[Illustration]
The Iron Heel
by Jack London
Contents
FOREWORD
I. MY EAGLE
II. CHALLENGES
III. JACKSON’S ARM
IV. SLAVES OF THE MACHINE
V. THE PHILOMATHS
VI. ADUMBRATIONS
VII. THE BISHOP’S VISION
VIII. THE MACHINE BREAKERS
IX. THE MATHEMATICS OF A DREAM
X. THE VORTEX
XI. THE GREAT ADVENTURE
XII. THE BISHOP
XIII. THE GENERAL STRIKE
XIV. THE BEGINNING OF THE END
XV. LAST DAYS
XVI. THE END
XVII. THE SCARLET LIVERY
XVIII. IN THE SHADOW OF SONOMA
XIX. TRANSFORMATION
XX. A LOST OLIGARCH
XXI. THE ROARING ABYSMAL BEAST
XXII. THE CHICAGO COMMUNE
XXIII. THE PEOPLE OF THE ABYSS
XXIV. NIGHTMARE
XXV. THE TERRORISTS
“At first, this Earth, a stage so gloomed with woe
You almost sicken at the shifting of the scenes.
And yet be patient. Our Playwright may show
In some fifth act what this Wild Drama means.”
THE IRON HEEL
FOREWORD
It cannot be said that the Everhard Manuscript is an important
historical document. To the historian it bristles with errors—not
errors of fact, but errors of interpretation. Looking back across the
seven centuries that have lapsed since Avis Everhard completed her
manuscript, events, and the bearings of events, that were confused and
veiled to her, are clear to us. She lacked perspective. She was too
close to the events she writes about. Nay, she was merged in the events
she has described.
Nevertheless, as a personal document, the Everhard Manuscript is of
inestimable value. But here again enter error of perspective, and
vitiation due to the bias of love. Yet we smile, indeed, and forgive
Avis Everhard for the heroic lines upon which she modelled her husband.
We know to-day that he was not so colossal, and that he loomed among
the events of his times less largely than the Manuscript would lead us
to believe.
We know that Ernest Everhard was an exceptionally strong man, but not
so exceptional as his wife thought him to be. He was, after all, but
one of a large number of heroes who, throughout the world, devoted
their lives to the Revolution; though it must be conceded that he did
unusual work, especially in his elaboration and interpretation of
working-class philosophy. “Proletarian science” and “proletarian
philosophy” were his phrases for it, and therein he shows the
provincialism of his mind—a defect, however, that was due to the times
and that none in that day could escape.
But to return to the Manuscript. Especially valuable is it in
communicating to us the _feel_ of those terrible times. Nowhere do we
find more vividly portrayed the psychology of the persons that lived in
that turbulent period embraced between the years 1912 and 1932—their
mistakes and ignorance, their doubts and fears and misapprehensions,
their ethical delusions, their violent passions, their inconceivable
sordidness and selfishness. These are the things that are so hard for
us of this enlightened age to understand. History tells us that these
things were, and biology and psychology tell us why they were; but
history and biology and psychology do not make these things alive. We
accept them as facts, but we are left without sympathetic comprehension
of them.
This sympathy comes to us, however, as we peruse the Everhard
Manuscript. We enter into the minds of the actors in that long-ago
world-drama, and for the time being their mental processes are our
mental processes. Not alone do we understand Avis Everhard’s love for
her hero-husband, but we feel, as he felt, in those first days, the
vague and terrible loom of the Oligarchy. The Iron Heel (well named) we
feel descending upon and crushing mankind.
And in passing we note that that historic phrase, the Iron Heel,
originated in Ernest Everhard’s mind. This, we may say, is the one moot
question that this new-found document clears up. Previous to this, the
earliest-known use of the phrase occurred in the pamphlet, “Ye Slaves,”
written by George Milford and published in December, 1912. This George
Milford was an obscure agitator about whom nothing is known, save the
one additional bit of information gained from the Manuscript, which
mentions that he was shot in the Chicago Commune. Evidently he had
heard Ernest Everhard make use of the phrase in some public speech,
most probably when he was running for Congress in the fall of 1912.
