Established by Edward L. Youmans
APPLETONS' POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY
EDITED BY WILLIAM JAY YOUMANS
VOL. LVI NOVEMBER, 1899, TO APRIL, 1900
NEW YORK D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 1900
COPYRIGHT, 1900, BY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY.
[Illustration: GEORGE M. STERNBERG.]
APPLETONS' POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
NOVEMBER, 1899.
THE REAL PROBLEMS OF DEMOCRACY.
BY FRANKLIN SMITH.
Much has been written of late about "the real problems of democracy."
According to some "thinkers," they consist of the invention of
ingenious devices to prevent caucus frauds and the purchase of votes,
to check the passage of special laws as well as too many laws, and
to infuse into decent people an ardent desire to participate in
the wrangles of politics. According to others, they consist of the
invention of equally ingenious devices to compel corporations to manage
their business in accordance with Christian principles, to transform
the so-called natural monopolies into either State or municipal
monopolies, and to effect, by means of the power of taxation, a more
equitable distribution of wealth. According to still others, they
consist of the invention of no less ingenious devices to force people
to be temperate, to observe humanity toward children and animals, and
to read and study what will make them model citizens. It is innocently
and touchingly believed that with the solution of these problems, by
the application of the authority that society has over the individual,
"the social conscience" will be awakened. But such a belief can not
be realized. It has its origin in a conception of democracy that has
no foundation either in history or science. What are supposed to be
the real problems of democracy are only the problems of despotism--the
problems to which every tyrant from time immemorial has addressed
himself, to the moral and industrial ruin of his subjects.
If democracy be conceived not as a form of political government under
the _régime_ of universal suffrage, but as a condition of freedom under
moral control, permitting every man to do as he likes, so long as he
does not trench upon the equal right of every other man, deliverance
from the sophistries and absurdities of current social and political
discussion becomes easy and inevitable. Its real problems cease to
be an endless succession of political devices that stimulate cunning
and evasion, and countless encroachments upon individual freedom that
stir up contention and ill feeling. Instead of being innumerable and
complex, defying the solvent power of the greatest intellects and the
efforts of the most enthusiastic philanthropists, they become few and
simple. While their proper solution is beset with difficulties, these
difficulties are not as hopeless as the framing of a statute to produce
a growth of virtue in a depraved heart. Indeed, no such task has ever
been accomplished, and every effort in that direction has been worse
than futile. It has encouraged the growth of all the savage traits that
ages of conflict have stamped so profoundly in the nervous system of
the race. But let it be understood that the real problems of democracy
are the problems of self-support and self-control, the problems that
appeared with the appearance of human life, and that their sole
solution is to be found in the application of precisely the same
methods with which Nature disciplines the meanest of her creatures,
then we may expect a measure of success from the efforts of social
and political reformers; for freedom of thought and action, coupled
with the punishment that comes from a failure to comply with the laws
of life and the conditions of existence, creates an internal control
far more potent than any law. It impels men to depend upon their own
efforts to gain a livelihood; it inspires them with a respect for the
right of others to do the same.
Simple and commonplace as the traits of self-support and self-control
may seem, they are of transcendent importance. Every other trait sinks
into insignificance. The society whose members have learned to care for
themselves and to control themselves has no further moral or economic
conquests to make. It will be in the happy condition dreamed of by all
poets, philosophers, and philanthropists. There will be no destitution,
for each person, being able to maintain himself and his family, will
have no occasion, except in a case of a sudden and an unforeseen
misfortune, to look to his friends and neighbors for aid. But in thus
maintaining himself--that is, in pursuing the occupation best adapted
to his ability and most congenial to his taste--he will contribute
in the largest degree to the happiness of the other members of the
community. While they are pursuing the occupations best adapted to
their ability and most congenial to their tastes, they will be able to
obtain from him, as he will be able to obtain from them, those things
that both need to supplement the products of their own industry. Since
each will be left in full possession of all the fruits of his own toil,
he will be at liberty to make just such use of them as will contribute
most to his happiness, thus permitting the realization, in the only
practicable way, of Bentham's principle of "the greatest happiness
of the greatest number." Since all of them will be free to make such
contracts as they believe will be most advantageous to them, exchanging
what they are willing to part with for what some one else is willing
to give in return, there will prevail the only equitable distribution
of the returns from labor and capital. No one will receive more and no
one less than he is entitled to. Thus will benefit be in proportion to
merit, and the most scrupulous justice be satisfied.
But this _régime_ of equity in the distribution of property implies, as
I have already said, the possession of a high degree of self-control.
