[62] How easy it is for ignorance to pass into contempt and dislike;

how natural it is for us to consider any difference in manners,

customs, religion, etc., as proof of the inferiority of those who

differ from us, any one who has emancipated himself in any degree from

prejudice, and who mixes with different classes, may see in civilized

society. In religion, for instance, the spirit of the hymn—

“I’d rather be a Baptist, and wear a shining face,

Than for to be a Methodist and always fall from grace,”

is observable in all denominations. As the English Bishop said,

“Orthodoxy is my doxy, and heterodoxy is any other doxy,” while the

universal tendency is to classify all outside of the orthodoxies and

heterodoxies of the prevailing religion as heathens or atheists. And

the like tendency is observable as to all other differences.

[63] The Sandwich Islanders did honor to their good chiefs by eating

their bodies. Their bad and tyrannical chiefs they would not touch. The

New Zealanders had a notion that by eating their enemies they acquired

their strength and valor. And this seems to be the general origin of

eating prisoners of war.

CHAPTER IV.

HOW MODERN CIVILIZATION MAY DECLINE.

The conclusion we have thus reached harmonizes completely with our

previous conclusions.

This consideration of the law of human progress not only brings the

politico-economic laws, which in this inquiry we have worked out,

within the scope of a higher law—perhaps the very highest law our minds

can grasp—but it proves that the making of land common property in the

way I have proposed would give an enormous impetus to civilization,

while the refusal to do so must entail retrogression. A civilization

like ours must either advance or go back; it cannot stand still. It

is not like those homogeneous civilizations, such as that of the Nile

Valley, which molded men for their places and put them in it like

bricks into a pyramid. It much more resembles that civilization whose

rise and fall is within historic times, and from which it sprung.

There is just now a disposition to scoff at any implication that we are

not in all respects progressing, and the spirit of our times is that of

the edict which the flattering premier proposed to the Chinese Emperor

who burned the ancient books—“that all who may dare to speak together

about the She and the Shoo be put to death; that those who make mention

of the past so as to blame the present be put to death along with their

relatives.”

Yet it is evident that there have been times of decline, just as there

have been times of advance; and it is further evident that these epochs

of decline could not at first have been generally recognized.

He would have been a rash man who, when Augustus was changing the

Rome of brick to the Rome of marble, when wealth was augmenting and

magnificence increasing, when victorious legions were extending the

frontier, when manners were becoming more refined, language more

polished, and literature rising to higher splendors—he would have been

a rash man who then would have said that Rome was entering her decline.

Yet such was the case.

And whoever will look may see that though our civilization is

apparently advancing with greater rapidity than ever, the same cause

which turned Roman progress into retrogression is operating now.

What has destroyed every previous civilization has been the tendency

to the unequal distribution of wealth and power. This same tendency,

operating with increasing force, is observable in our civilization

to-day, showing itself in every progressive community, and with greater

intensity the more progressive the community. Wages and interest tend

constantly to fall, rent to rise, the rich to become very much richer,

the poor to become more helpless and hopeless, and the middle class to

be swept away.

I have traced this tendency to its cause. I have shown by what simple

means this cause may be removed. I now wish to point out _how_, if this

is not done, progress must turn to decadence, and modern civilization

decline to barbarism, as have all previous civilizations. It is worth

while to point out _how_ this may occur, as many people, being unable

to see how progress may pass into retrogression, conceive such a thing

impossible. Gibbon, for instance, thought that modern civilization

could never be destroyed because there remained no barbarians to

overrun it, and it is a common idea that the invention of printing by

so multiplying books has prevented the possibility of knowledge ever

again being lost.

The conditions of social progress, as we have traced the law, are

association and equality. The general tendency of modern development,

since the time when we can first discern the gleams of civilization in

the darkness which followed the fall of the Western Empire, has been

toward political and legal equality—to the abolition of slavery; to the

abrogation of status; to the sweeping away of hereditary privileges;

to the substitution of parliamentary for arbitrary government; to the

right of private judgment in matters of religion; to the more equal

security in person and property of high and low, weak and strong; to

the greater freedom of movement and occupation, of speech and of the

press. The history of modern civilization is the history of advances in

this direction—of the struggles and triumphs of personal, political,

and religious freedom. And the general law is shown by the fact that

just as this tendency has asserted itself civilization has advanced,

while just as it has been repressed or forced back civilization has

been checked.

This tendency has reached its full expression in the American Republic,

where political and legal rights are absolutely equal, and, owing to

the system of rotation in office, even the growth of a bureaucracy

is prevented; where every religious belief or non-belief stands on

the same footing; where every boy may hope to be President, every

man has an equal voice in public affairs, and every official is

mediately or immediately dependent for the short lease of his place

upon a popular vote. This tendency has yet some triumphs to win in

England, in extending the suffrage, and sweeping away the vestiges

of monarchy, aristocracy, and prelacy; while in such countries as

Germany and Russia, where divine right is yet a good deal more than

a legal fiction, it has a considerable distance to go. But it is the

prevailing tendency, and how soon Europe will be completely republican

is only a matter of time, or rather of accident. The United States are

therefore, in this respect, the most advanced of all the great nations,

in a direction in which all are advancing, and in the United States we

see just how much this tendency to personal and political freedom can

of itself accomplish.

Now, the first effect of the tendency to political equality was to the

more equal distribution of wealth and power; for, while population

is comparatively sparse, inequality in the distribution of wealth is

principally due to the inequality of personal rights, and it is only

as material progress goes on that the tendency to inequality involved

in the reduction of land to private ownership strongly appears. But it

is now manifest that absolute political equality does not in itself

prevent the tendency to inequality involved in the private ownership of

land, and it is further evident that political equality, co-existing

with an increasing tendency to the unequal distribution of wealth, must

ultimately beget either the despotism of organized tyranny or the worse

despotism of anarchy.