From the Manuscript we learn that Everhard used the phrase at a private
dinner in the spring of 1912. This is, without discussion, the
earliest-known occasion on which the Oligarchy was so designated.
The rise of the Oligarchy will always remain a cause of secret wonder
to the historian and the philosopher. Other great historical events
have their place in social evolution. They were inevitable. Their
coming could have been predicted with the same certitude that
astronomers to-day predict the outcome of the movements of stars.
Without these other great historical events, social evolution could not
have proceeded. Primitive communism, chattel slavery, serf slavery, and
wage slavery were necessary stepping-stones in the evolution of
society. But it were ridiculous to assert that the Iron Heel was a
necessary stepping-stone. Rather, to-day, is it adjudged a step aside,
or a step backward, to the social tyrannies that made the early world a
hell, but that were as necessary as the Iron Heel was unnecessary.
Black as Feudalism was, yet the coming of it was inevitable. What else
than Feudalism could have followed upon the breakdown of that great
centralized governmental machine known as the Roman Empire? Not so,
however, with the Iron Heel. In the orderly procedure of social
evolution there was no place for it. It was not necessary, and it was
not inevitable. It must always remain the great curiosity of history—a
whim, a fantasy, an apparition, a thing unexpected and undreamed; and
it should serve as a warning to those rash political theorists of
to-day who speak with certitude of social processes.
Capitalism was adjudged by the sociologists of the time to be the
culmination of bourgeois rule, the ripened fruit of the bourgeois
revolution. And we of to-day can but applaud that judgment. Following
upon Capitalism, it was held, even by such intellectual and
antagonistic giants as Herbert Spencer, that Socialism would come. Out
of the decay of self-seeking capitalism, it was held, would arise that
flower of the ages, the Brotherhood of Man. Instead of which, appalling
alike to us who look back and to those that lived at the time,
capitalism, rotten-ripe, sent forth that monstrous offshoot, the
Oligarchy.
Too late did the socialist movement of the early twentieth century
divine the coming of the Oligarchy. Even as it was divined, the
Oligarchy was there—a fact established in blood, a stupendous and awful
reality. Nor even then, as the Everhard Manuscript well shows, was any
permanence attributed to the Iron Heel. Its overthrow was a matter of a
few short years, was the judgment of the revolutionists. It is true,
they realized that the Peasant Revolt was unplanned, and that the First
Revolt was premature; but they little realized that the Second Revolt,
planned and mature, was doomed to equal futility and more terrible
punishment.
It is apparent that Avis Everhard completed the Manuscript during the
last days of preparation for the Second Revolt; hence the fact that
there is no mention of the disastrous outcome of the Second Revolt. It
is quite clear that she intended the Manuscript for immediate
publication, as soon as the Iron Heel was overthrown, so that her
husband, so recently dead, should receive full credit for all that he
had ventured and accomplished. Then came the frightful crushing of the
Second Revolt, and it is probable that in the moment of danger, ere she
fled or was captured by the Mercenaries, she hid the Manuscript in the
hollow oak at Wake Robin Lodge.
Of Avis Everhard there is no further record. Undoubtedly she was
executed by the Mercenaries; and, as is well known, no record of such
executions was kept by the Iron Heel. But little did she realize, even
then, as she hid the Manuscript and prepared to flee, how terrible had
been the breakdown of the Second Revolt. Little did she realize that
the tortuous and distorted evolution of the next three centuries would
compel a Third Revolt and a Fourth Revolt, and many Revolts, all
drowned in seas of blood, ere the world-movement of labor should come
into its own. And little did she dream that for seven long centuries
the tribute of her love to Ernest Everhard would repose undisturbed in
the heart of the ancient oak of Wake Robin Lodge.
ANTHONY MEREDITH
ARDIS,
November 27, 419 B.O.M.
THE IRON HEEL
CHAPTER I.