Not only must all persons have such a keen sense of their own rights
as will never permit them to submit to infringement, but they must
have such a keen sense of the rights of others that they will not be
guilty themselves of infringement. Not only will they refrain from the
commission of those acts of aggression whose ill effects are immediate
and obvious; they will refrain from those acts whose ill effects are
remote and obscure. Although they will not, for example, deceive or
steal or commit personal assaults, they will not urge the adoption of
a policy that will injure the unknown members of other communities,
like the Welsh tin-plate makers and the Vienna pearl-button makers that
the McKinley Bill deprived of employment. Realizing the vice of the
plea of the opponents of international copyright that cheap literature
for a people is better than scrupulous honesty, they will not refuse
to foreign authors the same protection to property that they demand.
They will not, finally, allow themselves to take by compulsion or by
persuasion the property of neighbors to be used to alleviate suffering
or to disseminate knowledge in a way to weaken the moral and physical
strength of their fellows. But the possession of a sense of justice
so scrupulous assumes the possession of a fellow-feeling so vivid
that it will allow no man to refuse all needful aid to the victims of
misfortune. As suffering to others will mean suffering to himself,
he will be as powerfully moved to go to their rescue as he would to
protect himself against the same misfortune. Indeed, he will be moved,
as all others will be moved, to undertake without compulsion all the
benevolent work, be it charitable or educational, that may be necessary
to aid those persons less fortunate than himself to obtain the greatest
possible satisfaction out of life.
But the methods of social reform now in greatest vogue do not
contribute to the realization of any such millennium. They are a
flagrant violation of the laws of life and the conditions of existence.
They make difficult, if not impossible, the establishment of the moral
government of a democracy that insures every man and woman not only
freedom but also sustentation and protection. In disregard of the
principles of biology, which demand that benefit shall be in proportion
to merit, the feeble members of society are fostered at the expense
of the strong. Setting at defiance the principles of psychology,
which insist upon the cultivation of the clearest perception of the
inseparable relation of cause and effect and the equally inseparable
relation of aggression and punishment, honest people are turned into
thieves and murderers, and thieves and murderers are taught to believe
that no retribution awaits the commission of the foulest crime.
Scornful of the principles of sociology, which teach in the plainest
way that the institutions of feudalism are the products of war and can
serve no other purpose than the promotion of aggression, a deliberate
effort, born of the astonishing belief that they can be transformed
into the agencies of progress, is made in time of peace to restore them
to life.
To the American Philistine nothing is more indicative of the marvelous
moral superiority of this age and country than the rapid increase
in the public expenditures for enterprises "to benefit the people."
Particularly enamored is he of the showy statistics of hospitals,
asylums, reformatories, and other so-called charitable institutions
supported by public taxation. "How unselfish we are!" he exclaims,
swelling with pride as he points to them. "In what other age or in what
other country has so much been done for the poor and unfortunate?"
Naught shall ever be said by me against the desire to help others.
The fellow-feeling that thrives upon the aid rendered to the sick and
destitute I believe to be the most precious gift of civilization.
Upon its growth depends the further moral advancement of the race. As
I have already intimated, only as human beings are able to represent
to themselves vividly the sufferings of others will they be moved to
desist from the conduct that contributes to those sufferings. But the
system of public charity that prevails in this country is not charity
at all; it is a system of forcible public largesses, as odious and
demoralizing as the one that contributed so powerfully to the downfall
of Athens and Rome. By it money is extorted from the taxpayer with as
little justification as the crime of the highwayman, and expended by
politicians with as little love as he of their fellows. What is the
result? Precisely what might be expected. He is infuriated because of
the growing burden of his taxes. Instead of being made more humane and
sympathetic with every dollar he gives under compulsion to the poor and
suffering, he becomes more hard-hearted and bitter toward his fellows.
The notion that society, as organized at present, is reducing him to
poverty and degradation takes possession of him. He becomes an agitator
for violent reforms that will only render his condition worse. At the
same time the people he aids come to regard him simply as a person
under obligations to care for them. They feel no more gratitude toward
him than the wolf toward the victim of its hunger and ferocity.
Akin to public charity are all those public enterprises undertaken to
ameliorate the condition of the poor--parks, model tenement houses, art
galleries, free concerts, free baths, and relief works of all kinds. To
these I must add all those Federal, State, and municipal enterprises,
such as the post office with the proposed savings attachment, a State
system of highways and waterways, municipal water, gas and electric
works, etc., that are supposed to be of inestimable advantage to the
same worthy class. These likewise fill the heart of the American
Philistine with immense satisfaction. Although he finds, by his study
of pleasing romances on municipal government in Europe, that we have
yet to take some further steps before we fall as completely as the
inhabitants of Paris and Berlin into the hands of municipal despotism,
he is convinced that we have made gratifying headway, and that the
outlook for complete subjection to that despotism is encouraging. But
it should be remembered that splendid public libraries and public
baths, and extensive and expensive systems of highways and municipal
improvements, built under a modified form of the old _corvée_, are
no measure of the fellow-feeling and enlightenment of a community.