To turn a republican government into a despotism the basest and most

brutal, it is not necessary formally to change its constitution or

abandon popular elections. It was centuries after Cæsar before the

absolute master of the Roman world pretended to rule other than by

authority of a Senate that trembled before him.

But forms are nothing when substance has gone, and the forms of popular

government are those from which the substance of freedom may most

easily go. Extremes meet, and a government of universal suffrage and

theoretical equality may, under conditions which impel the change,

most readily become a despotism. For there despotism advances in the

name and with the might of the people. The single source of power once

secured, everything is secured. There is no unfranchised class to

whom appeal may be made, no privileged orders who in defending their

own rights may defend those of all. No bulwark remains to stay the

flood, no eminence to rise above it. They were belted barons led by a

mitered archbishop who curbed the Plantagenet with Magna Charta; it

was the middle classes who broke the pride of the Stuarts; but a mere

aristocracy of wealth will never struggle while it can hope to bribe a

tyrant.

And when the disparity of condition increases, so does universal

suffrage make it easy to seize the source of power, for the greater

is the proportion of power in the hands of those who feel no direct

interest in the conduct of government; who, tortured by want and

embruted by poverty, are ready to sell their votes to the highest

bidder or follow the lead of the most blatant demagogue; or who, made

bitter by hardships, may even look upon profligate and tyrannous

government with the satisfaction we may imagine the proletarians

and slaves of Rome to have felt, as they saw a Caligula or Nero

raging among the rich patricians. Given a community with republican

institutions, in which one class is too rich to be shorn of its

luxuries, no matter how public affairs are administered, and another

so poor that a few dollars on election day will seem more than any

abstract consideration; in which the few roll in wealth and the many

seethe with discontent at a condition of things they know not how to

remedy, and power must pass into the hands of jobbers who will buy and

sell it as the Prætorians sold the Roman purple, or into the hands of

demagogues who will seize and wield it for a time, only to be displaced

by worse demagogues.

Where there is anything like an equal distribution of wealth—that is to

say, where there is general patriotism, virtue, and intelligence—the

more democratic the government the better it will be; but where there

is gross inequality in the distribution of wealth, the more democratic

the government the worse it will be; for, while rotten democracy

may not in itself be worse than rotten autocracy, its effects upon

national character will be worse. To give the suffrage to tramps, to

paupers, to men to whom the chance to labor is a boon, to men who must

beg, or steal, or starve, is to invoke destruction. To put political

power in the hands of men embittered and degraded by poverty is to tie

firebrands to foxes and turn them loose amid the standing corn; it

is to put out the eyes of a Samson and to twine his arms around the

pillars of national life.

Even the accidents of hereditary succession or of selection by lot, the

plan of some of the ancient republics, may sometimes place the wise

and just in power; but in a corrupt democracy the tendency is always

to give power to the worst. Honesty and patriotism are weighted, and

unscrupulousness commands success. The best gravitate to the bottom,

the worst float to the top, and the vile will only be ousted by the

viler. While as national character must gradually assimilate to the

qualities that win power, and consequently respect, that demoralization

of opinion goes on which in the long panorama of history we may see

over and over again transmuting races of freemen into races of slaves.

As in England in the last century, when Parliament was but a close

corporation of the aristocracy, a corrupt oligarchy clearly fenced off

from the masses may exist without much effect on national character,

because in that case power is associated in the popular mind with other

things than corruption. But where there are no hereditary distinctions,

and men are habitually seen to raise themselves by corrupt qualities

from the lowest places to wealth and power, tolerance of these

qualities finally becomes admiration. A corrupt democratic government

must finally corrupt the people, and when a people become corrupt there

is no resurrection. The life is gone, only the carcass remains; and it

is left but for the plowshares of fate to bury it out of sight.

Now this transformation of popular government into despotism of the

vilest and most degrading kind, which must inevitably result from the

unequal distribution of wealth, is not a thing of the far future. It

has already begun in the United States, and is rapidly going on under

our eyes. That our legislative bodies are steadily deteriorating in

standard; that men of the highest ability and character are compelled

to eschew politics, and the arts of the jobber count for more than

the reputation of the statesman; that voting is done more recklessly

and the power of money is increasing; that it is harder to arouse

the people to the necessity of reforms and more difficult to carry

them out; that political differences are ceasing to be differences of

principle, and abstract ideas are losing their power; that parties

are passing into the control of what in general government would be

oligarchies and dictatorships; are all evidences of political decline.

The type of modern growth is the great city. Here are to be found the

greatest wealth and the deepest poverty. And it is here that popular

government has most clearly broken down. In all the great American

cities there is to-day as clearly defined a ruling class as in the most

aristocratic countries of the world. Its members carry wards in their

pockets, make up the slates for nominating conventions, distribute

offices as they bargain together, and—though they toil not, neither do

they spin—wear the best of raiment and spend money lavishly. They are

men of power, whose favor the ambitious must court and whose vengeance

he must avoid. Who are these men? The wise, the good, the learned—men

who have earned the confidence of their fellow-citizens by the purity

of their lives, the splendor of their talents, their probity in public

trusts, their deep study of the problems of government? No; they are

gamblers, saloon keepers, pugilists, or worse, who have made a trade

of controlling votes and of buying and selling offices and official

acts. They stand to the government of these cities as the Prætorian

Guards did to that of declining Rome. He who would wear the purple,

fill the curule chair, or have the fasces carried before him, must go

or send his messengers to their camps, give them donatives and make

them promises. It is through these men that the rich corporations

and powerful pecuniary interests can pack the Senate and the bench

with their creatures. It is these men who make School Directors,

Supervisors, Assessors, members of the Legislature, Congressmen. Why,

there are many election districts in the United States in which a

George Washington, a Benjamin Franklin or a Thomas Jefferson could

no more go to the lower house of a State Legislature than under the

Ancient Régime a base-born peasant could become a Marshal of France.