MY EAGLE
The soft summer wind stirs the redwoods, and Wild-Water ripples sweet
cadences over its mossy stones. There are butterflies in the sunshine,
and from everywhere arises the drowsy hum of bees. It is so quiet and
peaceful, and I sit here, and ponder, and am restless. It is the quiet
that makes me restless. It seems unreal. All the world is quiet, but it
is the quiet before the storm. I strain my ears, and all my senses, for
some betrayal of that impending storm. Oh, that it may not be
premature! That it may not be premature![1]
[1] The Second Revolt was largely the work of Ernest Everhard, though
he coöperated, of course, with the European leaders. The capture and
secret execution of Everhard was the great event of the spring of 1932
A.D. Yet so thoroughly had he prepared for the revolt, that his
fellow-conspirators were able, with little confusion or delay, to
carry out his plans. It was after Everhard’s execution that his wife
went to Wake Robin Lodge, a small bungalow in the Sonoma Hills of
California.
Small wonder that I am restless. I think, and think, and I cannot cease
from thinking. I have been in the thick of life so long that I am
oppressed by the peace and quiet, and I cannot forbear from dwelling
upon that mad maelstrom of death and destruction so soon to burst
forth. In my ears are the cries of the stricken; and I can see, as I
have seen in the past,[2] all the marring and mangling of the sweet,
beautiful flesh, and the souls torn with violence from proud bodies and
hurled to God. Thus do we poor humans attain our ends, striving through
carnage and destruction to bring lasting peace and happiness upon the
earth.
[2] Without doubt she here refers to the Chicago Commune.
And then I am lonely. When I do not think of what is to come, I think
of what has been and is no more—my Eagle, beating with tireless wings
the void, soaring toward what was ever his sun, the flaming ideal of
human freedom. I cannot sit idly by and wait the great event that is
his making, though he is not here to see. He devoted all the years of
his manhood to it, and for it he gave his life. It is his handiwork. He
made it.[3]
[3] With all respect to Avis Everhard, it must be pointed out that
Everhard was but one of many able leaders who planned the Second
Revolt. And we to-day, looking back across the centuries, can safely
say that even had he lived, the Second Revolt would not have been less
calamitous in its outcome than it was.
And so it is, in this anxious time of waiting, that I shall write of my
husband. There is much light that I alone of all persons living can
throw upon his character, and so noble a character cannot be blazoned
forth too brightly. His was a great soul, and, when my love grows
unselfish, my chiefest regret is that he is not here to witness
to-morrow’s dawn. We cannot fail. He has built too stoutly and too
surely for that. Woe to the Iron Heel! Soon shall it be thrust back
from off prostrate humanity. When the word goes forth, the labor hosts
of all the world shall rise. There has been nothing like it in the
history of the world. The solidarity of labor is assured, and for the
first time will there be an international revolution wide as the world
is wide.[4]
[4] The Second Revolt was truly international. It was a colossal
plan—too colossal to be wrought by the genius of one man alone. Labor,
in all the oligarchies of the world, was prepared to rise at the
signal. Germany, Italy, France, and all Australasia were labor
countries—socialist states. They were ready to lend aid to the
revolution. Gallantly they did; and it was for this reason, when the
Second Revolt was crushed, that they, too, were crushed by the united
oligarchies of the world, their socialist governments being replaced
by oligarchical governments.
You see, I am full of what is impending. I have lived it day and night
utterly and for so long that it is ever present in my mind. For that
matter, I cannot think of my husband without thinking of it. He was the
soul of it, and how can I possibly separate the two in thought?
As I have said, there is much light that I alone can throw upon his
character. It is well known that he toiled hard for liberty and
suffered sore. How hard he toiled and how greatly he suffered, I well
know; for I have been with him during these twenty anxious years and I
know his patience, his untiring effort, his infinite devotion to the
Cause for which, only two months gone, he laid down his life.
I shall try to write simply and to tell here how Ernest Everhard
entered my life—how I first met him, how he grew until I became a part
of him, and the tremendous changes he wrought in my life. In this way
may you look at him through my eyes and learn him as I learned him—in
all save the things too secret and sweet for me to tell.
It was in February, 1912, that I first met him, when, as a guest of my
father’s[5] at dinner, he came to our house in Berkeley. I cannot say
that my very first impression of him was favorable. He was one of many
at dinner, and in the drawing-room where we gathered and waited for all
to arrive, he made a rather incongruous appearance. It was “preacher’s
night,” as my father privately called it, and Ernest was certainly out
of place in the midst of the churchmen.
