all sociologists.

A right understanding of economics is therefore of the utmost

importance to the conscious development of man. Unfortunately

economists themselves have been until very lately just as narrow in

their disregard of science and religion as science and religion have

been narrow in their disregard of economics. Let us consider as

briefly as the subject permits the inconsistencies which result from

this narrowness in regard to religion and economics.

Sec. 2. CONFLICT BETWEEN ECONOMICS AND RELIGION

It is said that by the side of every poison in Nature there grows its

antidote; that for every bean of St. Ignatius there is a bean of

Calabar; and that a man poisoned by the one has only to stretch his

hand out to the other.

So also in our social system may the two influences be at work, at

odds with each other; whereas, did we but know enough, they might not

only serve to counteract one another, but even become a priceless

boon to humanity, as indeed the beans of St. Ignatius and Calabar have

been made to yield up drugs as useful as nux vomica and eserine.

Religion and economics start by assumptions that are glaringly

inconsistent.

Religion proceeds upon the assumption that man has morality in him and

will, sometimes, act morally even contrary to his material interests.

Economics proceed upon the assumption that man has no morality in him

and will never act morally if morality be contrary to his material

interests.

Modern economists have somewhat modified this last view, but I am not

criticising modern Political Economy, which is already lowering its

flag to new doctrine; I am criticising the doctrine of _laissez

faire_, which still constitutes the backbone of our existing economics

and will continue to deform our economic ideas until that backbone is

relegated to museums by the side of the Ichthyosaurus and the

Iguanodon.

Is the assumption that economic science is uninfluenced by morality

true or false? Undoubtedly an economic science can be and has been

constructed which does ignore morality and, dealing with man not as he

really is but stripped of his morality, or as he is termed by some

economic writers, "economic man," and still more naively by others the

"average sensual man," has laid down the laws which _for such a man_

govern the production, distribution, and accumulation of wealth. In

the development of this science it has been found necessary to define

wealth, and here we come upon the first hard substance against which

economists have broken their heads. For obviously wealth is to the

"economic" or "average sensual" man a totally different thing to what

it is to a Diogenes, a Cato, or to a Sister of Charity. To the latter

wealth or well-being as opposed to illth or ill-being, consists mainly

in the opportunity to be helpful to our fellow-creatures, whereas to

the average sensual man wealth means money or the things that

represent money, produce, bonds, and shares of stock. Now all

economists are not "average sensual" men; it is doubtful whether to

those who know the Dean of Modern Economists, Mr. Alfred Marshall, he

can be described as a sensual man at all; and so there are few

subjects upon which economists have differed so much as upon the

definition of wealth. The extremists confine wealth to material things

that have an exchange value; but the absurdity of such a definition is

slowly making itself recognized; thus it has been forced upon some

that skill is wealth; and upon others that honesty too is wealth; for

the money value of honesty is now put into dollars and cents by surety

companies. And so very slowly but surely economists are beginning to

recognize that man is a moral as well as a sensual animal, and that

his morality cannot be disregarded even by economics.

Then, too, what is wealth in one country is not wealth in another;

thus we are told that the food of John the Baptist was "locusts and

wild honey," and in certain parts of Africa locusts are still a

marketable article of food; so snails are wealth in France though not

in England; and human flesh which is not wealth in Europe is still

wealth in some parts of Africa. Wealth then depends upon two factors:

intrinsic and extrinsic; the first including qualities of the thing

itself, the second depending upon human demand; so that a painting by

Tintoretto is wealth to a community that loves art, but an encumbrance

to one that does not love it; and absinthe, that is regarded as a

valuable asset in France, is excluded by Belgium as poison.

Here again we come up against the morality of man; will he continue to

poison himself with absinthe or will he abstain? Upon this ethical

decision will depend the question whether the immense stock of

absinthe now on the French market is wealth or not. And so we are led

insensibly to a question of still wider importance: Is wealth money or

is it happiness? If it is money then economists are right; if it is

happiness then they are wrong. And yet it is as clear as the sun on a

cloudless day that what man wants is happiness, and that if he has

been set all these centuries on seeking money it is because money is

believed by him to be practically the only medium through which he can

attain happiness. Here is repeated the old story of the captive beaver

in the attic gathering sticks to make a dam when the water pitcher was

upset. The object for making dams had disappeared, but the

dam-building instinct survived. We have grown so accustomed to labor

for money that we have lost sight of the real object of our efforts;

and we have to think a long time before we recognize that money in

itself is of no importance to us whatever; and that the only thing of

real importance is that for which money is sought--happiness. Now what

happiness consists of depends upon the mentality of any given

community. The tree-dwelling savage's idea of happiness is plenty of

nuts and fine weather; the Englishman's idea is plenty of land and a

seat in Parliament; the American's idea is millions of money; and the

tree-dwelling savage is probably as near the truth as either of the

other two.

