sphere a particular kind of human activity belongs. This is notably the
case as regards education. "Render unto Cæsar the things that be
Cæsar's, and unto God the things that be God's." But is education among
the things that belong to Cæsar, to social organization, or among the
things that belong to God, to the province of the individual's soul?
There is much to be said on both sides. Of late the Socialist tendency
prevails here, and there is a disposition to standardize rigidly an
education so superficial, so platitudinous, so uniform, so
unprofitable--so fatally oblivious of what even the word _education_
means[257]--that some day, perhaps, the revolted Individualist spirit will
arise in irresistible might to sweep away the whole worthless structure
from top to bottom, with even such possibilities of good as it may
conceal. The educationalists of to-day may do well to remember that it
is wise to be generous to your enemies even in the interests of your own
preservation.
In every age the question of Individualism and Socialism takes on a
different form. In our own age it has become acute under the form of a
conflict between the advocates of good heredity and the advocates of
good environment. On the one hand there is the desire to breed the
individual to a high degree of efficiency by eugenic selection,
favouring good stocks and making the procreation of bad stocks more
difficult. On the other hand there is the effort so to organize the
environment by collectivist methods that life for all may become easy
and wholesome. As usual, those who insist on the importance of good
environment are inclined to consider that the question of heredity may
be left to itself, and those who insist on the importance of good
heredity are indifferent to environment. As usual, also, there is a real
underlying harmony of those two demands. There is, however, here more
than this. In this most modern of their embodiments, Socialism and
Individualism are not merely harmonious, each is the key to the other,
which remains unattainable without it. However carefully we improve our
breed, however anxiously we guard the entrance to life, our labour will
be in vain if we neglect to adapt the environment to the fine race we
are breeding. The best individuals are not the toughest, any more than
the highest species are the toughest, but rather, indeed, the reverse,
and no creature needs so much and so prolonged an environing care as
man, to ensure his survival. On the other hand, an elaborate attention
to the environment, combined with a reckless inattention to the quality
of the individuals born to live in that environment can only lead to an
overburdened social organization which will speedily fall by its own
weight.
During the past century the Socialists of the school for bettering the
environment have for the most part had the game in their own hands. They
founded themselves on the very reasonable basis of sympathy, a basis
which the eighteenth-century moralists had prepared, which Schopenhauer
had formulated, which George Eliot had passionately preached, which had
around its operations the immense prestige of the gospel of Jesus. The
environmental Socialists--always quite reasonably--set themselves to
improve the conditions of labour; they provided local relief for the
poor; they built hospitals for the free treatment of the sick. They are
proceeding to feed school children, to segregate and protect the
feeble-minded, to insure the unemployed, to give State pensions to the
aged, and they are even asked to guarantee work for all. Now these
things, and the likes of them, are not only in accordance with natural
human impulses, but for the most part they are reasonable, and in
protecting the weak the strong are, in a certain sense, protecting
themselves. No one nowadays wants the hungry to hunger or the suffering
to suffer. Indeed, in that sense, there never has been any
_laissez-faire_ school.[258]
But as the movement of environmental Socialism realizes itself, it
becomes increasingly clear that it is itself multiplying the work which
it sets itself to do. In enabling the weak, the incompetent, and the
defective to live and to live comfortably, it makes it easier for those
on the borderland of these classes to fall into them, and it furnishes
the conditions which enable them to propagate their like, and to do
this, moreover, without that prudent limitation which is now becoming
universal in all classes above those of the weak, the incompetent, and
the defective. Thus unchecked environmental Socialism, obeying natural
impulses and seeking legitimate ends, would be drawn into courses at the
end of which only social enfeeblement, perhaps even dissolution, could
be seen.
The key to the situation, it is now beginning to be more and more widely
felt, is to be found in the counterbalancing tendency of Individualism,
and the eugenic guardianship of the race. Not, rightly understood, as a
method of arresting environmental Socialism, nor even as a counterblast
to its gospel of sympathy. Nietzsche, indeed, has made a famous assault
on sympathy, as he has on conventional morality generally, but his
"immoralism" in general and his "hardness" in particular are but new and
finer manifestations of those faded virtues he was really seeking to
revive. The superficially sympathetic man flings a coin to the beggar;
the more deeply sympathetic man builds an almshouse for him so that he
need no longer beg; but perhaps the most radically sympathetic of all is
the man who arranges that the beggar shall not be born.
