_WHEREFORE WE SHOULD LOVE ONE ANOTHER._
Suppose that a man, going through a wood, should be struck by a falling
tree and pinned down beneath it. Suppose that another man, coming that
way and finding him there, should, instead of hastening to give or to
bring aid, begin to lecture on the law of gravitation, taking the tree
as an illustration.
Suppose, again, that a person lecturing on the law of gravitation
should state the law of falling bodies, and suppose that an objector
should say: You state your law as a cold, mathematical fact and you
declare that all bodies will fall conformably to it. How heartless! You
do not reflect that it may be a beautiful little child falling from a
window.
These two suppositions may be of some use to us as illustrations.
Let us take the second first. It is the objection of the
sentimentalist; and, ridiculous as the mode of discussion appears when
applied to the laws of natural philosophy, the sociologist is
constantly met by objections of just that character. Especially when
the subject under discussion is charity in any of its public forms, the
attempt to bring method and clearness into the discussion is sure to be
crossed by suggestions which are as far from the point and as foreign
to any really intelligent point of view as the supposed speech in the
illustration. In the first place, a child would fall just as a stone
would fall. Nature's forces know no pity. Just so in sociology. The
forces know no pity. In the second place, if a natural philosopher
should discuss all the bodies which may fall, he would go entirely
astray, and would certainly do no good. The same is true of the
sociologist. He must concentrate, not scatter, and study laws, not all
conceivable combinations of force which may occur in practice. In the
third place, nobody ever saw a body fall as the philosophers say it
will fall, because they can accomplish nothing unless they study forces
separately, and allow for their combined action in all concrete and
actual phenomena. The same is true in sociology, with the additional
fact that the forces and their combinations in sociology are far the
most complex which we have to deal with. In the fourth place, any
natural philosopher who should stop, after stating the law of falling
bodies, to warn mothers not to let their children fall out of the
window, would make himself ridiculous. Just so a sociologist who should
attach moral applications and practical maxims to his investigations
would entirely miss his proper business. There is the force of gravity
as a fact in the world. If we understand this, the necessity of care
to conform to the action of gravity meets us at every step in our
private life and personal experience. The fact in sociology is in no
wise different.
If, for instance, we take political economy, that science does not
teach an individual how to get rich. It is a social science. It treats
of the laws of the material welfare of human societies. It is,
therefore, only one science among all the sciences which inform us
about the laws and conditions of our life on earth. Education has for
its object to give a man knowledge of the conditions and laws of
living, so that, in any case in which the individual stands face to
face with the necessity of deciding what to do, if he is an educated
man, he may know how to make a wise and intelligent decision. If he
knows chemistry, physics, geology, and other sciences, he will know
what he must encounter of obstacle or help in Nature in what he
proposes to do. If he knows physiology and hygiene, he will know what
effects on health he must expect in one course or another. If he knows
political economy, he will know what effect on wealth and on the
welfare of society one course or another will produce. There is no
injunction, no "ought" in political economy at all. It does not assume
to tell man what he ought to do, any more than chemistry tells us that
we ought to mix things, or mathematics that we ought to solve
equations. It only gives one element necessary to an intelligent
decision, and in every practical and concrete case the responsibility
of deciding what to do rests on the man who has to act. The economist,
therefore, does not say to any one, You ought never to give money to
charity. He contradicts anybody who says, You ought to give money to
charity; and, in opposition to any such person, he says, Let me show
you what difference it makes to you, to others, to society, whether you
give money to charity or not, so that you can make a wise and
intelligent decision. Certainly there is no harder thing to do than to
employ capital charitably. It would be extreme folly to say that
nothing of that sort ought to be done, but I fully believe that today
the next pernicious thing to vice is charity in its broad and popular
sense.
In the preceding chapters I have discussed the public and social
relations of classes, and those social topics in which groups of
persons are considered as groups or classes, without regard to personal
merits or demerits. I have relegated all charitable work to the domain
of private relations, where personal acquaintance and personal
estimates may furnish the proper limitations and guarantees. A man who
had no sympathies and no sentiments would be a very poor creature; but
the public charities, more especially the legislative charities,
nourish no man's sympathies and sentiments. Furthermore, it ought to
be distinctly perceived that any charitable and benevolent effort which
any man desires to make voluntarily, to see if he can do any good, lies
entirely beyond the field of discussion. It would be as impertinent to
prevent his effort as it is to force co-operation in an effort on some
one who does not want to participate in it. What I choose to do by way
of exercising my own sympathies under my own reason and conscience is
one thing; what another man forces me to do of a sympathetic character,
because his reason and conscience approve of it, is quite another
thing.
What, now, is the reason why we should help each other? This carries us
back to the other illustration with which we started. We may
philosophize as coolly and correctly as we choose about our duties and
about the laws of right living; no one of us lives up to what he knows.