Their very character would be an insuperable disqualification.

In theory we are intense democrats. The proposal to sacrifice swine in

the temple would hardly have excited greater horror and indignation in

Jerusalem of old than would among us that of conferring a distinction

of rank upon our most eminent citizen. But is there not growing up

among us a class who have all the power without any of the virtues of

aristocracy? We have simple citizens who control thousands of miles of

railroad, millions of acres of land, the means of livelihood of great

numbers of men; who name the Governors of sovereign States as they

name their clerks, choose Senators as they choose attorneys, and whose

will is as supreme with Legislatures as that of a French King sitting

in bed of justice. The undercurrents of the times seem to sweep us

back again to the old conditions from which we dreamed we had escaped.

The development of the artisan and commercial classes gradually broke

down feudalism after it had become so complete that men thought of

heaven as organized on a feudal basis, and ranked the first and

second persons of the Trinity as suzerain and tenant-in-chief. But

now the development of manufactures and exchange, acting in a social

organization in which land is made private property, threatens to

compel every worker to seek a master, as the insecurity which followed

the final break-up of the Roman Empire compelled every freeman to seek

a lord. Nothing seems exempt from this tendency. Industry everywhere

tends to assume a form in which one is master and many serve. And when

one is master and the others serve, the one will control the others,

even in such matters as votes. Just as the English landlord votes his

tenants, so does the New England mill owner vote his operatives.

There is no mistaking it—the very foundations of society are being

sapped before our eyes, while we ask, _how_ is it possible that such

a civilization as this, with its railroads, and daily newspapers,

and electric telegraphs, should ever be destroyed? While literature

breathes but the belief that we have been, are, and for the future must

be, leaving the savage state further and further behind us, there are

indications that we are actually turning back again toward barbarism.

Let me illustrate: One of the characteristics of barbarism is the low

regard for the rights of person and of property. That the laws of our

Anglo-Saxon ancestors imposed as penalty for murder a fine proportioned

to the rank of the victim, while our law knows no distinction of rank,

and protects the lowest from the highest, the poorest from the richest,

by the uniform penalty of death, is looked upon as evidence of their

barbarism and our civilization. And so, that piracy, and robbery, and

slave-trading, and blackmailing, were once regarded as legitimate

occupations, is conclusive proof of the rude state of development from

which we have so far progressed.

But it is a matter of fact that, in spite of our laws, any one who has

money enough and wants to kill another may go into any one of our great

centers of population and business, and gratify his desire, and then

surrender himself to justice, with the chances as a hundred to one that

he will suffer no greater penalty than a temporary imprisonment and the

loss of a sum proportioned partly to his own wealth and partly to the

wealth and standing of the man he kills. His money will be paid, not to

the family of the murdered man, who have lost their protector; not to

the state, which has lost a citizen; but to lawyers who understand how

to secure delays, to find witnesses, and get juries to disagree.

And so, if a man steal enough, he may be sure that his punishment will

practically amount but to the loss of a part of the proceeds of his

theft; and if he steal enough to get off with a fortune, he will be

greeted by his acquaintances as a viking might have been greeted after

a successful cruise. Even though he robbed those who trusted him; even

though he robbed the widow and the fatherless; he has only to get

enough, and he may safely flaunt his wealth in the eyes of day.

Now, the tendency in this direction is an increasing one. It is shown

in greatest force where the inequalities in the distribution of wealth

are greatest, and it shows itself as they increase. If it be not a

return to barbarism, what is it? The failures of justice to which I

have alluded are only illustrative of the increasing debility of our

legal machinery in every department. It is becoming common to hear

men say that it would be better to revert to first principles and

abolish law, for then in self-defense the people would form Vigilance

Committees and take justice into their own hands. Is this indicative of

advance or retrogression?

All this is matter of common observation. Though we may not speak it

openly, the general faith in republican institutions is, where they

have reached their fullest development, narrowing and weakening. It

is no longer that confident belief in republicanism as the source of

national blessings that it once was. Thoughtful men are beginning to

see its dangers, without seeing how to escape them; are beginning to

accept the view of Macaulay and distrust that of Jefferson.[64] And the

people at large are becoming used to the growing corruption. The most

ominous political sign in the United States to-day is the growth of a

sentiment which either doubts the existence of an honest man in public

office or looks on him as a fool for not seizing his opportunities.

That is to say, the people themselves are becoming corrupted. Thus in

the United States to-day is republican government running the course

it must inevitably follow under conditions which cause the unequal

distribution of wealth.

Where that course leads is clear to whoever will think. As corruption

becomes chronic; as public spirit is lost; as traditions of honor,

virtue, and patriotism are weakened; as law is brought into contempt

and reforms become hopeless; then in the festering mass will be

generated volcanic forces, which shatter and rend when seeming accident

gives them vent. Strong, unscrupulous men, rising up upon occasion,

will become the exponents of blind popular desires or fierce popular

passions, and dash aside forms that have lost their vitality. The sword

will again be mightier than the pen, and in carnivals of destruction

brute force and wild frenzy will alternate with the lethargy of a

declining civilization.

I speak of the United States only because the United States is the most

advanced of all the great nations. What shall we say of Europe, where

dams of ancient law and custom pen up the swelling waters and standing

armies weigh down the safety valves, though year by year the fires

grow hotter underneath? Europe tends to republicanism under conditions

that will not admit of true republicanism—under conditions that

substitute for the calm and august figure of Liberty the petroleuse and

the guillotine!

Whence shall come the new barbarians? Go through the squalid quarters

of great cities, and you may see, even now, their gathering hordes! How

shall learning perish? Men will cease to read, and books will kindle

fires and be turned into cartridges!