So it is that the question of breed, the production of fine individuals,
the elevation of the ideal of quality in human production over that of
mere quantity, begins to be seen, not merely as a noble ideal in itself,
but as the only method by which Socialism can be enabled to continue on
its present path. If the entry into life is conceded more freely to the
weak, the incompetent, and the defective than to the strong, the
efficient, and the sane, then a Sisyphean task is imposed on society;
for every burden lifted two more burdens appear. But as individual
responsibility becomes developed, as we approach the time to which
Galton looked forward, when the eugenic care for the race may become a
religion, then social control over the facts of life becomes possible.
Through the slow growth of knowledge concerning hereditary conditions,
by voluntary self-restraint, by the final disappearance of the lingering
prejudice against the control of procreation, by sterilization in
special cases, by methods of pressure which need not amount to actual
compulsion,[259] it will be possible to attain an increasingly firm grip
on the evil elements of heredity. Not until such measures as these,
under the controlling influence of a sense of personal responsibility
extending to every member of the community, have long been put into
practice, can we hope to see man on the earth risen to his full stature,
healthy in body, noble in spirit, beautiful in both alike, moving
spaciously and harmoniously among his fellows in the great world of
Nature, to which he is so subtly adapted because he has himself sprung
out of it and is its most exquisite flower. At this final point social
hygiene becomes one with the hygiene of the soul.[260]
Poets and prophets, from Jesus and Paul to Novalis and Whitman, have
seen the divine possibilities of Man. There is no temple in the world,
they seem to say, so great as the human body; he comes in contact with
Heaven, they declare, who touches a human person. But these human
things, made to be gods, have spawned like frogs over all the earth.
Everywhere they have beslimed its purity and befouled its beauty,
darkening the very sunshine. Heaped upon one another in evil masses,
preying upon one another as no other creature has ever preyed upon its
kind, they have become a festering heap which all the oceans in vain
lave with their antiseptic waters, and all the winds of heaven cannot
purify. It is only in the unextinguished spark of reason within him that
salvation for man may ever be found, in the realization that he is his
own star, and carries in his hands his own fate. The impulses of
Individualism and of Socialism alike prompt us to gain self-control and
to learn the vast extent of our responsibility. The whole of humanity is
working for each of us; each of us must live worthy of that great
responsibility to humanity. By how fine a flash of insight Jesus
declared that few could enter the Kingdom of Heaven! Not until the earth
is purified of untold millions of its population will it ever become the
Heaven of old dreamers, in which the elect walk spaciously and nobly,
loving one another. Only in such spacious and pure air is it possible
for the individual to perfect himself, as a rose becomes perfect,
according to Dante's beautiful simile,[261] in order that he may spread
abroad for others the fragrance that has been generated within him. If
one thinks of it, that seems a truism, yet, even in this twentieth
century, how few, how very few, there are who know it!
This is why we cannot have too much Individualism, we cannot have too
much Socialism. They play into each other's hands. To strengthen one is
to give force to the other. The greater the vigour of both, the more
vitally a society is progressing. "I can no more call myself an
Individualist or a Socialist," said Henry George, "than one who
considers the forces by which the planets are held to their orbits could
call himself a centrifugalist or a centripetalist." To attain a society
in which Individualism and Socialism are each carried to its extreme
point would be to attain to the society that lived in the Abbey of
Thelema, in the City of the Sun, in Utopia, in the land of Zarathustra,
in the Garden of Eden, in the Kingdom of Heaven. It is a kingdom, no
doubt, that is, as Diderot expressed it, "diablement idéal." But to-day
we hold in our hands more certainly than ever before the clues that were
imperfectly foreshadowed by Plato, and what our fathers sought
ignorantly we may attempt by methods according to knowledge. No Utopia
was ever realized; and the ideal is a mirage that must ever elude us or
it would cease to be ideal. Yet all our progress, if progress there be,
can only lie in setting our faces towards that goal to which Utopias and
ideals point.