Obviously there is an ideal of happiness quite different from this; an

ideal that recognizes the solidarity of the race and recognizes that

no one man can be securely happy unless his neighbors are happy also;

an ideal built on the plan of mutual helpfulness--of cooperation

instead of competition. But here the lip of the economist will curl

and he will, if he deigns to express himself at all, denounce such a

proposition as "impractical." But why does he do this? Because he has

been educated to believe that economics deal only with the "average

sensual man," and that wealth consists exclusively of "material things

that have an exchange value." If, then, it turns out that both these

assumptions are false, is it not time for him to revise his

philosophy?

It is not unnatural that starting with false definitions of man and of

wealth, economists should arrive at a false conclusion regarding the

so-called beauties of our industrial system, and of such time-honored

though immoral maxims as "competition is the soul of trade" and

"_caveat emptor_."

And now after this rapid glance at economic philosophy and the

"average sensual man," let us turn to Religion and see how Religion

regards man.

It seems inconceivable that the same civilization should include two

bodies of men living in apparent harmony and yet holding such opposite

and inconsistent views on man as economists on the one hand and

theologians on the other. To these last, man has no economic needs;

this world does not count; it is merely a place of probation,

mitigated sometimes, it is true, by ecclesiastical pomp and episcopal

palaces; but serving for the most part as a mere preparation for a

future existence which will satisfy the aspirations of the human

soul--the only thing that does count, in this world or the next. So

while to the economist man is all hog, to the theologian he is all

soul; and between the two the Devil secures the vast majority.

One-fifth of the population in London is admittedly foredoomed to die

in a penitentiary, an almshouse, or a lunatic asylum; and the vast

multitude of wage earners are kept out on the ragged edge of the

strike on one hand and unemployment on the other, with no better

prospect before them than a destitute old age.

Were there no churches in the land, were there no charity in man, no

pity, the economists would be comprehensible; but with our churches

still crowded; with charitable societies as thick as universities;

with pity in their own hearts giving every day the lie to the economic

enormities they profess and teach, what are we going to say of these

men? And were there no economists in the chair, no stock exchange, no

factory, no strikes, no unemployed; did our theologians' stomachs

never themselves clamor for food, or their bodies cry out for shelter

and heat, they too would be excusable. But with our tenements steeped

in misery; with misery pitilessly leading to crime, vice, disease;

with the demands of the body brought home to every one of them a

thousand times a day, is it not time for theologians at last to

remember that men have bodies as well as souls?

Consider then these two sets of teachers, one professing a philosophy

built on the assumption that man is all body and no soul, the other

built on the contrary assumption that man is all soul, meeting daily

at dinner parties and discussing the agony of the workingman with

complacency and "philosophic calm"!

Yet if we look at the world as it is, so full of evil and yet so

easily set right, we will not delve at the roots of plants and say:

"Life is all mud;" nor point to their leaves and say: "Life is all

flower and fruit." Life is made up of root and flower; man is made up

of body and soul. The economy and the religion that heed this will

alone be true. Let economics be enlightened by religion and let

religion be enlightened by economics; let the economist learn that the

soul of man is more than raiment and the priest that the needs of the

body come in order of time before the needs of the soul; let the

economist learn the laws of mutual helpfulness and the priest the laws

of the production and the distribution of well-being; and there will

spring into existence a new religion and a new political economy that

will preach the same thing--the solidarity of man--that what man wants

in this world is not money, but happiness--and that he can prepare

himself best for the next world of which he knows nothing by making

his neighbor as well as himself wholesome as well as happy, in this

world of which he to-day alas, knows too much of its misery and too

little of its play.

Sec. 3. SOCIALISM RECONCILES RELIGION, ECONOMICS, AND SCIENCE

Let us now consider the Scientific and Ethical aspects of Socialism

from a slightly different angle than that which closed the preceding

chapter.

In what Huxley calls the "cosmic process"--the process of evolution

prior to the advent of Man--the development or degeneration of animal

or vegetable life is determined by the environment. If the environment

is favorable to development, there is development; if it is

unfavorable, there is degeneration. The question, therefore, whether

animal or vegetable life is to develop or degenerate is left to the

caprice of environment. The process through which this caprice is

exercised is the survival of the fittest, and this includes two

processes: the utmost propagation on the one hand, and the utmost

competition on the other. With all the cruelty that this system

involves, it would be idle to call such a process moral; nor would it

be reasonable to call it immoral. The cosmic process is non-moral. It

ignores justice because justice is a conception of either God or Man,

and is not found in Nature outside of God or Man at all.