It is startling to think how slight the traces that would be left of

our civilization did it pass through the throes which have accompanied

the decline of every previous civilization. Paper will not last like

parchment, nor are our most massive buildings and monuments to be

compared in solidity with the rock-hewn temples and titanic edifices of

the old civilizations.[65] And invention has given us, not merely the

steam engine and the printing press, but petroleum, nitro-glycerine,

and dynamite.

Yet to hint, to-day, that our civilization may possibly be tending to

decline, seems like the wildness of pessimism. The special tendencies

to which I have alluded are obvious to thinking men, but with the

majority of thinking men, as with the great masses, the belief in

substantial progress is yet deep and strong—a fundamental belief which

admits not the shadow of a doubt.

But any one who will think over the matter will see that this

must necessarily be the case where advance gradually passes into

retrogression. For in social development, as in everything else, motion

tends to persist in straight lines, and therefore, where there has been

a previous advance, it is extremely difficult to recognize decline,

even when it has fully commenced; there is an almost irresistible

tendency to believe that the forward movement which has been advance,

and is still going on, is still advance. The web of beliefs, customs,

laws, institutions, and habits of thought, which each community is

constantly spinning, and which produces in the individual environed

by it all the differences of national character, is never unraveled.

That is to say, in the decline of civilization, communities do not go

down by the same paths that they came up. For instance, the decline of

civilization as manifested in government would not take us back from

republicanism to constitutional monarchy, and thence to the feudal

system; it would take us to imperatorship and anarchy. As manifested in

religion, it would not take us back into the faiths of our forefathers,

into Protestantism or Catholicity, but into new forms of superstition,

of which possibly Mormonism and other even grosser “isms” may give some

vague idea. As manifested in knowledge, it would not take us toward

Bacon, but toward the literati of China.

And how the retrogression of civilization, following a period of

advance, may be so gradual as to attract no attention at the time;

nay, how that decline must necessarily, by the great majority of men,

be mistaken for advance, is easily seen. For instance, there is an

enormous difference between Grecian art of the classic period and that

of the lower empire; yet the change was accompanied, or rather caused,

by a change of taste. The artists who most quickly followed this change

of taste were in their day regarded as the superior artists. And so of

literature. As it became more vapid, puerile, and stilted, it would be

in obedience to an altered taste, which would regard its increasing

weakness as increasing strength and beauty. The really good writer

would not find readers; he would be regarded as rude, dry, or dull.

And so would the drama decline; not because there was a lack of good

plays, but because the prevailing taste became more and more that of a

less cultured class, who, of course, regard that which they most admire

as the best of its kind. And so, too, of religion; the superstitions

which a superstitious people will add to it will be regarded by them as

improvements. While, as the decline goes on, the return to barbarism,

where it is not in itself regarded as an advance, will seem necessary

to meet the exigencies of the times.

For instance, flogging, as a punishment for certain offenses, has

been recently restored to the penal code of England, and has been

strongly advocated on this side of the Atlantic. I express no opinion

as to whether this is or is not a better punishment for crime than

imprisonment. I only point to the fact as illustrating how an

increasing amount of crime and an increasing embarrassment as to the

maintenance of prisoners, both obvious tendencies at present, might

lead to a fuller return to the physical cruelty of barbarous codes.

The use of torture in judicial investigations, which steadily grew

with the decline of Roman civilization, it is thus easy to see, might,

as manners brutalized and crime increased, be demanded as a necessary

improvement of the criminal law.

Whether in the present drifts of opinion and taste there are as yet

any indications of retrogression, it is not necessary to inquire; but

there are many things about which there can be no dispute, which go

to show that our civilization has reached a critical period, and that

unless a new start is made in the direction of social equality, the

nineteenth century may to the future mark its climax. These industrial

depressions, which cause as much waste and suffering as famines

or wars, are like the twinges and shocks which precede paralysis.

Everywhere is it evident that the tendency to inequality, which is

the necessary result of material progress where land is monopolized,

cannot go much further without carrying our civilization into that

downward path which is so easy to enter and so hard to abandon.

Everywhere the increasing intensity of the struggle to live, the

increasing necessity for straining every nerve to prevent being thrown

down and trodden under foot in the scramble for wealth, is draining

the forces which gain and maintain improvements. In every civilized

country pauperism, crime, insanity, and suicides are increasing. In

every civilized country the diseases are increasing which come from

overstrained nerves, from insufficient nourishment, from squalid

lodgings, from unwholesome and monotonous occupations, from premature

labor of children, from the tasks and crimes which poverty imposes

upon women. In every highly civilized country the expectation of life,

which gradually rose for several centuries, and which seems to have

culminated about the first quarter of this century, appears to be now

diminishing.[66]

It is not an advancing civilization that such figures show. It is a

civilization which in its undercurrents has already begun to recede.

When the tide turns in bay or river from flood to ebb, it is not all at

once; but here it still runs on, though there it has begun to recede.

When the sun passes the meridian, it can be told only by the way the

short shadows fall; for the heat of the day yet increases. But as sure

as the turning tide must soon run full ebb; as sure as the declining

sun must bring darkness, so sure is it, that though knowledge yet

increases and invention marches on, and new states are being settled,

and cities still expand, yet civilization has begun to wane when, in

proportion to population, we must build more and more prisons, more and

more almshouses, more and more insane asylums. It is not from top to

bottom that societies die; it is from bottom to top.