On the contrary, they indicate a pitiful incapacity to appreciate
the rights of others, and are, therefore, a measure rather of the
low degree of civilization. It should be remembered also, especially
by the impoverished victims of the delusions of the legislative
philanthropist, that there is no expenditure that yields a smaller
return in the long run than public expenditure; that however honest the
belief that public officials will do their duty as conscientiously and
efficiently as private individuals, history has yet to record the fact
of any bureaucracy; that however profound the conviction that the cost
of these "public blessings" comes out of the pockets of the rich and is
on that account particularly justifiable, it comes largely out of the
pockets of the poor; and that by the amount abstracted from the income
of labor and capital by that amount is the sum divided between labor
and capital reduced.
"But," interposes the optimist, "have the Americans not their great
public-school system, unrivaled in the world, to check and finally
to end the evils that appear thus far to be inseparably connected
with popular government? Is there any truth more firmly established
than that it is the bulwark of American institutions, and that if we
maintain it as it should be maintained they will be able to weather any
storm that may threaten?" Precisely the same argument has been urged
time out of mind in behalf of an ecclesiastical system supported at
the expense of the taxpayer. Good men without number have believed,
and have fought to maintain their belief, that only by the continuance
of this form of aggression could society be saved from corruption and
barbarism. Even in England to-day, where freedom and civilization
have made their most brilliant conquests, this absurd contention
is made to bolster up the rotten and tottering union of Church and
state, and to justify the seizure of the property of taxpayers to
support a particular form of ecclesiastical instruction. But no fact
of history has received demonstrations more numerous and conclusive
than that such instruction, whether Protestant or Catholic, Buddhist
or Mohammedan, in the presence of the demoralizing forces of militant
activities, is as impotent as the revolutions of the prayer wheel of
a pious Hindu. To whatever country or people or age we may turn, we
find that the spirit of the warrior tramples the spirit of the saint
in the dust. Despite the lofty teachings of Socrates and Plato, the
Athenians degenerated until the name of the Greek became synonymous
with that of the blackest knave. With the noble examples and precepts
of the Stoics in constant view, the Romans became beastlier than any
beast. All through the middle ages and down to the present century
the armies of ecclesiastics, the vast libraries of theology, and the
myriads of homilies and prayers were impotent to prevent the social
degradation that inundated the world with the outbreak of every great
conflict. Take, for example, a page from the history of Spain. At the
time of Philip II, who tried to make his people as rigid as monks, that
country had no rival in its fanatical devotion to the Church, or its
slavish observance of the forms of religion. Yet its moral as well as
its intellectual and industrial life was sinking to the lowest level.
Official corruption was rampant. The most shameless sexual laxity
pervaded all ranks. The name of Spanish women, who had "in previous
times been modest, almost austere and Oriental in their deportment,"
became a byword and a reproach throughout the world. "The ladies are
naturally shameless," says Camille Borghese, the Pope's delegate
to Madrid in 1593, "and even in the streets go up and address men
unknown to them, looking upon it as a kind of heresy to be properly
introduced. They admit all sorts of men to their conversation, and
are not in the least scandalized at the most improper proposals being
made to them." To see how ecclesiastics themselves fall a prey to the
ethics of militant activities, becoming as heartless and debauched as
any other class, take a page from Italian history at the time of Pope
Alexander VI. "Crimes grosser than Scythian," says a pious Catholic who
visited Rome, "acts of treachery worse than Carthaginian, are committed
without disguise in the Vatican itself under the eyes of the Pope.
There are rapines, murders, incests, debaucheries, cruelties exceeding
those of the Neros and Caligulas." Similar pages from the history of
every other country in Europe given up to war, including Protestant
England, might be quoted.