FOOTNOTES:
[248] In the narrow sense Socialism is identical with the definite
economic doctrine of the Collectivistic organization of the productive
and distributive work of society. It also possesses, as Bosanquet
remarks (in an essay on "Individualism and Socialism," in _The
Civilization of Christendom_), "a deeper meaning as a name for a human
tendency that is operative throughout history." Every Collectivist is a
Socialist, but not every Socialist would admit that he is a
Collectivist. "Moral Socialism," however, though not identical with
"Economic Socialism," tends to involve it.
[249] The term "Individualism," like the term "Socialism," is used in
varying senses, and is not, therefore, satisfactory to everyone. Thus
E.F.B. Fell (_The Foundations of Liberty_, 1908), regarding
"Individualism," as a merely negative term, prefers the term
"Personalism," to denote a more positive ideal. There is, however, by no
means as any necessity to consider "Individualism," a more negative term
than "Socialism."
[250] The inspiring appeal of Socialism to ardent minds is no doubt
ethical. "The ethics of Socialism," says Kirkup, "are closely akin to
the ethics of Christianity, if not identical with them." That, perhaps,
is why Socialism is so attractive to some minds, so repugnant to others.
[251] This idea was elaborated by Eimer in an appendix to his _Organic
Evolution_ on the idea of the individual in the animal kingdom.
[252] The term "socialism" is said to date from about the year 1835.
Leroux claimed that he invented it, in opposition to the term
"individualism," but at that period it had become so necessary and so
obvious a term that it is difficult to say positively by whom it was
first used.
[253] An important point which the Individualist may fairly bring forward
in this connection is the tendency of Socialism to repress the energy of
the best worker among its officials at the expense of the public. Alike
in government offices at Whitehall and in municipal offices in the town
halls there is a certain proportion of workers who find pleasure in
putting forth their best energies at high pressure. But the majority
take care that work shall be carried on at low pressure, and that the
output shall not exceed a certain understood minimum. They ensure this
by making things uncomfortable for the workers who exceed that minimum.
The gravity of this evil is scarcely yet realized. It could probably be
counteracted by so organizing promotion that the higher posts really
went to the officials distinguished by the quantity and the quality of
their work. Pensions should also be affected by the same consideration.
In any case, the evil is serious, and is becoming more so since the
number of public officials is constantly increasing. The Council of the
Law Society found some years ago that the cost of civil administration
in England had increased between the years 1894 and 1904 from 19
millions to 25 millions, and, excluding the Revenue Departments, it is
now said to have gone up to 42 millions. It is an evil that will have to
be dealt with sooner or later.
[254] Max Stirner wrote his work, _Der Einzige und sein Eigenthum_ (_The
Ego and His Own_, in the English translation of Byington), in 1845. His
life has been written by John Henry Mackay (_Max Stirner: Sein Leben und
Sein Werk_), and an interesting study of Max Stirner (whose real name
was Schmidt) will be found in James Huneker's _Egoists_.