[5] John Cunningham, Avis Everhard’s father, was a professor at the
State University at Berkeley, California. His chosen field was
physics, and in addition he did much original research and was greatly
distinguished as a scientist. His chief contribution to science was
his studies of the electron and his monumental work on the
“Identification of Matter and Energy,” wherein he established, beyond
cavil and for all time, that the ultimate unit of matter and the
ultimate unit of force were identical. This idea had been earlier
advanced, but not demonstrated, by Sir Oliver Lodge and other students
in the new field of radio-activity.
In the first place, his clothes did not fit him. He wore a ready-made
suit of dark cloth that was ill adjusted to his body. In fact, no
ready-made suit of clothes ever could fit his body. And on this night,
as always, the cloth bulged with his muscles, while the coat between
the shoulders, what of the heavy shoulder-development, was a maze of
wrinkles. His neck was the neck of a prize-fighter,[6] thick and
strong. So this was the social philosopher and ex-horseshoer my father
had discovered, was my thought. And he certainly looked it with those
bulging muscles and that bull-throat. Immediately I classified him—a
sort of prodigy, I thought, a Blind Tom[7] of the working class.
[6] In that day it was the custom of men to compete for purses of
money. They fought with their hands. When one was beaten into
insensibility or killed, the survivor took the money.
[7] This obscure reference applies to a blind negro musician who took
the world by storm in the latter half of the nineteenth century of the
Christian Era.
And then, when he shook hands with me! His handshake was firm and
strong, but he looked at me boldly with his black eyes—too boldly, I
thought. You see, I was a creature of environment, and at that time had
strong class instincts. Such boldness on the part of a man of my own
class would have been almost unforgivable. I know that I could not
avoid dropping my eyes, and I was quite relieved when I passed him on
and turned to greet Bishop Morehouse—a favorite of mine, a sweet and
serious man of middle age, Christ-like in appearance and goodness, and
a scholar as well.
But this boldness that I took to be presumption was a vital clew to the
nature of Ernest Everhard. He was simple, direct, afraid of nothing,
and he refused to waste time on conventional mannerisms. “You pleased
me,” he explained long afterward; “and why should I not fill my eyes
with that which pleases me?” I have said that he was afraid of nothing.
He was a natural aristocrat—and this in spite of the fact that he was
in the camp of the non-aristocrats. He was a superman, a blond beast
such as Nietzsche[8] has described, and in addition he was aflame with
democracy.
[8] Friederich Nietzsche, the mad philosopher of the nineteenth
century of the Christian Era, who caught wild glimpses of truth, but
who, before he was done, reasoned himself around the great circle of
human thought and off into madness.
In the interest of meeting the other guests, and what of my unfavorable
impression, I forgot all about the working-class philosopher, though
once or twice at table I noticed him—especially the twinkle in his eye
as he listened to the talk first of one minister and then of another.
He has humor, I thought, and I almost forgave him his clothes. But the
time went by, and the dinner went by, and he never opened his mouth to
speak, while the ministers talked interminably about the working class
and its relation to the church, and what the church had done and was
doing for it. I noticed that my father was annoyed because Ernest did
not talk. Once father took advantage of a lull and asked him to say
something; but Ernest shrugged his shoulders and with an “I have
nothing to say” went on eating salted almonds.
But father was not to be denied. After a while he said:
“We have with us a member of the working class. I am sure that he can
present things from a new point of view that will be interesting and
refreshing. I refer to Mr. Everhard.”
The others betrayed a well-mannered interest, and urged Ernest for a
statement of his views. Their attitude toward him was so broadly
tolerant and kindly that it was really patronizing. And I saw that
Ernest noted it and was amused. He looked slowly about him, and I saw
the glint of laughter in his eyes.
“I am not versed in the courtesies of ecclesiastical controversy,” he
began, and then hesitated with modesty and indecision.
“Go on,” they urged, and Dr. Hammerfield said: “We do not mind the
truth that is in any man. If it is sincere,” he amended.