But what is true of ecclesiastical effort in the presence of militant
activities is true of pedagogic effort in the presence of political
activities. For more than half a century the public-school system
in its existing form has been in full and energetic operation. The
money devoted to it every year now reaches the enormous total of one
hundred and eighty million dollars. Simultaneously an unprecedented
extension of secondary education has occurred. Since the war, colleges
and universities, supported in whole or in part at the public expense,
have been established in more than half of the States and Territories
of the Union. To these must be added the phenomenal growth of normal
schools, high schools, and academies, and of the equipment of the
educational institutions already in existence. Yet, as a result, are
the American people more moral than they were half a century ago? Have
American institutions--that is, the institutions based upon the freedom
of the individual--been made more secure? I venture to answer both
questions with an emphatic negative. The construction and operation
of the greatest machine of pedagogy recorded in history has been
absolutely impotent to stem the rising tide of political corruption
and social degeneration. If there are skeptics that doubt the truth
of this indictment let them study the criminal history of the day
that records the annual commission of more than six thousand suicides
and more than ten thousand homicides, and the embezzlement of more
than eleven million dollars. Let them study the lying pleas of the
commercial interests of the country that demand protection against "the
pauper labor of Europe," and thus commit a shameless aggression upon
the pauper labor of America. Let them study the records of the deeds
of intolerance and violence committed upon workingmen that refuse to
exchange their personal liberty for membership of a despotic labor
organization. Let them study the columns of the newspapers, crowded
with records of crime, salacious stories, and ignorant comment on
current questions and events that appeal to a population as unlettered
and base as themselves. Let them study, finally, the appalling
indictment of American political life, in a State where the native
blood still runs pure in the veins of the majority of the inhabitants,
that Mr. John Wanamaker framed in a great speech at the opening of
his memorable campaign in Lancaster against the most powerful and
most corrupt despotism that can be found outside of Russia or Turkey.
"In the fourth century of Rome, in the time of Emperor Theodosius,
Hellebichus was master of the forces," he said, endeavoring to describe
a condition of affairs that exists in a similar degree in every State
in the Union, "and Cæsarius was count of the offices. In the nineteenth
century, M. S. Quay is count of the offices, and W. A. Andrews, Prince
of Lexow, is master of forces in Pennsylvania, and we have to come
through the iron age and the silver age to the worst of all ages--the
degraded, evil age of conscienceless, debauched politics.... Profligacy
and extravagance and boss rule everywhere oppress the people. By the
multiplication of indictments your district attorney has multiplied
his fees far beyond the joint salaries of both your judges. The
administration of justice before the magistrates has degenerated
into organized raids on the county treasury.... Voters are corruptly
influenced or forcibly coerced to do the bidding of the bosses, and
thus force the fetters of political vassalage on the freemen of the
old guard. School directors, supervisors, and magistrates, and the
whole machinery of local government, are involved and dominated by this
accursed system."
But Mr. Wanamaker might have added that the whole social and industrial
life of the country is involved and dominated by the same system. It
is a well-established law of social science that the evil effects
of a dominant activity are not confined to the persons engaged
in it. Like a contagion, they spread to every part of the social
organization, and poison the life farthest removed from their origin.
Yet the public-school system, so impotent to save us from social and
political degradation and still such an object of unbounded pride and
adulation, is, as Mr. Wanamaker, all unconscious of the implication of
his scathing criticism, points out in so many words, an integral part
of the vast and complex machinery that political despotism has seized
upon to plunder and enslave the American people. As in the case of
every other extension of the duties of government beyond the limits
of the preservation of order and the enforcement of justice, it is an
aggression upon the rights of the individual, and, as in the case of
every other aggression, contributes powerfully to the decay of national
character and free institutions. It adds thousands upon thousands to
the constantly growing army of tax eaters that are impoverishing the
people still striving against heavy odds to gain an honest livelihood.
It places in the hands of the political despots now ruling the country,
without the responsibility that the most odious monarchs have to bear,
a revenue and an army of mercenaries that make more and more difficult
emancipation from their shackles. It is doing more than anything else
except the post-office department to teach people that there is no
connection between merit and benefit; that they have the right to look
to the State rather than to themselves for maintenance; that they
are under no obligations to see that they do not take from others,
in the form of salaries not earned nor intended to be earned, what
does not belong to them. In the face of this wholesale destruction of
fellow-feeling such as occurred in France under the old _régime_ and is
occurring to-day in Italy and Spain, and the inculcation of the ethics
of militant activities, such as may be observed in these countries as
well as elsewhere in Europe, is it any wonder that the mind-stuffing
that goes on in the public schools has no more effect upon the morals
of the American people than the creeds and prayers of the mediæval
ecclesiastics that joined in wars and the spoliation of oppressed
populations throughout Europe?
Since the path that all people under popular government as well
as under forms more despotic are pursuing so energetically and
hopefully leads to the certain destruction of the foundations of
civilization, what is the path that social science points out? What
must they do to prevent the extinction of the priceless acquisition
of fellow-feeling, now vanishing so rapidly before the most unselfish
efforts to promote it? The supposition is that the social teachings
of the philosophy of evolution have no answer to these questions.