[255] In the introduction to my earliest book, _The New Spirit_ (1889), I
set forth this position, from which I have never departed: "While we are
socializing all those things of which all have equal common need, we are
more and more tending to leave to the individual the control of those
things which in our complex civilization constitute individuality. We
socialize what we call our physical life in order that we may attain
greater freedom for what we call our spiritual life." No doubt such a
point of view was implicit in Ruskin and other previous writers, just as
it has subsequently been set forth by Ellen Key and others, while from
the economic side it has been well formulated by Mr. J.A. Hobson in his
_Evolution of Capital_: "The _very raison d'être_ of increased social
cohesiveness is to economize and enrich the individual life, and to
enable the play of individual energy to assume higher forms out of which
more individual satisfaction may accrue." "Socialism will be of value,"
thought Oscar Wilde in his _Soul of Man_, "simply because it will lead
to Individualism." "Socialism denies economic Individualism for any,"
says Karl Nötzel ("Zur Ethischen Begrundung des Sozialismus,"
_Sozialistische Monatshefte_, 1910, Heft 23), "in order to make moral
intellectual Individualism possible for all." And as it has been seen
that Socialism leads to Individualism, so it has also been seen that
Individualism, even on the ethical plane, leads to Socialism. "You must
let the individual make his will a reality in the conduct of his life,"
Bosanquet remarks in an essay already quoted, "in order that it may be
possible for him consciously to entertain the social purpose as a
constituent of his will. Without these conditions there is no social
organism and no moral Socialism.... Each unit of the social organism has
to embody his relations with the whole in his own particular work and
will; and in order to do this the individual must have a strength and
depth in himself proportional to and consisting of the relations which
he has to embody." Grant Allen long since clearly set forth the harmony
between Individualism and Socialism in an article published in the
_Contemporary Review_ in 1879.
[256] An instructive illustration is furnished by the question of the
relation of the sexes, and elsewhere (_Studies in the Psychology of
Sex_, Vol. VI, "Sex in Relation to Society") I have sought to show that
we must distinguish between marriage, which is directly the affair of
the individuals primarily concerned, and procreation, which is mainly
the concern of society.
[257] See, for instance, the opinion of the former Chief Inspector of
Elementary Schools in England, Mr. Edmond Holmes, _What Is and What
Might Be_ (1911). He points out that true education must be
"self-realization," and that the present system of "education" is
entirely opposed to self-realization. Sir John Gorst, again, has
repeatedly attacked the errors of the English State system of
education.
[258] The phrase _Laissez faire_ is sometimes used as though it were the
watchword of a party which graciously accorded a free hand to the Devil
to do his worst. As a matter of fact, it was simply a phrase adopted by
the French economists of the eighteenth century to summarize the
conclusion of their arguments against the antiquated restrictions which
were then stifling the trade and commerce of France (see G. Weuleresse,
_Le Mouvement Physiocratique en France_, 1910, Vol. II, p. 17). Properly
understood, it is not a maxim which any party need be ashamed to own.
[259] I would again repeat that I do not regard legislation as a channel
of true eugenic reform. As Bateson well says (_op. cit._ p. 15); "It is
not the tyrannical and capricious interference of a half-informed
majority which can safely mould or purify a population, but rather that
simplification of instinct for which we ever hope, which fuller
knowledge alone can make possible." Even the subsidising of
unexceptionable parents, as the same writer remarks, cannot be viewed
with enthusiasm. "If we picture to ourselves the kind of persons who
would infallibly be chosen as examples of 'civic worth' the prospect is
not very attractive."
[260] "Aristotle, herein the organ and exponent of the Greek national
mind," remarks Gomperz, "understood by the hygiene of the soul the
avoidance of all extremes, the equilibrium of the powers, the harmonious
development of aptitudes, none of which is allowed to starve or paralyse
the others." Gomperz points out that this individual morality
corresponded to the characteristics of the Greek national religion--its
inclusiveness and spaciousness, its freedom and serenity, its
ennoblement alike of energetic action and passive enjoyment (Gomperz,
_Greek Thinkers_, Eng. Trans., Vol. III, p. 13).
[261] _Convito_, IV, 27.