The man struck by the falling tree has, perhaps, been careless. We are
all careless. Environed as we are by risks and perils, which befall us
as misfortunes, no man of us is in a position to say, "I know all the
laws, and am sure to obey them all; therefore I shall never need aid
and sympathy." At the very best, one of us fails in one way and another
in another, if we do not fail altogether. Therefore the man under the
tree is the one of us who for the moment is smitten. It may be you
to-morrow, and I next day. It is the common frailty in the midst of a
common peril which gives us a kind of solidarity of interest to rescue
the one for whom the chances of life have turned out badly just now.
Probably the victim is to blame. He almost always is so. A lecture to
that effect in the crisis of his peril would be out of place, because
it would not fit the need of the moment; but it would be very much in
place at another time, when the need was to avert the repetition of
such an accident to somebody else. Men, therefore, owe to men, in the
chances and perils of this life, aid and sympathy, on account of the
common participation in human frailty and folly. This observation,
however, puts aid and sympathy in the field of private and personal
relations, under the regulation of reason and conscience, and gives no
ground for mechanical and impersonal schemes.
We may, then, distinguish four things:
1. The function of science is to investigate truth. Science is
colorless and impersonal. It investigates the force of gravity, and
finds out the laws of that force, and has nothing to do with the weal
or woe of men under the operation of the law.
2. The moral deductions as to what one ought to do are to be drawn by
the reason and conscience of the individual man who is instructed by
science. Let him take note of the force of gravity, and see to it that
he does not walk off a precipice or get in the way of a falling body.
3. On account of the number and variety of perils of all kinds by which
our lives are environed, and on account of ignorance, carelessness, and
folly, we all neglect to obey the moral deductions which we have
learned, so that, in fact, the wisest and the best of us act foolishly
and suffer.
4. The law of sympathy, by which we share each others' burdens, is to
do as we would be done by. It is not a scientific principle, and does
not admit of such generalization or interpretation that A can tell B
what this law enjoins on B to do. Hence the relations of sympathy and
sentiment are essentially limited to two persons only, and they cannot
be made a basis for the relations of groups of persons, or for
discussion by any third party.
Social improvement is not to be won by direct effort. It is secondary,
and results from physical or economic improvements. That is the reason
why schemes of direct social amelioration always have an arbitrary,
sentimental, and artificial character, while true social advance must
be a product and a growth. The efforts which are being put forth for
every kind of progress in the arts and sciences are, therefore,
contributing to true social progress. Let any one learn what hardship
was involved, even for a wealthy person, a century ago, in crossing the
Atlantic, and then let him compare that hardship even with a steerage
passage at the present time, considering time and money cost. This
improvement in transportation by which "the poor and weak" can be
carried from the crowded centres of population to the new land is worth
more to them than all the schemes of all the social reformers. An
improvement in surgical instruments or in anaesthetics really does more
for those who are not well off than all the declamations of the orators
and pious wishes of the reformers. Civil service reform would be a
greater gain to the laborers than innumerable factory acts and
eight-hour laws. Free trade would be a greater blessing to "the poor
man" than all the devices of all the friends of humanity if they could
be realized. If the economists could satisfactorily solve the problem
of the regulation of paper currency, they would do more for the wages
class than could be accomplished by all the artificial doctrines about
wages which they seem to feel bound to encourage. If we could get firm
and good laws passed for the management of savings-banks, and then
refrain from the amendments by which those laws are gradually broken
down, we should do more for the non-capitalist class than by volumes
of laws against "corporations" and the "excessive power of capital."
We each owe to the other mutual redress of grievances. It has been
said, in answer to my argument in the last chapter about the Forgotten
Women and thread, that the tax on thread is "only a little thing," and
that it cannot hurt the women much, and also that, if the women do not
want to pay two cents a spool tax, there is thread of an inferior
quality, which they can buy cheaper. These answers represent the
bitterest and basest social injustice. Every honest citizen of a free
state owes it to himself, to the community, and especially to those who
are at once weak and wronged, to go to their assistance and to help
redress their wrongs. Whenever a law or social arrangement acts so as
to injure any one, and that one the humblest, then there is a duty on
those who are stronger, or who know better, to demand and fight for
redress and correction. When generalized this means that it is the duty
of All-of-us (that is, the State) to establish justice for all, from
the least to the greatest, and in all matters. This, however, is no new
doctrine. It is only the old, true, and indisputable function of the
State; and in working for a redress of wrongs and a correction of
legislative abuses, we are only struggling to a fuller realization of
it--that is, working to improve civil government.