Believing that they inculcate the hideous _laissez-faire_ doctrine of
"each for himself and the devil take the hindmost," so characteristic
of human relations among all classes of people in this country, the
victims of this supposition have repudiated them. But I propose to
show that they are the only teachings that give the slightest promise
of social amelioration. Although they are ignorantly stigmatized as
individualistic, and therefore necessarily selfish and inconsiderate
of the welfare of others, they are in reality socialistic in the best
sense of the word--that is, they enjoin voluntary, not coercive,
co-operation, and insure the noblest humanity and the most perfect
civilization, moral as well as material, that can be attained.
Why a society organized upon the individualistic instead of the
socialistic basis will realize every achievement admits of easy
explanation. A man dependent upon himself is forced by the struggle
for existence to exercise every faculty he possesses or can possibly
develop to save himself and his progeny from extinction. Under
such pitiless and irresistible pressure he acquires the highest
physical and intellectual strength. Thus equipped with weapons
absolutely indispensable in any state of society, whether civilized
or uncivilized, he is prepared for the conquest of the world. He
gains also the physical and moral courage needful to cope with the
difficulties that terrify and paralyze the people that have not been
subjected to the same rigid discipline. Energetic and self-reliant, he
assails them with no thought of failure. If, however, he meets with
reverses, he renews the attack, and repeats it until success finally
comes to reward his efforts. Such prolonged struggles give steadiness
and solidity to his character that do not permit him to abandon himself
to trifles or to yield easily, if at all, to excitement and panic. He
never falls a victim to Reigns of Terror. The more trying the times,
the more self-possessed, clear-headed, and capable of grappling with
the situation he becomes, and soon rises superior to it. With every
triumph over difficulties there never fails to come the joy that
more than balances the pain and suffering endured. But the pain and
suffering are as precious as the joy of triumph. Indelibly registered
in the nervous system, they enable their victim to feel as others feel
passing through the same experience, and this fellow-feeling prompts
him to render them the assistance they may need. In this way be becomes
a philanthropist. Possessed of the abundant means that the success of
his enterprises has placed in his hands, he is in a position to help
them to a degree not within the reach nor the desires of the member of
the society organized upon the socialistic basis.
In the briefest appeal to history may be found the amplest support
for these deductions from the principles of social science. Wherever
the individual has been given the largest freedom to do whatever he
pleases, as long as he does not trench upon the equal freedom of
others, there we witness all those achievements and discover all
those traits that indicate an advanced state of social progress.
The people are the most energetic, the most resourceful, the most
prosperous, the most considerate and humane, the most anxious, and the
most competent to care for their less fortunate fellows. On the other
hand, wherever the individual has been most repressed, deterred by
custom or legislation from making the most of himself in every way,
there are to be observed social immobility or retrogression and all
the hateful traits that belong to barbarians. The people are inert,
slavish, cruel, and superstitious. In the ancient world one type
of society is represented by the Egyptians and Assyrians, and the
other by the Greeks and Romans. In the modern world all the Oriental
peoples, particularly the Hindus and Chinese, represent the former, and
the Occidental peoples, particularly the Anglo-Saxons, represent the
latter. So superior, in fact, are the Anglo-Saxons because of their
observance of the sacred and fruitful principle of individual freedom
that they control the most desirable parts of the earth's surface. If
not checked by the practice of a philosophy that has destroyed all
the great peoples of antiquity and paralyzed their competitors in the
establishment of colonies in the New as well as the Old World, there is
no reason to doubt that the time will eventually come when, like the
Romans, there will be no other rule than theirs in all the choicest
parts of the globe.
It is the immense material superiority of the Anglo-Saxon peoples
over all other nations that first arrests attention. No people in
Europe possess the capital or conduct the enterprises that the
English and Americans do. They have more railroads, more steamships,
more factories, more foundries, more warehouses, more of everything
that requires wealth and energy than their rivals. Though the fact
evokes the sneers of the Ruskins and Carlyles, these enterprises are
the indispensable agents of civilization. They have done more for
civilization, for the union of distant peoples, and the development of
fellow-feeling--for all that makes life worth living--than all the art,
literature, and theology ever produced. Without industry and commerce,
which these devotees of "the higher life" never weary of deprecating,
how would the inhabitants of the Italian republics have achieved the
intellectual and artistic conquests that make them the admiration of
every historian? The Stones of Venice could not have been written. The
artists could not have lived that enabled Vassari to hand his name
down to posterity. The new learning would have been a flower planted
in a barren soil, and even before it had come to bud it would have
fallen withered. May we not, therefore, expect that in like manner the
wealth and freedom of the Anglo-Saxon race will bring forth fruits
that shall not evoke scorn and contempt? Already their achievements
in every field except painting, sculpture, and architecture eclipse
those of their rivals. Not excepting the literature of the Greeks,
is any so rich, varied, powerful, and voluminous as theirs? If they
have no Cæsar or Napoleon, they have a long list of men that have been
of infinitely greater use to civilization than those two products of
militant barbarism. If judged by practical results, they are without
rivals in the work of education. By their inventions and their
applications of the discoveries of science they have distanced all
competitors in the race for industrial and commercial supremacy. In
the work of philanthropy no people has done as much as they. The volume
of their personal effort and pecuniary contributions to ameliorate
the condition of the poor and unfortunate are without parallel in the
annals of charity. Yet Professor Ely, echoing the opinion of Charles
Booth and other misguided philanthropists, has the assurance to tell us
that "individualism has broken down." It is the social philosophy that
they are trying to thrust upon the world again that stands hopelessly
condemned before the remorseless tribunal of universal experience.