“Then you separate sincerity from truth?” Ernest laughed quickly.
Dr. Hammerfield gasped, and managed to answer, “The best of us may be
mistaken, young man, the best of us.”
Ernest’s manner changed on the instant. He became another man.
“All right, then,” he answered; “and let me begin by saying that you
are all mistaken. You know nothing, and worse than nothing, about the
working class. Your sociology is as vicious and worthless as is your
method of thinking.”
It was not so much what he said as how he said it. I roused at the
first sound of his voice. It was as bold as his eyes. It was a
clarion-call that thrilled me. And the whole table was aroused, shaken
alive from monotony and drowsiness.
“What is so dreadfully vicious and worthless in our method of thinking,
young man?” Dr. Hammerfield demanded, and already there was something
unpleasant in his voice and manner of utterance.
“You are metaphysicians. You can prove anything by metaphysics; and
having done so, every metaphysician can prove every other metaphysician
wrong—to his own satisfaction. You are anarchists in the realm of
thought. And you are mad cosmos-makers. Each of you dwells in a cosmos
of his own making, created out of his own fancies and desires. You do
not know the real world in which you live, and your thinking has no
place in the real world except in so far as it is phenomena of mental
aberration.
“Do you know what I was reminded of as I sat at table and listened to
you talk and talk? You reminded me for all the world of the scholastics
of the Middle Ages who gravely and learnedly debated the absorbing
question of how many angels could dance on the point of a needle. Why,
my dear sirs, you are as remote from the intellectual life of the
twentieth century as an Indian medicine-man making incantation in the
primeval forest ten thousand years ago.”
As Ernest talked he seemed in a fine passion; his face glowed, his eyes
snapped and flashed, and his chin and jaw were eloquent with
aggressiveness. But it was only a way he had. It always aroused people.
His smashing, sledge-hammer manner of attack invariably made them
forget themselves. And they were forgetting themselves now. Bishop
Morehouse was leaning forward and listening intently. Exasperation and
anger were flushing the face of Dr. Hammerfield. And others were
exasperated, too, and some were smiling in an amused and superior way.
As for myself, I found it most enjoyable. I glanced at father, and I
was afraid he was going to giggle at the effect of this human bombshell
he had been guilty of launching amongst us.
“Your terms are rather vague,” Dr. Hammerfield interrupted. “Just
precisely what do you mean when you call us metaphysicians?”
“I call you metaphysicians because you reason metaphysically,” Ernest
went on. “Your method of reasoning is the opposite to that of science.
There is no validity to your conclusions. You can prove everything and
nothing, and no two of you can agree upon anything. Each of you goes
into his own consciousness to explain himself and the universe. As well
may you lift yourselves by your own bootstraps as to explain
consciousness by consciousness.”
“I do not understand,” Bishop Morehouse said. “It seems to me that all
things of the mind are metaphysical. That most exact and convincing of
all sciences, mathematics, is sheerly metaphysical. Each and every
thought-process of the scientific reasoner is metaphysical. Surely you
will agree with me?”
“As you say, you do not understand,” Ernest replied. “The metaphysician
reasons deductively out of his own subjectivity. The scientist reasons
inductively from the facts of experience. The metaphysician reasons
from theory to facts, the scientist reasons from facts to theory. The
metaphysician explains the universe by himself, the scientist explains
himself by the universe.”
“Thank God we are not scientists,” Dr. Hammerfield murmured
complacently.
“What are you then?” Ernest demanded.
“Philosophers.”
“There you go,” Ernest laughed. “You have left the real and solid earth
and are up in the air with a word for a flying machine. Pray come down
to earth and tell me precisely what you do mean by philosophy.”
“Philosophy is—” (Dr. Hammerfield paused and cleared his
throat)—“something that cannot be defined comprehensively except to
such minds and temperaments as are philosophical. The narrow scientist
with his nose in a test-tube cannot understand philosophy.”
Ernest ignored the thrust. It was always his way to turn the point back
upon an opponent, and he did it now, with a beaming brotherliness of
face and utterance.
