By reason of his physical nature man is hampered by three wants—he
needs food, clothing, and shelter. In his first and lowest stage of
civilisation man lives in a state of enthrallment to nature. He dreads
and worships the cruel forces of matter. But by the aid of science, and
invention which flows from science, man attains domination or control
over things and forces and directs them into the service of humanity for
use or for beauty. The soul conquers nature by science and machinery and
then it next desires to see this conquest over nature reflected in works
of art. Hence it creates architecture, sculpture, painting, music, and
poetry, all of these fine arts portraying man’s victory over wants and
necessities.
If the spectacle of pauperism and crime, the savagery that still lingers
in the slums of our cities, sternly reminds us of the yet feeble hold
which our civilisation has obtained even in cities—if the census of
mankind proves that three-fourths are yet counted as below the line
that separates the half-civilised from the civilised—yet we are wont to
console ourselves by the promise and potency which we can all discern
in productive industry aided by the might of science and invention.
This view is always hopeful. We see that there is a sort of geometric
progress in the conquest over things and forces. The ability of man to
create wealth continually accelerates. The more he obtains the more
he can obtain. The more each one gets the more his neighbor also can
get. Even the weakling of society, the pauper or beggar, the insane,
and the criminal all fare better in the centres of wealth than they do
at a distance from them where there is no wealth to beg or steal and
no asylums created and sustained by wealth to shelter and heal their
diseased bodies.
Wealth in the modern sense of the word, far more than in its ancient
sense, is self-productive. It is capital, and capital is wealth
that generates wealth. Capital represents conquered forces and
things—conquered for the supply of human wants. Capital consists of
natural forces yoked and set to work for food, clothing, shelter, and the
facilities of human culture. The three physical wants (food, clothing,
and shelter) are produced by nature—they are the chains and fetters
whereby nature asserts her right to enslave humanity—to keep man in a
state of thralldom.
But the Promethean cunning of man, realised first in science and next
in useful machines, has succeeded in subduing the powers of nature and
imposing on them the task of supplying and gratifying the very needs
which nature creates in us. Nature had chained man to the task of daily
toil for food, clothing, and shelter. But man turns back upon nature and
compels her to take the place of human drudgery and produce an abundance
of these needed supplies and bring them wherever they are needed for
consumption. This is accomplished by mechanical combinations that secure
the service of steam, electricity, and various devices of earth, air,
fire, and water.
This self-generating wealth that exists in the shape of capital is so
much on the increase that it fills all classes of our population with
hopes or if not with hopes at least with discontents—and discontent is
certainly the product of hope struggling up from the depths of the soul.
Without the vivid perception of a higher ideal and without the feeling
that it is attainable, there would not be any such thing as discontent.
The average production of man, woman, and child in the United States
increased in the thirty years between 1850 and 1880 from about 25 cents
per day to 40 cents per day—an increase of over 60 per cent. This means
the production of far more substantial improvements for human comfort.
Much more wealth is created that possesses an enduring character and may
be handed down to the next generation. Finer dwellings, better roads and
streets, fences for lands, drainings and levelings, and the processes
necessary to bring wild land under cultivation, artificial supplies
of water and gas, the warehouses and elevators, and the appliances of
commerce—and finally the buildings and furnishings of culture, including
churches, schools, libraries, museums, asylums, and all manner of
public buildings. Great Britain, the leading nation in commerce and
manufactures, according to the returns for 1888 (see Mulhall’s “Dict.
Statistics,” new edition) distributed comfortable incomes of $1000 and
upwards to each family of 30 per cent. of the entire population, and the
remaining 70 per cent. averaged $485 per annum (for each family). France
provided incomes of $1300 per annum for 24 per cent. of its families.
This shows what great capitalists are doing for the creation and
distribution of wealth. Italy showed by its income returns that less than
2 per cent. received incomes of $1000 and upwards, while 98 per cent. of
the families averaged less than $300 income. Italy makes little use of
steam power and labor saving machines.
If science progresses and its concomitant, useful invention, progresses
as fast for the next hundred years as it has done for the past forty
years, the vision of Edward Bellamy of comfort for all will be realised
without the necessity of any form of socialism. There will be comfort and
even luxury for all who will labor a moderate amount of time.