If now we turn from the cosmic process to that employed by the

gardener in converting wild land into a garden for the purpose of

producing things beautiful or useful to man, we find that the gardener

reverses the cosmic process. He does not tolerate utmost propagation

or even propagation at all except to the extent necessary to furnish

him beautiful or useful things. He limits propagation; and as to

utmost competition, he eliminates competition altogether. And it is

only by limiting propagation and eliminating competition that the

gardener keeps his garden beautiful and useful. The moment he stops

applying to his garden patch the art which limits propagation and

eliminates competition, that moment the garden tends to return to a

state of Nature; to

"an unweeded garden,

That grows to seed; things rank, and gross in nature,

Possess in merely."[221]

It must also be observed that in the garden patch selection is not

exercised by the environment, though it is limited by the

environment; selection is exercised by the gardener who, within the

limits permitted by the environment, replaces Nature. It is no longer

Nature that selects, but Man.

Let us now turn from the civilized garden to the civilized community.

Here, too, we find the cosmic process in some respects reversed; in

other respects, allowed to run riot. It is reversed in the sense of

the word that prudence created by the ownership of property limits the

propagation of the educated; but it remains unreversed by the fact

that despair created by absence of property leaves propagation

unchecked in the uneducated. So that if it be admitted that it would

be better for type that the educated should propagate than the

uneducated, the human type is tending to degenerate owing to the fact

that there is unlimited propagation of the least desirable types;

whereas there is limited propagation of the more desirable.

When we turn to competition, we find it almost unrestrained. Indeed,

it was the deliberate policy of the government and of political

economists a century ago to let it proceed absolutely without

restraint. Such was the doctrine of _laissez faire_ and such is the

doctrine which to-day is expressed by business men in the request to

be "let alone." But the experience of the past one hundred years has

demonstrated that humanity cannot afford to let competition go

unrestrained; that it leads to such fatal consequences that all--even

the most educated and carefully nurtured--are exposed to the contagion

of disease engendered by unrestrained competition; witness the cholera

scare and the hygienic laws to which this cholera scare gave

rise.[222] Competition has been controlled in various manners: by laws

such as factory acts, child labor acts, women labor acts; second, by

trade unions which the community and the law have had to protect in

order to keep workingmen from the danger of having to work for less

than starvation wages; and last of all, by trusts, which discovered

that competition involves a waste which, could it be saved, would roll

up enormous dividends to stockholders. But trusts have occasioned

evils against which to-day the whole nation is crying out. So that the

cry now abroad is to control monopolies, trusts, and corporations; and

if the efforts to control corporations have not already sufficiently

demonstrated that such laws are bound to result in more blackmail than

control, no reasonable man can doubt that they must in the end so

result in view of the fact that the prizes offered by business attract

first-class talent to business whereas the smaller prizes offered by

politics or the government can only draw to it second-or third-rate

ability.

I trust it has been shown that the confusion that results from the

competitive system is due to false notions of property; that property

as an institution is, and must always be, essential to the economic

structure of the state in the sense that the original and beneficial

purpose of property is to secure to men as nearly as possible the full

product of their toil. This is the ideal distinctly expressed by Mr.

Roosevelt, and is the ideal of every mind that has distinct notions

about property at all.

Our social structure, therefore, should be so organized as to assure

to men the full product of their toil by the adoption of some such

system as has been described in the chapter on the Economic

Construction of the Cooperative Commonwealth.

In such a social structure, competition would be limited so that we

should reserve its stimulus and eliminate its sting, and propagation

would be limited not only by prudence, but by the economic

independence of women, who ought to have most to say on the subject.

In such a social structure, we should for the first time have an

environment that would discourage vice and encourage virtue. And here

comes, as I have already said, the crowning glory of Socialism that

reconciles religion, economics, and science.

For the Church teaches: "Man is born in sin; his passions are sinful;

unaided by God he is their slave. If, however, he chooses to make the

effort necessary to secure the aid of God, he can master his passions

and earn salvation. But although the Grace of God will secure to him

some happiness in this world, this world is a place of unhappiness and

purgation; the reward of the faithful is not in this world, but in the

world to come."

The Economist teaches: "Man is born in sin; his passions are sinful;

in matters so practical as bread and butter we must not allow

ourselves to be deluded by the promises of the Church, as to the

fulfilment of which no evidence has ever been furnished. A practical

system of economics then must be built on the undoubted fact that the

'average man' is 'sensual' and will always act in accordance with what

he believes to be his material interest. It must be founded on human

selfishness; let every man be driven by selfishness to make wealth

primarily for himself and incidentally for the community at large.

This is the only practical system for the accumulation of wealth."

Science says: "Man is born with passions, but are these passions

sinful? They are sinful when uncontrolled, because they may then act

injuriously to the neighbor. When controlled they act beneficially to

the neighbor. The problem is not how to suppress passion, but how to

control it. Man must indeed obey his greater inclination; but Man has

the power to mould his own environment; to make his own habits; to

make his own inclination; Man therefore is master--not slave. There is

too in evolution a power which from the creation to this day has

persistently worked toward progress, justice, and happiness; but we

are still ignorant as to what this power is except in so far as we see

it working in Man. In Man we can see and study the working of this

power. And we find it in Man's capacity to mould his own environment

by resisting Nature instead of yielding to it. And so science teaches

to-day--not the gospel of evolution alone--but also the gospel of

effort and Art."