THE END
INDEX
(_Names of Authors quoted are italicized._)
Abortion, facultative, 99
Age of consent, 288 _et seq._
Aggeneration, 24
Alcohol, legislative control of, 277 _et seq._, 295 _et seq._
Alcoholism, 33, 41
_Allen, Grant_, 394
_Allen, W.H._, 11
Ancestry, the study of, 2
_Angell, Norman_, 321
_Anthony, Susan_, 111
Antimachus of Colophon, 117
Anti-militarism, 328
_Aristotle_, 403
_Ashby_, 33
_Asnurof_, 283
_Aubry_, 42
_Augustine_, St., 5
Australia, birth-rate in, 146 _et seq._, 162;
moral legislation in, 291
_Azoulay_, 188
Bachofen, 91
_Baines, Sir J.A._, 153
_Barnes, Earl_, 223
_Basedow_, 244
_Bateson_, 27, 194, 402
Beatrice, Dante's, 122
Beaufront, L. de, 372, 373
Bebel, 71, 88
_Becker, R._, 118
_Belbèze_, 211
_Benecke, E.F.M._, 117
Bergsonian philosophy, 31
_Bertillon, G._, 63
_Bertillon, J._, 278
_Beveridge_, 171
Bible in religious education, 230, 240
_Billroth_, 353
_Bingham_, 274
Birth-rate, in France, 17, 136, 188;
in England, 17, 137;
in Germany, 17, 138;
in Russia, 25;
in United States, 141;
in Canada, 144;
in Australasia, 146, 162;
in Japan, 155;
in China, 156;
among savages, 167;
significance of a falling, 134 _et seq._;
in relation to death-rate, 7, 150
_Blease, W. Lyon_, 70
_Bloch, Iwan_, 93
_Boccaccio_, 119, 123
_Bodey_, 43, 201
_Böhmert_, 138
_Bonhoeffer_, 38
_Booth, C._, 177, 184
_Bosanquet_, 18, 383, 394
_Bouché-Leclercq_, 306
_Branthwaite_, 41
_Braun, Lily_, 139
_Brinton_, 351
Budin, 8
Bund für Mutterschutz, 96
_Burckhardt_, 123
_Burnham_, 221
_Bushee, F._, 11, 171
_Byington_, 393
Camp, Maxime du, 50
Campanella, 27
Campbell, Harry, 179
Canada, birth-rate in, 144 _et seq._;
sexual hygiene in, 253
_Cantlie_, 179
_Carpenter, Edward_, 397
_Casper_, 91
Certificates, eugenic, 30, 44, 202
_Chadwick, Sir E._, 4, 184
_Chamfort_, 256
Chastity of German women, 88
_Cheetham_, 235
Chicago Vice Commission, 277, 295, 300
Child, psychology of, 218
Children, religious education of, 217
China, birth-rate in, 156
Christianity in relation to romantic love, 117
Chivalrous attitude towards women, 124
Civilization, what it consists in, 18
_Clayton_, 180
_Cobbe, F.P._, 50
Co-education, 58
_Coghlan, T.A._, 147, 161, 165, 166
Coinage, international, 378
Concubinage, legalized, 104
_Condorcet_, 50, 67
Confirmation, rite of, 236
Consent, age of, 288 _et seq._
Courts of Love, 119
_Couturat_, 350, 374
_Creed, J.M._, 291
Criminality and feeble-mindedness, 38
Crucé, Emeric, 315
_Dante_, 122, 132
_Dareste_, 387, 396
_Davenport_, 35, 36, 44, 198
Death-rate in relation to birth-rate, 7, 150
Degenerate families, 41 _et seq._
Degeneration of race, alleged, 19 _et seq._, 37
_De Quincey_, 219
Descartes, 349
_Dickens_, 129
_Dill, Sir S._, 305
Disinfection, origin of, 5
Divorce, 62, 109
_Donkin, Sir H.B._, 39
_Donnan_, 374
Drunkenness, decrease of, 18
Dubois, P., 315
_Dugdale_, 42
_Dumont, Arsène_, 157, 160, 171
Economic aspect of woman's movement, 52, 63 _et seq._
Education, 6, 47, 57, 71, 201, 217 _et seq._, 398
_Ehrenfels_, 25
_Eichholz_, 36
_Eimer_, 387
_Ellis, Havelock_, 15, 31, 40, 44, 49, 88, 100, 108,
118, 130, 154, 161, 179, 186, 204, 206, 207, 220, 244,