In the light thus obtained from science and history, the duty of the
American people toward the current social and political philosophy
and all the quack measures it proposes for the amelioration of the
condition of the unfortunate becomes clear and urgent. It is to
pursue without equivocation or deviation the policy of larger and
larger freedom for the individual that has given the Anglo-Saxon his
superiority and present dominance in the world. To this end they should
oppose with all possible vigor every proposed extension of the duty
of the state that does not look to the preservation of order and the
enforcement of justice. Regarding it as an onslaught of the forces of
barbarism, they should make no compromise with it; they should fight it
until freedom has triumphed. The next duty is to conquer the freedom
they still lack. Here the battle must be for the suppression of the
system of protective tariffs, for the transfer to private enterprise
and beneficence, the duties of the post office, the public schools, and
all public charities, for the repeal of all laws in regulation of trade
and industry as well as those in regulation of habits and morals. As
an inspiration it should be remembered that the struggle is not only
for freedom but for honesty. For the truth can not be too loudly or
too often proclaimed that every law taking a dollar from a man without
his consent, or regulating his conduct not in accordance with his own
notions, but in accordance with those of his neighbors, contributes to
the education of a people in idleness and crime. The next duty is to
encourage on every hand an appeal to voluntary effort to accomplish
all tasks too great for the strength of the individual. Whether those
tasks be moral, industrial, or educational, voluntary co-operation
alone should assume them and carry them to a successful issue. The
government should have no more to do with them than it has to do with
the cultivation of wheat or the management of Sunday schools or the
suppression of backbiting. The last and final duty should be to cheapen
and, as fast as possible, to establish gratuitous justice. With the
great diminution of crime that would result from the observance of the
duties already mentioned there would be much less occasion than now
to appeal to the courts. But, whenever the occasion arises, it should
involve no cost to the person that feels that his rights have been
invaded.
Thus will be solved indirectly all the problems of democracy that
social and political reformers seek in vain to solve directly. With the
diminution of the duties of the state to the preservation of order and
the enforcement of justice will be effected a reform as important and
far reaching as the suppression of chronic warfare. When politicians
are deprived of the immense plunder now involved in political warfare,
it will not be necessary to devise futile plans for caucus reform, or
ballot reform, or convention reform, or charter reform, or legislative
reform. Having no more incentive to engage in their nefarious business
than the smugglers that the abolition of the infamous tariff laws
banished from Europe, they will disappear among the crowd of honest
toilers. The suppression of the robberies of the tax collectors and
tax eaters, who have become so vast an army in the United States,
will effect also a solution of all labor problems. A society that
permits every toiler to work for whomsoever he pleases and for whatever
he pleases, protecting him in the full enjoyment of all the fruits
of his labor, has done for him everything that can be done. It has
taught him self-support and self-control. In thus guaranteeing him
freedom of contract and putting an end to the plunder of a bureaucracy
and privileged classes of private individuals, the beneficiaries of
special legislation, it has effected the only equitable distribution
of property possible. At the same time it has accomplished a vastly
greater work. As I have shown, the indispensable condition of success
of all movements for moral reform is the suppression not only of
militant strife, but of political strife. While they prevail, all
ecclesiastical and pedagogic efforts to better the condition of society
must fail. Despite lectures, despite sermons and prayers, despite also
literature and art, the ethics controlling the conduct of men and women
will be those of war. But with the abolition of both forms of militant
strife it becomes an easy task to teach the ethics of peace, and to
establish a state of society that requires no other government than
that of conscience. All the forces of industrialism contribute to the
work and insure its success.
* * * * *
"This thirst for shooting every rare or unwonted kind of bird," says
the author of an article in the London Saturday Review, "is accountable
for the disappearance of many interesting forms of life in the British
Islands."
AN ENGLISH UNIVERSITY.
BY HERBERT STOTESBURY.
[Illustration: MICHAEL FOSTER, K. C. B., M. A., F. R. S., Trinity.
Professor of Physiology.]