In Nature we observe two systems of social existence: one competitive,

one cooperative. Both are attended by evils; both by advantages. Man

can frame his social and economic conditions so as to eliminate the

evils and secure the advantages of both. This is Socialism.

Socialism leaves the church free to proceed along the lines of its

faith; but it furnishes the church with the inestimable advantage of

creating economic conditions that make the practice of religion for

the first time possible. To-day economic conditions by ignoring the

soul of Man and appealing only to his appetites make the practice of

the Golden Rule impossible.

Economic conditions can be so changed that they appeal to the soul of

man without ignoring his appetites. It may be that the earth is a

place of preparation for another life. But it is not for that reason

necessarily a place of misery and injustice. Socialism by eliminating

misery and injustice will make this preparation easier. The

environment of Socialism will tend to improve not only the

individual, but also the type. It may be that the grace of God will

help man to be noble and just. Let the church continue to teach this.

But let science be heard also in the positive proof it furnishes that

man will and must be what the environment makes him; that if we

continue to tolerate economic conditions that appeal to his

selfishness, he will and must remain selfish; whereas if wiser

economic conditions appeal to his unselfishness he will and must tend

to be unselfish.

And so in Socialism and in Socialism alone, do we find reconciled the

ethics of the church, the needs of economics, and the demands of

science.

The new church will continue to teach social service; the new

economics will permit of social service; and the new science will make

of social service an environment out of which the new type of man will

be evolved that will justify the words of Christ: "Hath it not been

said in your law 'Ye are Gods'?"

FOOTNOTES:

[207] "Evolution and Ethics," by T.H. Huxley, p. 80.

[208] "Evolution and Ethics," p. 13.

[209] "Evolution and Ethics," p. 20.

[210] Ibid., p. 81.

[211] "Evolution and Ethics," p. 81.

[212] Ibid., p. 83.

[213] Ibid., p. 85.

[214] Ibid., p. 116.

[215] "Evolution and Ethics," p. 20.

[216] Book II, Chapter I.

[217] "Government or Human Evolution," Vol. I, p. 16.

[218] "Evolution and Ethics," p. 85.

[219] Ibid., p. 86.

[220] "Modern Socialism," by R.C.K. Ensor.

[221] Of course, I must not be understood to mean that nothing

beautiful or useful grows in Nature outside of the art of the

gardener. On the contrary, we know that in the Tropics Nature

furnishes not only beautiful things, but enough of useful things to

make the art of the gardener unnecessary. The lesson to be drawn from

the garden patch is that, if the best result in the shape of beautiful

and useful things is to be obtained from a limited surface, Art must

be applied to that surface; Nature cannot be depended upon.

[222] Book III, Chapter II.

CHAPTER VI

SOLIDARITY

I think it was Miss Martineau who said that if her generation was

better than that which preceded her, the betterment was due to the

teachings of Carlyle; and much though we may differ with John Ruskin

in matters of detail, no one will dispute the apostolic fervor with

which he endeavored to push on the work of Thomas Carlyle. It is a

significant fact, therefore, that both Thomas Carlyle and John Ruskin

had nothing but abuse to give to political economy. Nevertheless, I

think we all must agree that this hostile attitude was due to a

misconception of the scope of political economy, a misconception due

in great part to its name; for the words "political economy" seem to

indicate that it deals with the economy of the state, and that it

becomes the duty of its teachers to show us not only what the rules

regarding the production and distribution of goods are, but what they

ought to be.

In fact, however, although economists do discuss how--if at all--the

system of production and distribution of goods can be improved, they

have always regarded it as their principal function to describe

accurately what the rules that govern production and distribution

really are, rather than what they ought to be. And as existing

industrial conditions are extremely complicated, those who have thrown

light upon them are highly to be honored. And although they have

contributed nothing to the solution of such problems as unemployment,

pauperism, and the conflict of labor and capital, it may be as

unreasonable to complain of this as to quarrel with the

"crossing-sweeper of Piccadilly" because he is unable "to tell you the

road to Highgate."

Again, political economy has encountered a great deal of unmerited

abuse because critics have confounded authors with their subject, and

have held economists responsible for the industrial conditions they

describe; whereas, these economists have earned our sincerest thanks

for demonstrating that the competitive system offers no solution for

the conflict between capital and labor, or the problem of unemployment

and all the other problems as those of pauperism, prostitution, and

economic crime which result therefrom.