But there are evidences far more palpable than any that can be given

by statistics, of tendencies to the ebb of civilization. There is a

vague but general feeling of disappointment; an increased bitterness

among the working classes; a widespread feeling of unrest and brooding

revolution. If this were accompanied by a definite idea of how relief

is to be obtained, it would be a hopeful sign; but it is not. Though

the schoolmaster has been abroad some time, the general power of

tracing effect to cause does not seem a whit improved. The reaction

toward protectionism, as the reaction toward other exploded fallacies

of government, shows this.[67] And even the philosophic free-thinker

cannot look upon that vast change in religious ideas that is now

sweeping over the civilized world without feeling that this tremendous

fact may have most momentous relations, which only the future can

develop. For what is going on is not a change in the form of religion,

but the negation and destruction of the ideas from which religion

springs. Christianity is not simply clearing itself of superstitions,

but in the popular mind it is dying at the root, as the old paganisms

were dying when Christianity entered the world. And nothing arises to

take its place. The fundamental ideas of an intelligent Creator and of

a future life are in the general mind rapidly weakening. Now, whether

this may or may not be in itself an advance, the importance of the part

which religion has played in the world’s history shows the importance

of the change that is now going on. Unless human nature has suddenly

altered in what the universal history of the race shows to be its

deepest characteristics, the mightiest actions and reactions are thus

preparing. Such stages of thought have heretofore always marked periods

of transition. On a smaller scale and to a less depth (for I think any

one who will notice the drift of our literature, and talk upon such

subjects with the men he meets, will see that it is sub-soil and not

surface plowing that materialistic ideas are now doing), such a state

of thought preceded the French revolution. But the closest parallel to

the wreck of religious ideas now going on is to be found in that period

in which ancient civilization began to pass from splendor to decline.

What change may come, no mortal man can tell, but that some great

change _must_ come, thoughtful men begin to feel. The civilized world

is trembling on the verge of a great movement. Either it must be a leap

upward, which will open the way to advances yet undreamed of, or it

must be a plunge downward, which will carry us back toward barbarism.

FOOTNOTES:

[64] See Macaulay’s letter to Randall, the biographer of Jefferson.

[65] It is also, it seems to me, instructive to note how inadequate and

utterly misleading would be the idea of our civilization which could be

gained from the religious and funereal monuments of our time, which are

all we have from which to gain our ideas of the buried civilizations.

[66] Statistics which show these things are collected in convenient

form in a volume entitled “Deterioration and Race Education,” by Samuel

Royce, which has been largely distributed by the venerable Peter Cooper

of New York. Strangely enough, the only remedy proposed by Mr. Royce is

the establishment of Kindergarten schools.

[67] In point of constructive statesmanship—the recognition of

fundamental principles and the adaptation of means to ends, the

Constitution of the United States, adopted a century ago, is greatly

superior to the latest State Constitutions, the most recent of which is

that of California—a piece of utter botchwork.

CHAPTER V.

THE CENTRAL TRUTH.

In the short space to which this latter part of our inquiry is

necessarily confined, I have been obliged to omit much that I would

like to say, and to touch briefly where an exhaustive consideration

would not be out of place.

Nevertheless, this, at least, is evident, that the truth to which we

were led in the politico-economic branch of our inquiry is as clearly

apparent in the rise and fall of nations and the growth and decay of

civilizations, and that it accords with those deep-seated recognitions

of relation and sequence that we denominate moral perceptions. Thus

have been given to our conclusions the greatest certitude and highest

sanction.

This truth involves both a menace and a promise. It shows that the

evils arising from the unjust and unequal distribution of wealth, which

are becoming more and more apparent as modern civilization goes on, are

not incidents of progress, but tendencies which must bring progress to

a halt; that they will not cure themselves, but, on the contrary, must,

unless their cause is removed, grow greater and greater, until they

sweep us back into barbarism by the road every previous civilization

has trod. But it also shows that these evils are not imposed by natural

laws; that they spring solely from social mal-adjustments which ignore

natural laws, and that in removing their cause we shall be giving an

enormous impetus to progress.

The poverty which in the midst of abundance pinches and imbrutes men,

and all the manifold evils which flow from it, spring from a denial of

justice. In permitting the monopolization of the opportunities which

nature freely offers to all, we have ignored the fundamental law of

justice—for, so far as we can see, when we view things upon a large

scale, justice seems to be the supreme law of the universe. But by

sweeping away this injustice and asserting the rights of all men to

natural opportunities, we shall conform ourselves to the law—we shall

remove the great cause of unnatural inequality in the distribution of

wealth and power; we shall abolish poverty; tame the ruthless passions

of greed; dry up the springs of vice and misery; light in dark places

the lamp of knowledge; give new vigor to invention and a fresh impulse

to discovery; substitute political strength for political weakness; and

make tyranny and anarchy impossible.

The reform I have proposed accords with all that is politically,

socially, or morally desirable. It has the qualities of a true reform,

for it will make all other reforms easier. What is it but the carrying

out in letter and spirit of the truth enunciated in the Declaration of

Independence—the “self-evident” truth that is the heart and soul of the

Declaration—“_That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by

their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are

life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness!_”

These rights are denied when the equal right to land—on which and

by which men alone can live—is denied. Equality of political rights

will not compensate for the denial of the equal right to the bounty

of nature. Political liberty, when the equal right to land is denied,

becomes, as population increases and invention goes on, merely the

liberty to compete for employment at starvation wages. This is the

truth that we have ignored. And so there come beggars in our streets

and tramps on our roads; and poverty enslaves men whom we boast are

political sovereigns; and want breeds ignorance that our schools

cannot enlighten; and citizens vote as their masters dictate; and the

demagogue usurps the part of the statesman; and gold weighs in the

scales of justice; and in high places sit those who do not pay to

civic virtue even the compliment of hypocrisy; and the pillars of the

republic that we thought so strong already bend under an increasing

strain.

We honor Liberty in name and in form. We set up her statues and sound

her praises. But we have not fully trusted her. And with our growth so

grow her demands. She will have no half service!

Liberty! it is a word to conjure with, not to vex the ear in empty

boastings. For Liberty means Justice, and Justice is the natural

law—the law of health and symmetry and strength, of fraternity and

co-operation.