Most minds in America, as in England, if they think about the
subject at all, impute to the two ancient centers of Anglo-Saxon
learning--Oxford and Cambridge--an unquestionable supremacy. A halo
of greatness surrounds these august institutions, none the less real
because to the American mind, at least, it is vague. Half the books
students at other institutions require in their various courses have
the names of eminent Cambridge or Oxford men upon the fly leaf.
Michael Foster's Physiology, Sidgwick's Methods of Ethics, and Bryce's
American Commonwealth are recognized text-books wherever the subjects
of which they treat are studied; while Sir G. G. Stokes, Jebb, Lord
Acton, Caird, Max Müller, and Ray Lankester are as well known to
students of Leland Stanford or Princeton as they are to Englishmen.
One can scarcely read a work on English literature or open an English
novel which does not make some reference to one or other of the great
universities or their colleges, inseparably associated as they are
with English life and history, past and present. Our oldest college
owes its existence to John Harvard, of Emmanuel, Cambridge, and the
name of the mother university still clings to her transatlantic
offspring. The English institutions have become firmly associated in
the vulgar mind with all that is dignified, venerable, and thorough in
learning, but, beyond a vague sentiment of admiration, little adequate
knowledge on the subject is abroad. American or German universities are
organizations not very difficult to comprehend, and a vague knowledge
of them is perhaps sufficient. The understanding, however, of those
complicated academic communities, Oxford and Cambridge, is a matter of
intimate experience. They differ widely from their sister institutions
in other countries, and in attempting to give some conception of
their peculiarities the writer proposes to restrict himself chiefly
to Cambridge, because there are not very many striking differences
between the latter and Oxford, and because the scientific supremacy
of Cambridge is sufficiently established to render her an object of
greater interest to the readers of the Science Monthly.
[Illustration: The Right Hon. LORD ACTON, M. A., LL. D., Trinity.
Professor of Modern History.]
First of all, it must be borne in mind that throughout most of their
history these institutions have been closely related, not to the body
of the people, but to the aristocracy. This was not so much the case
at first, before the university became an aggregate of colleges. Then
a rather poor and humble class were enabled, through the small expense
involved, to acquire the rudiments of an education, and even to become
proficient in the scholastic dialectic. But ere long, and with the
gradual endowment of different colleges, the expenses of a student
became much greater, and, save where scholarships could be obtained,
it required some affluence before parents could afford to give their
sons an academic training. Hence, the more fortunate or aristocratic
classes came in time to contribute the large majority of the student
body. Those whose intellectual attainments were so unusual as to
constitute ways and means have never been debarred, but impecunious
mediocrity had and still has little place or opportunity. It is well to
remember, in addition, that the Church fostered these universities in
their infancy, that it deserves unqualified credit for having nursed
them through their early months, and that it continues to have some
considerable influence over the modern institutions. Finally, the
growth of Cambridge and Oxford has largely been occasioned by lack of
rivals in their own class. In this branch or that, other institutions
have become deservedly famous. Edinburgh has a high reputation in
moral science; Manchester is renowned for her physics, chemistry,
and engineering; and London for her medical schools. But Oxford and
Cambridge are strong in many branches. Financially powerful, they are
able to attract the majority of promising and eminent men, whence has
resulted that remarkable _coterie_ of unrivaled intellects through whom
the above-named universities are chiefly known to the outer and foreign
world. This characteristic has its opposite illustrated in the United
States, where the tendency is centrifugal, no one or two universities
or colleges having advantages so decided as inevitably to attract most
of the best minds, and where, in consequence, the best minds are found
scattered from California to Harvard and Pennsylvania.
[Illustration: J. J. THOMSON, M. A., F. R. S., Trinity. Professor of
Experimental Physics.]
The characteristic peculiar to Cambridge and Oxford, and which
distinguishes them not only from American but also from all other
universities in England and elsewhere, is the college system. Thus
Cambridge is a collection of eighteen colleges which, though nominally
united to form one institution, are really distinct, inasmuch as
each is a separate community with its own buildings and grounds, its
own resident students, its own lecturers, and Fellows--a community
which is supported by its own moneys without aid from the university
exchequer, and which in most matters legislates for itself. The
system is not unlike the American Union on a small scale, with its
cluster of governments and their relation to a supreme center. The
advantages of this scheme might theoretically be very great. With
each college handsomely endowed and, though managing its own affairs,
entering freely, in addition, into those relations of reciprocity
which make for the good of the whole, one can readily imagine an
ideal academic commonwealth. And while the present condition of the
university can scarcely be said to approximate very closely to such
an academic Utopia, it yet derives from its constitution numerous
obvious advantages which universities otherwise constituted would and
do undoubtedly lack. The chief evils besetting the university are
perhaps more adventitious than inherent; they are largely financial,
and arise from carrying the system of college individualism too far. A
description of the college and university organization may make this
apparent. By its endowment a college must support a certain number
of Fellows and scholars. The latter form a temporary body, while the
former are more or less permanent, and therefore upon them devolves the
management of the college. Business is usually done by a council chosen
from the Fellows, and the election of new Fellows to fill vacancies is
made by this select body. The head of a college is known as the master;
he is elected by the Fellows save in one or two cases, where his
appointment rests with the crown or with certain wealthy individuals.