Mr. Ruskin is certainly wrong when he denounces political economy as

the "science of getting rich," and when he adds that "persons who

follow its precepts" do actually become rich; "all persons who disobey

them become poor"; for our ablest political economists have always

been and still are relatively poor men, and our richest millionaire is

a past master of the rules in the game which it is his particular

business to play; but he is not concerned with a science which does no

more than study wealth under the competitive system and demonstrate

how inevitably a few grow rich and the rest grow poor under it.

Let us then abandon hostility to a science without which to-day we

could not see clearly the workings of the existing system, and on the

contrary, avail ourselves of all its teachings, recognizing that a

study of what industrial conditions to-day are must precede the study

of what they could and should be.

The study of political economy is necessary to a study of "social

economy." Political economy admittedly deals with the average sensual

man, and having determined the rules that determine the actions of the

average sensual man, it becomes now the problem of social economy to

deal with the average moral man. And the moral man must not be

regarded as opposed to the sensual. The moral man includes the

sensual, but adds affection, sympathy, and all that makes happiness to

the sensual man who may, through absence of affection and sympathy,

fail to attain the happiness of which he is in search. Under this

definition, while political economy deals with the attainment of

wealth, social economy deals with the attainment of happiness; and as

man must eat before he can pursue happiness, social economy must

concern itself with the acquisition of wealth to satisfy physical

needs before it concerns itself with the attainment of justice to

satisfy moral needs. An attempt has been made in this book to present

the social and economic structure which would best attain happiness.

Would such a system at the same time attain justice?[223]

To arrive at a correct notion of justice, we have to refer once more

to the difference between what Huxley calls the "cosmic

process"--that is to say, the process of the environment of Nature

before the advent of Man--and the ethical process, or the process of

the artificial environment created by Man. For there is one

difference, and a most essential difference, between them to which

attention has not yet been directed: namely, that in communities such

as those of the bee and ant, the individual is sacrificed to the

community; whereas the effort of Man is or should be to so organize

his community that it will serve the happiness of the individual. For

example, we would not tolerate a community upon the plan we see

practised by the bees, under which only one male out of a whole hive

is permitted to propagate and all the rest of the males on attaining

maturity are caused to die; only one female of the whole hive is

allowed to be fertile and to propagate, all the rest being subject to

the dreary round of keeping the fertile bee a prisoner, of feeding

her, of rearing, feeding and caring for the young in the hive, and

incidentally destroying any males who may return to the hive from the

nuptial flight. We have to recognize that the great obstacle to

happiness in community life is sexual instinct, of which Socialists of

the type of Edward Bellamy have for the most part failed to take

account.

Reference has been made to the various devices adopted by different

races of animals and by Man at different periods and at different

places to solve the problem of sexual instinct,[224] and it has been,

I think, demonstrated by Professor Giddings, that of all the systems

proposed none can compare with our present institution of

marriage.[225] The mere fact that the marriage system has survived in

the conflict with races that have adopted other systems ought to

furnish an argument in favor of its superiority. In the struggle

between races of Man, those races the institutions of which require

most self-restraint have invariably overwhelmed those races whose

institutions require less self-restraint. For example, the tribes that

lived without any regulation of sexual instinct and in which children

took the name of their mother because the name of their father was not

and could not be known, disappeared in the conflict with tribes which

insisted upon some restraint to sexual appetite, such as the

patriarchal system. Again, the patriarchal system which tolerated

polygamy has everywhere been destroyed when it came into conflict with

monogamous races, such as our own, which involve still further

restraint in the sexual relation.

It would seem, therefore, as though the monogamous marriage were the

keystone of our present civilization, for upon it has been built the

family, and the education and self-restraint which family life

involves.[226] There is too no function of the family more important

than that it serves as a model of what the state ought to be as

distinguished from what the state actually is; that is to say, a

government which should have equal concern for every member of the

community, and not one which as at present surfeits some and starves

others.

It is the growing idea that a properly constituted state must do this

for the protection not only of the many, but of the few that probably

give the most continuous aid to Socialism. As Mr. Edwin Bjoerkman

expressed it: "We are beginning to grasp the futility of planning the

welfare of any one human being apart from the rest of his kind. We are

coming to think of ourselves, at last, as links in a chain so firmly

bound together that when the devil grabs the hindmost the wrench is

felt by the top-most--felt in the very marrow of his bones."[227]

And so while the institution of marriage has removed an obstacle to

solidarity in community life, public health has proved its ally. Mr.

Bjoerkman has made an estimate of the enormous cost of unnecessary

sickness. But the protection of public health is furnishing us a far

better argument in favor of solidarity and Socialism than the mere

cost of neglecting it. In Cuba our sanitary engineers have practically

got rid of yellow fever, not only for that community, but for our own.

Recent discoveries tracing malaria to the mosquito are leading to the

destruction of this insect. Smallpox and cholera have practically been

stamped out, and efforts are now being made to do the same with

typhoid and tuberculosis.