They who look upon Liberty as having accomplished her mission when

she has abolished hereditary privileges and given men the ballot, who

think of her as having no further relations to the everyday affairs of

life, have not seen her real grandeur—to them the poets who have sung

of her must seem rhapsodists, and her martyrs fools! As the sun is

the lord of life, as well as of light; as his beams not merely pierce

the clouds, but support all growth, supply all motion, and call forth

from what would otherwise be a cold and inert mass all the infinite

diversities of being and beauty, so is liberty to mankind. It is not

for an abstraction that men have toiled and died; that in every age the

witnesses of Liberty have stood forth, and the martyrs of Liberty have

suffered.

We speak of Liberty as one thing, and of virtue, wealth, knowledge,

invention, national strength and national independence as other things.

But, of all these, Liberty is the source, the mother, the necessary

condition. She is to virtue what light is to color; to wealth what

sunshine is to grain; to knowledge what eyes are to sight. She is the

genius of invention, the brawn of national strength, the spirit of

national independence. Where Liberty rises, there virtue grows, wealth

increases, knowledge expands, invention multiplies human powers, and in

strength and spirit the freer nation rises among her neighbors as Saul

amid his brethren—taller and fairer. Where Liberty sinks, there virtue

fades, wealth diminishes, knowledge is forgotten, invention ceases, and

empires once mighty in arms and arts become a helpless prey to freer

barbarians!

Only in broken gleams and partial light has the sun of Liberty yet

beamed among men, but all progress hath she called forth.

Liberty came to a race of slaves crouching under Egyptian whips, and

led them forth from the House of Bondage. She hardened them in the

desert and made of them a race of conquerors. The free spirit of the

Mosaic law took their thinkers up to heights where they beheld the

unity of God, and inspired their poets with strains that yet phrase the

highest exaltations of thought. Liberty dawned on the Phœnician coast,

and ships passed the Pillars of Hercules to plow the unknown sea. She

shed a partial light on Greece, and marble grew to shapes of ideal

beauty, words became the instruments of subtlest thought, and against

the scanty militia of free cities the countless hosts of the Great King

broke like surges against a rock. She cast her beams on the four-acre

farms of Italian husbandmen, and born of her strength a power came

forth that conquered the world. They glinted from shields of German

warriors, and Augustus wept his legions. Out of the night that followed

her eclipse, her slanting rays fell again on free cities, and a lost

learning revived, modern civilization began, a new world was unveiled;

and as Liberty grew, so grew art, wealth, power, knowledge, and

refinement. In the history of every nation we may read the same truth.

It was the strength born of Magna Charta that won Crecy and Agincourt.

It was the revival of Liberty from the despotism of the Tudors that

glorified the Elizabethan age. It was the spirit that brought a crowned

tyrant to the block that planted here the seed of a mighty tree. It was

the energy of ancient freedom that, the moment it had gained unity,

made Spain the mightiest power of the world, only to fall to the lowest

depth of weakness when tyranny succeeded liberty. See, in France, all

intellectual vigor dying under the tyranny of the Seventeenth Century

to revive in splendor as Liberty awoke in the Eighteenth, and on the

enfranchisement of French peasants in the Great Revolution, basing the

wonderful strength that has in our time defied defeat.

Shall we not trust her?

In our time, as in times before, creep on the insidious forces that,

producing inequality, destroy Liberty. On the horizon the clouds begin

to lower. Liberty calls to us again. We must follow her further; we

must trust her fully. Either we must wholly accept her or she will not

stay. It is not enough that men should vote; it is not enough that they

should be theoretically equal before the law. They must have liberty

to avail themselves of the opportunities and means of life; they must

stand on equal terms with reference to the bounty of nature. Either

this, or Liberty withdraws her light! Either this, or darkness comes

on, and the very forces that progress has evolved turn to powers that

work destruction. This is the universal law. This is the lesson of

the centuries. Unless its foundations be laid in justice the social

structure cannot stand.

Our primary social adjustment is a denial of justice. In allowing one

man to own the land on which and from which other men must live, we

have made them his bondsmen in a degree which increases as material

progress goes on. This is the subtile alchemy that in ways they do

not realize is extracting from the masses in every civilized country

the fruits of their weary toil; that is instituting a harder and more

hopeless slavery in place of that which has been destroyed; that is

bringing political despotism out of political freedom, and must soon

transmute democratic institutions into anarchy.

It is this that turns the blessings of material progress into a curse.

It is this that crowds human beings into noisome cellars and squalid

tenement houses; that fills prisons and brothels; that goads men with

want and consumes them with greed; that robs women of the grace and

beauty of perfect womanhood; that takes from little children the joy

and innocence of life’s morning.

Civilization so based cannot continue. The eternal laws of the universe

forbid it. Ruins of dead empires testify, and the witness that is in

every soul answers, that it cannot be. It is something grander than

Benevolence, something more august than Charity—it is Justice herself

that demands of us to right this wrong. Justice that will not be

denied; that cannot be put off—Justice that with the scales carries

the sword. Shall we ward the stroke with liturgies and prayers? Shall

we avert the decrees of immutable law by raising churches when hungry

infants moan and weary mothers weep?

Though it may take the language of prayer, it is blasphemy that

attributes to the inscrutable decrees of Providence the suffering and

brutishness that come of poverty; that turns with folded hands to the

All-Father and lays on Him the responsibility for the want and crime of

our great cities. We degrade the Everlasting. We slander the Just One.

A merciful man would have better ordered the world; a just man would

crush with his foot such an ulcerous anthill! It is not the Almighty,

but we who are responsible for the vice and misery that fester amid our

civilization. The Creator showers upon us his gifts—more than enough

for all. But like swine scrambling for food, we tread them in the

mire—tread them in the mire, while we tear and rend each other!