259, 369, 394
Enfantin, Prosper, 104
_Engelmann_, 142, 160, 165
English, characteristics of the, 2;
attitude towards immorality, 270;
language for international purposes, 355 _et seq._
Esperanto, 372
_Espinas_, 60
Eugenics, 12, 26 _et seq._, 107, 195 _et seq._, 399 _et seq._
Euthenics, 12
_Ewart, R.J._, 26, 172
Factory legislation, 5
_Fahlbeck_, 22
Fairy tales in education, 239
Family, limitation of, 16, 26
Family in relation to degeneracy, 41;
size of, 35
Feeble-minded, problem of the, 31 _et seq._
_Fell, E.F.B._, 383
Ferrer, 318
Fertility in relation to prosperity, 169 _et seq._
_Fiedler_, 229
_Finlay-Johnson, H._, 227, 242
_Firenzuola_, 123
"Fit," the term, 44
_Flux_, 138
_Forel_, 93
France, birth-rate in, 17, 136, 188;
women and love in, 119;
legal attitude towards immorality in, 265;
regulation of alcohol in, 278
_Franklin, B._, 142, 327
_Fraser, Mrs._, 115
French language for international purposes, 364 _et seq._
Frenssen, 95
_Freud_, S., 92
_Fuld, E.F._, 274, 276
_Fürch, Henriette_, 252
_Galton, Sir F._, 28, 29, 44, 45, 107, 195, 197, 198, 200, 203, 208, 402
_Gaultier, J. de_, 342
_Gautier, Léon_, 119
_Gavin, H._, 184
_Gayley, Julia_, 420
Germany, sex questions in, 87 _et seq._;
illegitimacy in, 97;
sexual hygiene in, 94;
legal attitude towards immorality in, 265, 301
_Giddings_, 46
_Godden_, 35, 198
_Godwin, W._, 309
_Goethe_, 128, 131
_Goldscheid_, 167, 173
_Gomperz_, 403
_Goncourt_, 120
Gouges, Olympe de, 68
_Gourmont, Remy de_, 122, 299, 317
_Gournay, Marie de_, 110
_Grabowsky_, 263
_Grasset_, 209
_Grünspan_, 97
_Guérard_, 325, 346, 369
_Guthrie, L._, 239
_Haddon, A.C._, 234, 245
_Hagen_, 262
_Hale, Horatio_, 351
_Hales, W.W._, 260
_Hall, G. Stanley_, 220, 224, 232, 233, 303
_Hamburger, C._, 151
_Hamill, Henry_, 213
_Hausmeister, P._, 302
_Hayllar, F._, 233
Health, nationalization of, 15
Health visitors, 7
_Hearn, Lafcadio_, 191
_Henry, W.O._, 252
Heredity of feeble-mindedness, 34;
as the hope of the race, 44;
study of, 198
_Heron_, 19, 166
_Hervé_, 329
_Hiller_, 263, 267
_Hinton, James_, 133
_Hirschfeld, Magnus_, 92, 286
_Hobbes_, 313
Holland, moral legislation in, 291
_Holmes, Edmond_, 227, 228
Homosexuality and the law, 283, 286
_Hookey, N.A._, 174
_Hughes, R.E._, 242
_Humboldt, W. von_, 61, 106
_Huneker_, 393
Hungary, birth-rate and death-rate in, 169
_Hutchinson, Woods_, 186
Hygiene, in medieval and modern times, 5;
of sex, 244 _et seq._
Idiocy, 32 _et seq._
Ido, 373
Illegitimacy, and feeble-mindedness, 37;
in Germany, 97
Imbecility, 32 _et seq._
Individualism, 3, 381 _et seq._
Industrialism, modern, 2
Inebriety and feeble-mindedness, 41
Infant consultations, 8
Infantile mortality, 7, 13, 25, 138, 150 _et seq._
Initiation of youth, 234
Insurance, national, 15
International language of the future, 349 _et seq._
_James, E.C._, 123
James, William, 195
Japan, romantic love in, 115;
birth-rate and death-rate in, 155;
changed conditions in, 191, 322
_Jenks, E._, 312, 316
_Johannsen_, 152
_Johnson, Roswell_, 207
_Jordan, D.S._, 324
_Jörger_, 42
Jukes family, 41
_Kaan_, 91
_Kellerman, Ivy_, 369
_Key, Ellen_, 100 _et seq._, 130, 229, 394
_Kirkup_, 384