Now one feature characterizes all these efforts. They cannot be made

by one man for himself; they have to be made by whole communities for

whole communities and they will eventually have to be made by the

whole world for the whole world. The same thing is true of vagrancy,

pauperism, and crime. No individual or group of individuals can handle

this problem; it must be handled by every community, and through the

further extension of extradition treaties by all countries for the

whole world.

Again, reference has been often made in this book to the necessity

under which governments, openly professing the policy of _laissez

faire_, have found themselves to enact laws totally inconsistent with

this doctrine. Such, laws ought to be sufficient evidence that the

days of _laissez faire_ are gone forever; and that this theory,

universally proclaimed a century ago as the only sound theory of

government, has to-day given way before the recognition that no

wealth can compensate a man for the misery of his neighbors; and that

even if, abandoning all ideals and all ethics, we confine ourselves to

the problem how to make men materially happy, we can only do so by

adjusting our institutions so that no man will be allowed to become or

to remain a pauper or criminal.

I am not discussing here matters of theory, but matters of fact.

Theoretically, the development of man might have taken a totally

different direction. The master minds of the period (such as that, for

example, of Mr. W.H. Mallock) might have so organized the able as to

constitute an aristocracy strong enough to keep the rest of the

community in a state of ignorant servitude, so that while Mr. Mallock

was enjoying the necessary leisure to discuss the "New Republic" amid

the luxury of his English country home, all the work of the world

would be accomplished by human automata with no desires beyond that of

the immediate gratification of their appetites. Unfortunately,

however, Mr. Mallock has come too late upon the scene. Some years

before he was born, the die was cast. Workingmen were given a voice in

public affairs and have been educated, so that they constitute a power

with which government has to reckon. Here is a fact against which it

is useless for millionaires to break their heads. No one can ignore

the power exercised by such men as Bebel in Germany, Jaures and Guesde

in France, Vandervelde in Belgium, Keir Hardie and MacDonald in

England, Gompers and John Mitchell in America. These men are all

engaged in organizing the workingmen's vote with extraordinary

efficacy in Europe, and with extraordinary inefficacy in the United

States. But the days of Gompers and Mitchell are drawing to a close,

and in this country as well as in Europe, Organized Labor will grow

to understand the inevitable truth that it is only by political action

and with the Socialist program that it can defeat the power of

capital. So that whether Mr. Mallock be right or not, the day of

aristocracy is over and the day of solidarity has dawned. The question

for us to decide is whether we should recognize this fact and modify

our institutions to conform to the new era, or whether we should

continue to ignore the fact until we break our heads against it.

The point which Mr. Mallock and his school have failed to understand

is that the very greed which creates aristocracy unfits the aristocrat

for the cooperation indispensable to its survival. This condemns him,

as it does all the highest types of carnivora, created by the

competitive system to isolation. For it is out of the jealousy and

struggles of the aristocrats with one another that the people are at

last getting to their own. It was because the king, the noble, and the

church could not agree in the division of spoils that their perpetual

altercations left room for the organization of the Communes in France

at the end of the eleventh century. It was because the church, the

noble and the king would not give a fair share of the honors and

spoils of the state to the wealthy bourgeoisie, that the bourgeois was

obliged to associate himself with the people in 1789; it was because

of the conflict between the Whigs and the Tories that the franchise

was gradually extended to the workingmen in England; and it is because

the Republicans can put no limit to their greed that workingmen in

America will find themselves eventually compelled to organize

politically their at present disunited multitudes. It is, therefore,

extremely improbable that, even if Mr. Mallock had lived in an earlier

age, he could have prevented the inevitable progress of the great

principle of solidarity which has determined the direction of human

development ever since it began to differ from that of other animals.

If now we run through all the differences between the natural

environment and the environment created by Man, we shall see that they

practically all proceed upon the theory that men must develop no

longer as individuals but as a unit. All our customs and laws proceed

upon the theory of liberty and justice; and upon that theory is based

the original principle of property that assures to all men the product

of their toil. Now if all men are to be assured the product of their

toil, there must be an end to the system which puts a few millionaires

at one end of the social scale and millions of paupers at the other.

Again, for centuries the so-called struggle for life has ceased to be

a struggle for life, but has become a struggle for wealth, power, and

consideration. It is no longer only the fit that survive; the unfit

also survive; and if the unfit are to survive, we all have a common

interest in taking the necessary steps to prevent the unfit from

proving too heavy a burden upon the community.

Again, all isolating vices such as lust, ferocity, craft, fear, and

selfishness--vices which characterize the carnivora and condemn them

to lives of isolation--are being tempered by the necessities of common

life--by the fundamental fact of the solidarity of Man. Thus, lust is

tempered and in part replaced by love and mercy; ferocity is tempered

and in part replaced by courage and patience; fear is tempered and in

part replaced by respect and reverence; selfishness is tempered and in

part replaced by unselfishness.