“Then you will undoubtedly understand the definition I shall now make
of philosophy. But before I make it, I shall challenge you to point out
error in it or to remain a silent metaphysician. Philosophy is merely
the widest science of all. Its reasoning method is the same as that of
any particular science and of all particular sciences. And by that same
method of reasoning, the inductive method, philosophy fuses all
particular sciences into one great science. As Spencer says, the data
of any particular science are partially unified knowledge. Philosophy
unifies the knowledge that is contributed by all the sciences.
Philosophy is the science of science, the master science, if you
please. How do you like my definition?”
“Very creditable, very creditable,” Dr. Hammerfield muttered lamely.
But Ernest was merciless.
“Remember,” he warned, “my definition is fatal to metaphysics. If you
do not now point out a flaw in my definition, you are disqualified
later on from advancing metaphysical arguments. You must go through
life seeking that flaw and remaining metaphysically silent until you
have found it.”
Ernest waited. The silence was painful. Dr. Hammerfield was pained. He
was also puzzled. Ernest’s sledge-hammer attack disconcerted him. He
was not used to the simple and direct method of controversy. He looked
appealingly around the table, but no one answered for him. I caught
father grinning into his napkin.
“There is another way of disqualifying the metaphysicians,” Ernest
said, when he had rendered Dr. Hammerfield’s discomfiture complete.
“Judge them by their works. What have they done for mankind beyond the
spinning of airy fancies and the mistaking of their own shadows for
gods? They have added to the gayety of mankind, I grant; but what
tangible good have they wrought for mankind? They philosophized, if you
will pardon my misuse of the word, about the heart as the seat of the
emotions, while the scientists were formulating the circulation of the
blood. They declaimed about famine and pestilence as being scourges of
God, while the scientists were building granaries and draining cities.
They builded gods in their own shapes and out of their own desires,
while the scientists were building roads and bridges. They were
describing the earth as the centre of the universe, while the
scientists were discovering America and probing space for the stars and
the laws of the stars. In short, the metaphysicians have done nothing,
absolutely nothing, for mankind. Step by step, before the advance of
science, they have been driven back. As fast as the ascertained facts
of science have overthrown their subjective explanations of things,
they have made new subjective explanations of things, including
explanations of the latest ascertained facts. And this, I doubt not,
they will go on doing to the end of time. Gentlemen, a metaphysician is
a medicine man. The difference between you and the Eskimo who makes a
fur-clad blubber-eating god is merely a difference of several thousand
years of ascertained facts. That is all.”
“Yet the thought of Aristotle ruled Europe for twelve centuries,” Dr.
Ballingford announced pompously. “And Aristotle was a metaphysician.”
Dr. Ballingford glanced around the table and was rewarded by nods and
smiles of approval.
“Your illustration is most unfortunate,” Ernest replied. “You refer to
a very dark period in human history. In fact, we call that period the
Dark Ages. A period wherein science was raped by the metaphysicians,
wherein physics became a search for the Philosopher’s Stone, wherein
chemistry became alchemy, and astronomy became astrology. Sorry the
domination of Aristotle’s thought!”
Dr. Ballingford looked pained, then he brightened up and said:
“Granted this horrible picture you have drawn, yet you must confess
that metaphysics was inherently potent in so far as it drew humanity
out of this dark period and on into the illumination of the succeeding
centuries.”
“Metaphysics had nothing to do with it,” Ernest retorted.
“What?” Dr. Hammerfield cried. “It was not the thinking and the
speculation that led to the voyages of discovery?”
“Ah, my dear sir,” Ernest smiled, “I thought you were disqualified. You
have not yet picked out the flaw in my definition of philosophy. You
are now on an unsubstantial basis. But it is the way of the
metaphysicians, and I forgive you. No, I repeat, metaphysics had
nothing to do with it. Bread and butter, silks and jewels, dollars and
cents, and, incidentally, the closing up of the overland trade-routes
to India, were the things that caused the voyages of discovery. With
the fall of Constantinople, in 1453, the Turks blocked the way of the
caravans to India. The traders of Europe had to find another route.
Here was the original cause for the voyages of discovery. Columbus
sailed to find a new route to the Indies. It is so stated in all the
history books. Incidentally, new facts were learned about the nature,
size, and form of the earth, and the Ptolemaic system went glimmering.”