In the very centers of our civilization to-day are want and suffering

enough to make sick at heart whoever does not close his eyes and steel

his nerves. Dare we turn to the Creator and ask Him to relieve it?

Supposing the prayer were heard, and at the behest with which the

universe sprang into being there should glow in the sun a greater

power; new virtue fill the air; fresh vigor the soil; that for every

blade of grass that now grows two should spring up, and the seed that

now increases fifty-fold should increase a hundred-fold! Would poverty

be abated or want relieved? Manifestly no! Whatever benefit would

accrue would be but temporary. The new powers streaming through the

material universe could be utilized only through land. And land, being

private property, the classes that now monopolize the bounty of the

Creator would monopolize all the new bounty. Land owners would alone

be benefited. Rents would increase, but wages would still tend to the

starvation point!

This is not merely a deduction of political economy; it is a fact

of experience. We know it because we have seen it. Within our own

times, under our very eyes, that Power which is above all, and in all,

and through all; that Power of which the whole universe is but the

manifestation; that Power which maketh all things, and without which is

not anything made that is made, has increased the bounty which men may

enjoy, as truly as though the fertility of nature had been increased.

Into the mind of one came the thought that harnessed steam for the

service of mankind. To the inner ear of another was whispered the

secret that compels the lightning to bear a message round the globe.

In every direction have the laws of matter been revealed; in every

department of industry have arisen arms of iron and fingers of steel,

whose effect upon the production of wealth has been precisely the same

as an increase in the fertility of nature. What has been the result?

Simply that land owners get all the gain. The wonderful discoveries and

inventions of our century have neither increased wages nor lightened

toil. The effect has simply been to make the few richer; the many more

helpless!

Can it be that the gifts of the Creator may be thus misappropriated

with impunity? Is it a light thing that labor should be robbed of its

earnings while greed rolls in wealth—that the many should want while

the few are surfeited? Turn to history, and on every page may be read

the lesson that such wrong never goes unpunished; that the Nemesis that

follows injustice never falters nor sleeps! Look around to-day. Can

this state of things continue? May we even say, “After us the deluge!”

Nay; the pillars of the state are trembling even now, and the very

foundations of society begin to quiver with pent-up forces that glow

underneath. The struggle that must either revivify, or convulse in

ruin, is near at hand, if it be not already begun.

The fiat has gone forth! With steam and electricity, and the new powers

born of progress, forces have entered the world that will either

compel us to a higher plane or overwhelm us, as nation after nation,

as civilization after civilization, have been overwhelmed before. It

is the delusion which precedes destruction that sees in the popular

unrest with which the civilized world is feverishly pulsing only the

passing effect of ephemeral causes. Between democratic ideas and

the aristocratic adjustments of society there is an irreconcilable

conflict. Here in the United States, as there in Europe, it may be seen

arising. We cannot go on permitting men to vote and forcing them to

tramp. We cannot go on educating boys and girls in our public schools

and then refusing them the right to earn an honest living. We cannot

go on prating of the inalienable rights of man and then denying the

inalienable right to the bounty of the Creator. Even now, in old

bottles the new wine begins to ferment, and elemental forces gather for

the strife!

But if, while there is yet time, we turn to Justice and obey her,

if we trust Liberty and follow her, the dangers that now threaten

must disappear, the forces that now menace will turn to agencies of

elevation. Think of the powers now wasted; of the infinite fields

of knowledge yet to be explored; of the possibilities of which the

wondrous inventions of this century give us but a hint. With want

destroyed; with greed changed to noble passions; with the fraternity

that is born of equality taking the place of the jealousy and fear

that now array men against each other; with mental power loosed by

conditions that give to the humblest comfort and leisure; and who shall

measure the heights to which our civilization may soar? Words fail the

thought! It is the Golden Age of which poets have sung and high-raised

seers have told in metaphor! It is the glorious vision which has

always haunted man with gleams of fitful splendor. It is what he saw

whose eyes at Patmos were closed in a trance. It is the culmination of

Christianity—the City of God on earth, with its walls of jasper and its

gates of pearl! It is the reign of the Prince of Peace!

CONCLUSION.

THE PROBLEM OF INDIVIDUAL LIFE.

The days of the nations bear no trace

Of all the sunshine so far foretold;

The cannon speaks in the teacher’s place—

The age is weary with work and gold,

And high hopes wither, and memories wane;

On hearths and altars the fires are dead;

But that brave faith hath not lived in vain—

And this is all that our watcher said.

—_Frances Brown._

CONCLUSION.

THE PROBLEM OF INDIVIDUAL LIFE.

My task is done.

Yet the thought still mounts. The problems we have been considering

lead into a problem higher and deeper still. Behind the problems of

social life lies the problem of individual life. I have found it

impossible to think of the one without thinking of the other, and so,

I imagine, will it be with those who, reading this book, go with me

in thought. For, as says Guizot, “when the history of civilization

is completed, when there is nothing more to say as to our present

existence, man inevitably asks himself whether all is exhausted,

whether he has reached the end of all things?”

This problem I cannot now discuss. I speak of it only because the

thought which, while writing this book, has come with inexpressible

cheer to me, may also be of cheer to some who read it; for, whatever

be its fate, it will be read by some who in their heart of hearts

have taken the cross of a new crusade. This thought will come to them

without my suggestion; but we are surer that we see a star when we know

that others also see it.

* * * * *

The truth that I have tried to make clear will not find easy

acceptance. If that could be, it would have been accepted long ago.

If that could be, it would never have been obscured. But it will find

friends—those who will toil for it; suffer for it; if need be, die for

it. This is the power of Truth.

Will it at length prevail? Ultimately, yes. But in our own times, or

in times of which any memory of us remains, who shall say?

For the man who, seeing the want and misery, the ignorance and

brutishness caused by unjust social institutions, sets himself, in so

far as he has strength, to right them, there is disappointment and

bitterness. So it has been of old time. So is it even now. But the

bitterest thought—and it sometimes comes to the best and bravest—is

that of the hopelessness of the effort, the futility of the sacrifice.