And all this advantage which humanity has attained over the lower

animals is due to its ability to mould its own environment, and

deliberately undertake the task of justice; namely, to "eliminate from

our social conditions the effects of the inequalities of Nature upon

the happiness and advancement of Man, and particularly to create an

artificial environment which shall serve the individual as well as the

race, and tend to perpetuate noble types rather than those which are

base."

It is true that so far our efforts to attain justice have lamentably

failed; but they have failed mainly because we have not yet

sufficiently limited the scope of competition. The day we limit

competition as suggested in the chapter on the Economic Structure of

Socialism,[228] that day we shall have removed the lion from our path.

And as stated in the Preface, the development of Man will then proceed

upon the theory that all are perfectible and that it is through the

improvement of all that every individual will attain his best freedom,

his best happiness, and the fullest opportunities for promoting the

happiness of all around him.

This is the ideal to attain which the environment described in the

Chapter on the Economic Construction of the Cooperative Commonwealth

has been conceived. It is the ideal which furnishes the most

economical method of production and distribution and, therefore, the

most leisure and liberty; that creates the environment fitted to

perpetuate the noble rather than the base type; to promote virtue and

discourage vice and, in a word, creates conditions under which we can

practise the morality preached by every religion, whether it be that

of Moses, of Mohammed, or of Christ.

FOOTNOTES:

[223] In a previous attempt to define justice, I have found it

necessary to devote to this subject an entire volume, and I do not

believe that the subject can be sufficiently discussed in less than

such a volume. The definition with which I concluded that book has

been adopted by Mr. Lester F. Ward in his book on Applied Sociology. I

believe that all other definitions of justice are defective mainly

because other definitions such as those of Herbert Spencer in his book

entitled "Justice" confound justice with liberty. In other words, his

definition of justice is a definition of liberty, whereas justice is

more than liberty. Or perhaps it would be more correct to say that

liberty is one of the elements of justice.

[224] See "Government or Human Evolution," Vol. II, p. 181.

[225] See "Principles of Sociology," pp. 414-415.

[226] See "Justice," p. 127, by the author.

[227] The Unnecessary Curse of Sickness, _World's Work_, July, 1909.

[228] See Book III, Chapter II.

APPENDIX

I

SOCIALIST PARTY NATIONAL PLATFORM

ADOPTED AT THE NATIONAL CONVENTION ASSEMBLED AT CHICAGO, MAY, 1908

Human life depends upon food, clothing, and shelter. Only with these

assured are freedom, culture and higher human development possible. To

produce food, clothing and shelter, land and machinery are needed.

Land alone does not satisfy human needs. Human labor creates machinery

and applies it to the land for the production of raw materials and

food. Whoever has the control of land and machinery controls human

labor, and with it human life and liberty.

To-day the machinery and land used for industrial purposes are owned

by a rapidly decreasing minority. So long as machinery is simple and

easily handled by one man, its owner cannot dominate the sources of

life of others. But when machinery becomes more complex and expensive,

and requires for its effective operation the organized effort of many

workers, its influence reaches over wide circles of life. The owners

of such machinery become the dominant class.

POWER GOES WITH CONCENTRATION

In proportion as the number of such machine owners, compared to all

other classes, decreases, their power in the nation and in the world

increases. They bring ever larger masses of working people under their

control, reducing them to the point where muscle and brain are their

only productive property. Millions of formerly self-employing workers

thus become the helpless wage slaves of the industrial masters.

As the economic power of the ruling class grows, it becomes less

useful in the life of the nation. All the useful work of the nation

falls upon the shoulders of the class whose only property is its

manual and mental labor power--the wage workers--or of the class who

have but little land and little effective machinery outside of their

labor power--the small traders and small farmers. The ruling minority

is steadily becoming useless and parasitic.

STRUGGLE BETWEEN CLASSES

A bitter struggle over the division of the products of labor is waged

between the exploiting propertied classes on the one hand, and the

exploited propertyless class on the other. In this struggle the

wage-working class cannot expect adequate relief from any reform of

the present order at the hands of the dominant class.

The wage workers are, therefore, the most determined and

irreconcilable antagonists of the ruling class. They suffer most from

the curse of class rule. The fact that a few capitalists are permitted

to control all the country's industrial resources and social tools for

their individual profit, and to make the production of the necessaries

of life the object of competitive private enterprise and speculation,

is at the bottom of all the social evils of our time.

ANARCHY OF CAPITALIST PRODUCTION

In spite of the organization of trusts, pools and combinations, the

capitalists are powerless to regulate production for social ends.

Industries are largely conducted in a planless manner. Through periods

of feverish activity the strength and health of the workers are

mercilessly used up, and during periods of enforced idleness the

workers are frequently reduced to starvation.

The climaxes of this system of production are the regularly recurring

industrial depressions and crises which paralyze the nation every

fifteen or twenty years.