Dr. Hammerfield snorted.
“You do not agree with me?” Ernest queried. “Then wherein am I wrong?”
“I can only reaffirm my position,” Dr. Hammerfield retorted tartly. “It
is too long a story to enter into now.”
“No story is too long for the scientist,” Ernest said sweetly. “That is
why the scientist gets to places. That is why he got to America.”
I shall not describe the whole evening, though it is a joy to me to
recall every moment, every detail, of those first hours of my coming to
know Ernest Everhard.
Battle royal raged, and the ministers grew red-faced and excited,
especially at the moments when Ernest called them romantic
philosophers, shadow-projectors, and similar things. And always he
checked them back to facts. “The fact, man, the irrefragable fact!” he
would proclaim triumphantly, when he had brought one of them a cropper.
He bristled with facts. He tripped them up with facts, ambuscaded them
with facts, bombarded them with broadsides of facts.
“You seem to worship at the shrine of fact,” Dr. Hammerfield taunted
him.
“There is no God but Fact, and Mr. Everhard is its prophet,” Dr.
Ballingford paraphrased.
Ernest smilingly acquiesced.
“I’m like the man from Texas,” he said. And, on being solicited, he
explained. “You see, the man from Missouri always says, ‘You’ve got to
show me.’ But the man from Texas says, ‘You’ve got to put it in my
hand.’ From which it is apparent that he is no metaphysician.”
Another time, when Ernest had just said that the metaphysical
philosophers could never stand the test of truth, Dr. Hammerfield
suddenly demanded:
“What is the test of truth, young man? Will you kindly explain what has
so long puzzled wiser heads than yours?”
“Certainly,” Ernest answered. His cocksureness irritated them. “The
wise heads have puzzled so sorely over truth because they went up into
the air after it. Had they remained on the solid earth, they would have
found it easily enough—ay, they would have found that they themselves
were precisely testing truth with every practical act and thought of
their lives.”
“The test, the test,” Dr. Hammerfield repeated impatiently. “Never mind
the preamble. Give us that which we have sought so long—the test of
truth. Give it us, and we will be as gods.”
There was an impolite and sneering scepticism in his words and manner
that secretly pleased most of them at the table, though it seemed to
bother Bishop Morehouse.
“Dr. Jordan[9] has stated it very clearly,” Ernest said. “His test of
truth is: ‘Will it work? Will you trust your life to it?’”
[9] A noted educator of the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries of the Christian Era. He was president of the Stanford
University, a private benefaction of the times.
“Pish!” Dr. Hammerfield sneered. “You have not taken Bishop
Berkeley[10] into account. He has never been answered.”
[10] An idealistic monist who long puzzled the philosophers of that
time with his denial of the existence of matter, but whose clever
argument was finally demolished when the new empiric facts of science
were philosophically generalized.
“The noblest metaphysician of them all,” Ernest laughed. “But your
example is unfortunate. As Berkeley himself attested, his metaphysics
didn’t work.”
Dr. Hammerfield was angry, righteously angry. It was as though he had
caught Ernest in a theft or a lie.
“Young man,” he trumpeted, “that statement is on a par with all you
have uttered to-night. It is a base and unwarranted assumption.”
“I am quite crushed,” Ernest murmured meekly. “Only I don’t know what
hit me. You’ll have to put it in my hand, Doctor.”
“I will, I will,” Dr. Hammerfield spluttered. “How do you know? You do
not know that Bishop Berkeley attested that his metaphysics did not
work. You have no proof. Young man, they have always worked.”
“I take it as proof that Berkeley’s metaphysics did not work, because—”
Ernest paused calmly for a moment. “Because Berkeley made an invariable
practice of going through doors instead of walls. Because he trusted
his life to solid bread and butter and roast beef. Because he shaved
himself with a razor that worked when it removed the hair from his
face.”
“But those are actual things!” Dr. Hammerfield cried. “Metaphysics is
of the mind.”
“And they work—in the mind?” Ernest queried softly.
The other nodded.