We each owe it to the other to guarantee rights. Rights do not pertain
to _results_, but only to _chances_. They pertain to the _conditions_
of the struggle for existence, not to any of the results of it; to the
_pursuit_ of happiness, not to the possession of happiness. It cannot
be said that each one has a right to have some property, because if one
man had such a right some other man or men would be under a
corresponding obligation to provide him with some property. Each has a
right to acquire and possess property if he can. It is plain what
fallacies are developed when we overlook this distinction. Those
fallacies run through _all_ socialistic schemes and theories. If we
take rights to pertain to results, and then say that rights must be
equal, we come to say that men have a right to be equally happy, and so
on in all the details. Rights should be equal, because they pertain to
chances, and all ought to have equal chances so far as chances are
provided or limited by the action of society. This, however, will not
produce equal results, but it is right just because it will produce
unequal results--that is, results which shall be proportioned to the
merits of individuals. We each owe it to the other to guarantee
mutually the chance to earn, to possess, to learn, to marry, etc.,
etc., against any interference which would prevent the exercise of
those rights by a person who wishes to prosecute and enjoy them in
peace for the pursuit of happiness. If we generalize this, it means
that All-of-us ought to guarantee rights to each of us. But our modern
free, constitutional States are constructed entirely on the notion of
rights, and we regard them as performing their functions more and more
perfectly according as they guarantee rights in consonance with the
constantly corrected and expanded notions of rights from one generation
to another. Therefore, when we say that we owe it to each other to
guarantee rights we only say that we ought to prosecute and improve our
political science.
If we have in mind the value of chances to earn, learn, possess, etc.,
for a man of independent energy, we can go on one step farther in our
deductions about help. The only help which is generally expedient, even
within the limits of the private and personal relations of two persons
to each other, is that which consists in helping a man to help himself.
This always consists in opening the chances. A man of assured position
can by an effort which is of no appreciable importance to him, give aid
which is of incalculable value to a man who is all ready to make his
own career if he can only get a chance. The truest and deepest pathos
in this world is not that of suffering but that of brave struggling.
The truest sympathy is not compassion, but a fellow-feeling with
courage and fortitude in the midst of noble effort.
Now, the aid which helps a man to help himself is not in the least akin
to the aid which is given in charity. If alms are given, or if we "make
work" for a man, or "give him employment," or "protect" him, we simply
take a product from one and give it to another. If we help a man to
help himself, by opening the chances around him, we put him in a
position to add to the wealth of the community by putting new powers in
operation to produce. It would seem that the difference between getting
something already in existence from the one who has it, and producing a
new thing by applying new labor to natural materials, would be so plain
as never to be forgotten; but the fallacy of confusing the two is one
of the commonest in all social discussions.
We have now seen that the current discussions about the claims and
rights of social classes on each other are radically erroneous and
fallacious, and we have seen that an analysis of the general
obligations which we all have to each other leads us to nothing but an
emphatic repetition of old but well acknowledged obligations to perfect
our political institutions. We have been led to restriction, not
extension, of the functions of the State, but we have also been led to
see the necessity of purifying and perfecting the operation of the
State in the functions which properly belong to it. If we refuse to
recognize any classes as existing in society when, perhaps, a claim
might be set up that the wealthy, educated, and virtuous have acquired
special rights and precedence, we certainly cannot recognize any
classes when it is attempted to establish such distinctions for the
sake of imposing burdens and duties on one group for the benefit of
others. The men who have not done their duty in this world never can be
equal to those who have done their duty more or less well. If words
like wise and foolish, thrifty and extravagant, prudent and negligent,
have any meaning in language, then it must make some difference how
people behave in this world, and the difference will appear in the
position they acquire in the body of society, and in relation to the
chances of life. They may, then, be classified in reference to these
facts. Such classes always will exist; no other social distinctions can
endure. If, then, we look to the origin and definition of these
classes, we shall find it impossible to deduce any obligations which
one of them bears to the other. The class distinctions simply result
from the different degrees of success with which men have availed
themselves of the chances which were presented to them. Instead of
endeavoring to redistribute the acquisitions which have been made
between the existing classes, our aim should be to _increase,
multiply, and extend the chances_. Such is the work of civilization.
Every old error or abuse which is removed opens new chances of
development to all the new energy of society. Every improvement in
education, science, art, or government expands the chances of man on
earth. Such expansion is no guarantee of equality. On the contrary, if
there be liberty, some will profit by the chances eagerly and some will
neglect them altogether. Therefore, the greater the chances the more
unequal will be the fortune of these two sets of men. So it ought to
be, in all justice and right reason. The yearning after equality is the
offspring of envy and covetousness, and there is no possible plan for
satisfying that yearning which can do aught else than rob A to give to
B; consequently all such plans nourish some of the meanest vices of
human nature, waste capital, and overthrow civilization. But if we can
expand the chances we can count on a general and steady growth of
civilization and advancement of society by and through its best
members. In the prosecution of these chances we all owe to each other
good-will, mutual respect, and mutual guarantees of liberty and
security. Beyond this nothing can be affirmed as a duty of one group to
another in a free state.
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