He lives in the college lodge especially built for him, draws a salary
large in proportion to the wealth of his college, and exerts an
influence corresponding to his intelligence.
[Illustration: G. H. DARWIN, M. A., F. R. S., Trinity. Plumian
Professor of Astronomy.]
The Fellows are in most cases chosen from those men who have achieved
the greatest success in an honor course. At Cambridge College
individualism has progressed so far that the Fellows of, say, Magdalen
must be Magdalen men, the students of Queens', St Catherine's, or any
other being ineligible save for their own fellowships. Oxford obtains
perhaps better men on the whole by throwing open the fellowships of
each particular college to the graduates of all, thus producing a
wider competition. A fellowship until recently was tenable for life,
but it has been reduced to about six years, the Fellows as a whole,
however, retaining the power to extend the period of possession. And,
further, the holding of a college office for fifteen years in general
qualifies for the holding of a fellowship for life, and for a pension
as lecturer or tutor. Thus a man is able to devote himself to research
with little fear that at the latter end of his career he will lack the
means of support. It is perhaps not too much to say that the offices of
college dean, tutor, and lecturer are more perquisites than anything
else. They are meant to keep and attract men of ability and parts.
However, their existence reacts upon the student body by augmenting
the expenses of the latter out of proportion to the benefits to be
obtained. For instance, instead of utilizing one set of lecturers for
one class of subjects, which all students could attend for a small fee,
each of the larger colleges, at any rate, pays special lecturers, drawn
from its own Fellows, to speak upon the same subjects each to a mere
handful of men from their own college only. The tutor is another luxury
inherited from the middle ages and therefore retained, and one for
which the students have to pay dearly. The chief business of the tutor
is not to teach, but to "look after" a certain number of students who
are theoretically relegated to his charge. He looks up their lodgings
for them, pays their bills at the end of the term, gets them out of
scrapes, and draws a large salary. The tutorships seem to the writer
to be a good illustration of how an office necessary to one period
persists after that for which it was instituted has ceased to exist.
When the students of Oxford and Cambridge were many of them thirteen
and fourteen years of age, as in the fourteenth century, nurses were
doubtless necessary, but they are still retained when the greater
maturity of the students renders them not only unnecessary but at times
even an impertinence.
The dean is not, as with us, the head of a department; his functions
are not so many, his tasks far less onerous. It is before a college
dean that students are "hauled" for such offenses as irregularity at
chapel, returning to the college after 12 P. M., smoking in college
precincts, bringing dogs into the college grounds, and other villainous
offenses against regulations. A dean must also attend chapel. Some
colleges require two deans to struggle through these complicated and
laborious duties, though some possessing only a few dozen students
succeed in getting along with one.
The line of demarcation between the university and the colleges is
very distinct. The legislative influence of the former extends over a
comparatively restricted field. All professorial chairs and certain
lectureships belong to and are paid by the university; the latter
has the arranging of the curricula, the care of the laboratories,
the disposition of certain noncollegiate scholarships; but, broadly
speaking, its two functions are the examination of all students and the
conferring of degrees. The supreme legislative body is the senate,
and it is composed of all masters of arts, doctors, and bachelors
of divinity whose names still remain on the university books--that
is, who continue to pay certain fees into the university treasury.
In addition to the legislative body there is an executive head or
council of nineteen, including the chancellor--at present the Duke of
Devonshire--and the vice-chancellor. Both these bodies must govern
according to the statutes, no alteration in which can be effected
without recourse being had to Parliament. The senate is a peculiar
body, and on occasions becomes somewhat unwieldy. It consists at
present of some 6,800 members, of whom only 452 are in residence at
Cambridge. Upon ordinary occasions only these 452 vote upon questions
proposed by the council; but on occasions of great moment, as when
the question of granting university degrees to women came up, some
thousands or more of the nonresident members, who in many cases have
lost touch with the modern university and modern systems of education,
swarm to their alma mater, annihilate the champions of reform, and are
hailed by their brethren as the saviors of their university.
[Illustration: R. C. JEBB, Litt. D., M. P., Trinity. Regius Professor
of Greek.]