“And even a multitude of angels can dance on the point of a needle—in
the mind,” Ernest went on reflectively. “And a blubber-eating, fur-clad
god can exist and work—in the mind; and there are no proofs to the
contrary—in the mind. I suppose, Doctor, you live in the mind?”
“My mind to me a kingdom is,” was the answer.
“That’s another way of saying that you live up in the air. But you come
back to earth at meal-time, I am sure, or when an earthquake happens
along. Or, tell me, Doctor, do you have no apprehension in an
earthquake that that incorporeal body of yours will be hit by an
immaterial brick?”
Instantly, and quite unconsciously, Dr. Hammerfield’s hand shot up to
his head, where a scar disappeared under the hair. It happened that
Ernest had blundered on an apposite illustration. Dr. Hammerfield had
been nearly killed in the Great Earthquake[11] by a falling chimney.
Everybody broke out into roars of laughter.
[11] The Great Earthquake of 1906 A.D. that destroyed San Francisco.
“Well?” Ernest asked, when the merriment had subsided. “Proofs to the
contrary?”
And in the silence he asked again, “Well?” Then he added, “Still well,
but not so well, that argument of yours.”
But Dr. Hammerfield was temporarily crushed, and the battle raged on in
new directions. On point after point, Ernest challenged the ministers.
When they affirmed that they knew the working class, he told them
fundamental truths about the working class that they did not know, and
challenged them for disproofs. He gave them facts, always facts,
checked their excursions into the air, and brought them back to the
solid earth and its facts.
How the scene comes back to me! I can hear him now, with that war-note
in his voice, flaying them with his facts, each fact a lash that stung
and stung again. And he was merciless. He took no quarter,[12] and gave
none. I can never forget the flaying he gave them at the end:
[12] This figure arises from the customs of the times. When, among men
fighting to the death in their wild-animal way, a beaten man threw
down his weapons, it was at the option of the victor to slay him or
spare him.
“You have repeatedly confessed to-night, by direct avowal or ignorant
statement, that you do not know the working class. But you are not to
be blamed for this. How can you know anything about the working class?
You do not live in the same locality with the working class. You herd
with the capitalist class in another locality. And why not? It is the
capitalist class that pays you, that feeds you, that puts the very
clothes on your backs that you are wearing to-night. And in return you
preach to your employers the brands of metaphysics that are especially
acceptable to them; and the especially acceptable brands are acceptable
because they do not menace the established order of society.”
Here there was a stir of dissent around the table.
“Oh, I am not challenging your sincerity,” Ernest continued. “You are
sincere. You preach what you believe. There lies your strength and your
value—to the capitalist class. But should you change your belief to
something that menaces the established order, your preaching would be
unacceptable to your employers, and you would be discharged. Every
little while some one or another of you is so discharged.[13] Am I not
right?”
[13] During this period there were many ministers cast out of the
church for preaching unacceptable doctrine. Especially were they cast
out when their preaching became tainted with socialism.
This time there was no dissent. They sat dumbly acquiescent, with the
exception of Dr. Hammerfield, who said:
“It is when their thinking is wrong that they are asked to resign.”
“Which is another way of saying when their thinking is unacceptable,”
Ernest answered, and then went on. “So I say to you, go ahead and
preach and earn your pay, but for goodness’ sake leave the working
class alone. You belong in the enemy’s camp. You have nothing in common
with the working class. Your hands are soft with the work others have
performed for you. Your stomachs are round with the plenitude of
eating.” (Here Dr. Ballingford winced, and every eye glanced at his
prodigious girth. It was said he had not seen his own feet in years.)
“And your minds are filled with doctrines that are buttresses of the
established order. You are as much mercenaries (sincere mercenaries, I
grant) as were the men of the Swiss Guard.[14] Be true to your salt and
your hire; guard, with your preaching, the interests of your employers;
but do not come down to the working class and serve as false leaders.
You cannot honestly be in the two camps at once. The working class has
done without you. Believe me, the working class will continue to do
without you. And, furthermore, the working class can do better without
you than with you.”
[14] The hired foreign palace guards of Louis XVI, a king of France
that was beheaded by his people.