The capitalist class, in its mad race for profits, is bound to

exploit the workers to the very limit of their endurance and to

sacrifice their physical, moral and mental welfare to its own

insatiable greed. Capitalism keeps the masses of workingmen in

poverty, destitution, physical exhaustion and ignorance. It drags

their wives from their homes to the mill and factory. It snatches

their children from the playgrounds and schools and grinds their

slender bodies and unformed minds into cold dollars. It disfigures,

maims, and kills hundreds of thousands of workingmen annually in

mines, on railroads and in factories. It drives millions of workers

into the ranks of the unemployed and forces large numbers of them into

beggary, vagrancy and all forms of crime and vice.

HOW THE RULING CLASS CONTROLS

To maintain their rule over their fellow men, the capitalists must

keep in their pay all organs of the public powers, public mind and

public conscience. They control the dominant parties and, through

them, the elected public officials. They select the executives, bribe

the legislatures, and corrupt the courts of justice. They own and

censor the press. They dominate the educational institutions. They own

the nation politically and intellectually just as they own it

industrially.

SOCIALISM WILL FREE ALL CLASSES

The struggle between wage workers and capitalists grows ever fiercer,

and has now become the only vital issue before the American people.

The wage-working class, therefore, has the most direct interest in

abolishing the capitalist system. But in abolishing the present system

the workingmen will free not only their own class, but also all other

classes of modern society: the small farmer who is to-day exploited by

large capital more indirectly but not less effectively than is the

wage laborer; the small manufacturer and trader, who is engaged in a

desperate and losing struggle for economic independence in the face of

the all-conquering power of concentrated capital; and even the

capitalist himself, who is the slave of his wealth rather than its

master. The struggle of the working class against the capitalist

class, while it is a class struggle, is thus at the same time a

struggle for the abolition of all classes and class privileges.

PRIVATE OWNERSHIP THE BASIS OF CLASS RULE

The private ownership of the land and means of production used for

exploitation is the rock upon which class rule is built; political

government is its indispensable instrument. The wage workers cannot be

freed from exploitation without conquering the political power and

substituting collective for private ownership of the land and means of

production used for exploitation.

The basis for such transformation is rapidly developing within present

capitalist society. The factory system, with its complex machinery and

minute division of labor, is rapidly destroying all vestiges of

individual production in manufacture. Modern production is already

very largely a collective and social process. The great trusts and

monopolies which have sprung up in recent years have organized the

work and management of the principal industries on a national scale,

and have fitted them for collective use and operation.

The Socialist Party is primarily an economic and political movement.

It is not concerned with matters of religious belief.

FREEDOM THROUGH SOLIDARITY

In the struggle for freedom the interests of all modern workers are

identical. The struggle is not only national, but international. It

embraces the world and will be carried to ultimate victory by the

united workers of the world.

To unite the workers of the nation and their allies and sympathizers

of all other classes to this end, is the mission of the Socialist

Party. In this battle for freedom the Socialist Party does not strive

to substitute working-class rule for capitalist-class rule, but by

working-class victory to free all humanity from class rule and to

realize the international brotherhood of man.

THE SOCIALIST PLATFORM

The Socialist Party, in national convention assembled, again declares

itself as the party of the working class, and appeals for the support

of all workers of the United States and of all citizens who sympathize

with the great and just cause of labor.

We are at this moment in the midst of one of those industrial

breakdowns that periodically paralyze the life of the nation. The

much-boasted era of our national prosperity has been followed by one

of general misery. Factories, mills and mines are closed. Millions of

men, ready, willing and able to provide the nation with all the

necessaries and comforts of life are forced into idleness and

starvation. Within recent times the trusts and monopolies have

attained an enormous and menacing development. They have acquired the

power to dictate the terms upon which we shall be allowed to live. The

trusts fix the prices of our bread, meat and sugar, of our coal, oil

and clothing, of our raw material and machinery, of all the

necessities of life.

CAPITALISM TAKES THE OFFENSIVE

The present desperate condition of the workers has been made the

opportunity for a renewed onslaught on organized labor. The highest

courts of the country have within the last year rendered decision

after decision depriving the workers of rights which they had won by

generations of struggle.

The attempt to destroy the Western Federation of Miners, although

defeated by the solidarity of organized labor and the Socialist

movement, revealed the existence of a far-reaching and unscrupulous

conspiracy by the ruling class against the organizations of labor.

In their efforts to take the lives of the leaders of the miners the

conspirators violated State laws and the federal constitution in a

manner seldom equalled even in a country so completely dominated by

the profit-seeking class as is the United States.

CAPITALIST REFORM FUTILE

The Congress of the United States has shown its contempt for the

interests of labor as plainly and unmistakably as have the other

branches of government. The laws for which the labor organizations

have continually petitioned have failed to pass. Laws ostensibly

enacted for the benefit of labor have been distorted against labor.