Science inventories nature and discovers properties and possible
combinations. Invention uses these combinations to meet mechanical
problems. Can any one doubt who looks into the state of science and its
continually improving methods that the conquest of nature will be more
rapid in the coming century than it has been in the past century?
But we are challenged by the question: What is the good of annihilating
the necessity for bodily toil? Will not man degenerate spiritually as
he comes to possess luxury at cheaper and cheaper rates? These material
advantages gained by useful invention which create a steady and permanent
supply of food, clothing, and shelter, are they not mere sumptuary
provisions and do they imply progress in civilisation? To this challenge
we reply by pointing out the relation of invention to the communication
of intelligence and the diffusion of knowledge by newspaper and book.
In the first place it is obvious that the three classes of employments
devoted chiefly to the supply of the physical wants—namely agriculture,
manufactures, and commerce—are undergoing change by aid of mechanic
invention in such a manner as to bring the laborer everywhere more and
more into relation with his fellow men. In other words commerce increases
more and more, and becomes a part of all employments. In exchanging goods
each gets something that he needed more than what he parted with. But the
best result of the exchange is the acquaintance formed between producer
and consumer. Each has learned something of the other’s ideas, modes of
looking at the world and habits of action. Each one’s life is enriched by
the addition of the knowledge of the life of the other.
Man as a spiritual being has for his problem the exploration of the two
worlds—the worlds of nature and man. The problem is too great for the
individual and he must avail himself of the work of others. Each man may
inventory a small portion of nature different from all others. Each one
may live a life different from another’s. But the individual gets a very
small glimpse of nature by the aid of his own senses. He gets a very
small arc of the total of human life in his survey of his own biography.
But by intercommunication each one may extend and supplement his own
observations of nature and of the experience of life,—he may avail
himself of the aid of the sense-perceptions of others and still more of
the aid of the thoughts and reflections of others.
We see at once that man is man because he possesses and uses this means
of re-enforcing his individual observations and reflections by those of
the race. Man is an individual endowed with the power of absorbing the
results of the race. We have with this a definition of civilisation and a
standard of measurement by which we may determine the rate of progress.
Advancement means that there are improved means realised by which each
individual can give to the rest of mankind the results of his living and
doing and thinking and at the same time share in the lives, thoughts, and
deeds of others.
Looked at in the light of this definition we shall be enabled to claim
progress in civilisation on substantial grounds. We shall be able to
see something more hopeful in the material progress promised us in
the coming century than the cheap supply of bodily comforts. We see
a progressive increase of intercommunication which will enable each
individual to command the results of the rational intelligence of all
mankind.
Man is first a speaking animal and next a writing animal. Each
word that he uses expresses a general meaning. Each word therefore
stores up an indefinite amount of experience. All men may pour into
it their experience and by it recognise the experience of others.
The art of writing at once increases infinitely the possibility of
intercommunication because it preserves the experience recorded for
persons widely separated in space and far removed in time. It renders
every _where_ in some sense a _here_ and every _when_ a _now_. But
mechanic invention comes to the aid of speech and the elementary arts of
writing by printing with movable types. Printing and gunpowder are two
great elementary arts both attributed to the Germanic race—the two wheels
of modern civilisation so to speak. But the Anglo-Saxon has added the
steam engine and the telegraph. The one makes locomotion possible to an
increasing degree and the other makes instantaneous intercommunication
with all places possible.
Armed with these instrumentalities our modern civilisation lives in a
sort of spiritual border land. It looks across the frontier and is in
a constant process of interaction with all other nations. The great
instrument of this process is the daily newspaper. Our people are
becoming from year to year a travelled people—in a short time the per
cent. of the population that has crossed the ocean has doubled. The
per cent. that has visited the western border land has quadrupled. But
the number of people who live in constant daily interrelation with all
mankind by aid of the daily newspaper has increased a hundred fold within
a single generation.
The test of a civilisation is its efficiency in re-enforcing the
endeavors of each individual so as to give him access to the labors of
the world. We are approaching a spiritual civilisation as well as an era
of the general distribution of wealth.