To how few of those who sow the seed is it given to see it grow, or

even with certainty to know that it will grow.

Let us not disguise it. Over and over again has the standard of Truth

and Justice been raised in this world. Over and over again has it been

trampled down—oftentimes in blood. If they are weak forces that are

opposed to Truth, how should Error so long prevail? If Justice has but

to raise her head to have Injustice flee before her, how should the

wail of the oppressed so long go up?

But for those who see Truth and would follow her; for those who

recognize Justice and would stand for her, success is not the only

thing. Success! Why, Falsehood has often that to give; and Injustice

often has that to give. Must not Truth and Justice have something to

give that is their own by proper right—theirs in essence, and not by

accident?

That they have, and that here and now, every one who has felt their

exaltation knows. But sometimes the clouds sweep down. It is sad, sad

reading, the lives of the men who would have done something for their

fellows. To Socrates they gave the hemlock; Gracchus they killed with

sticks and stones; and One, greatest and purest of all, they crucified.

These seem but types. To-day Russian prisons are full, and in long

processions, men and women, who, but for high-minded patriotism, might

have lived in ease and luxury, move in chains toward the death-in-life

of Siberia. And in penury and want, in neglect and contempt, destitute

even of the sympathy that would have been so sweet, how many in every

country have closed their eyes? This we see.

_But do we see it all?_

In writing I have picked up a newspaper. In it is a short account,

evidently translated from a semi-official report, of the execution of

three Nihilists at Kieff—the Prussian subject Brandtner, the unknown

man calling himself Antonoff, and the nobleman Ossinsky. At the foot of

the gallows they were permitted to kiss one another. “Then the hangman

cut the rope, the surgeons pronounced the victims dead, the bodies were

buried at the foot of the scaffold, and the Nihilists were given up to

eternal oblivion.” Thus says the account. I do not believe it. No; not

to oblivion!

* * * * *

I have in this inquiry followed the course of my own thought. When, in

mind, I set out on it I had no theory to support, no conclusions to

prove. Only, when I first realized the squalid misery of a great city,

it appalled and tormented me, and would not let me rest, for thinking

of what caused it and how it could be cured.

But out of this inquiry has come to me something I did not think to

find, and a faith that was dead revives.

* * * * *

The yearning for a further life is natural and deep. It grows with

intellectual growth, and perhaps none really feel it more than those

who have begun to see how great is the universe and how infinite are

the vistas which every advance in knowledge opens before us—vistas

which would require nothing short of eternity to explore. But in the

mental atmosphere of our times, to the great majority of men on whom

mere creeds have lost their hold, it seems impossible to look on this

yearning save as a vain and childish hope, arising from man’s egotism,

and for which there is not the slightest ground or warrant, but which,

on the contrary, seems inconsistent with positive knowledge.

Now, when we come to analyze and trace up the ideas that thus destroy

the hope of a future life, we shall find them, I think, to have their

source, not in any revelations of physical science, but in certain

teachings of political and social science which have deeply permeated

thought in all directions. They have their root in the doctrines,

that there is a tendency to the production of more human beings than

can be provided for; that vice and misery are the result of natural

laws, and the means by which advance goes on; and that human progress

is by a slow race development. These doctrines, which have been

generally accepted as approved truth, do what, except as scientific

interpretations have been colored by them, the extensions of physical

science do not do—they reduce the individual to insignificance; they

destroy the idea that there can be in the ordering of the universe any

regard for his existence, or any recognition of what we call moral

qualities.

It is difficult to reconcile the idea of human immortality with the

idea that nature wastes men by constantly bringing them into being

where there is no room for them. It is impossible to reconcile the

idea of an intelligent and beneficent Creator with the belief that

the wretchedness and degradation which are the lot of such a large

proportion of human kind result from his enactments; while the idea

that man mentally and physically is the result of slow modifications

perpetuated by heredity, irresistibly suggests the idea that it is

the race life, not the individual life, which is the object of human

existence. Thus has vanished with many of us, and is still vanishing

with more of us, that belief which in the battles and ills of life

affords the strongest support and deepest consolation.

Now, in the inquiry through which we have passed, we have met these

doctrines and seen their fallacy. We have seen that population does not

tend to outrun subsistence; we have seen that the waste of human powers

and the prodigality of human suffering do not spring from natural laws,

but from the ignorance and selfishness of men in refusing to conform

to natural laws. We have seen that human progress is not by altering

the nature of men; but that, on the contrary, the nature of men seems,

generally speaking, always the same.

Thus the nightmare which is banishing from the modern world the

belief in a future life is destroyed. Not that all difficulties

are removed—for turn which way we may, we come to what we cannot

comprehend; but that difficulties are removed which seem conclusive and

insuperable. And, thus, hope springs up.

But this is not all.

* * * * *

Political Economy has been called the dismal science, and as currently

taught, _is_ hopeless and despairing. But this, as we have seen,

is solely because she has been degraded and shackled; her truths

dislocated; her harmonies ignored; the word she would utter gagged in

her mouth, and her protest against wrong turned into an indorsement

of injustice. Freed, as I have tried to free her—in her own proper

symmetry, Political Economy is radiant with hope.

For properly understood, the laws which govern the production and

distribution of wealth show that the want and injustice of the present

social state are not necessary; but that, on the contrary, a social

state is possible in which poverty would be unknown, and all the better

qualities and higher powers of human nature would have opportunity for

full development.

And, further than this, when we see that social development is governed

neither by a Special Providence nor by a merciless fate, but by law,

at once unchangeable and beneficent; when we see that human will is

the great factor, and that taking men in the aggregate, their condition

is as they make it; when we see that economic law and moral law are

essentially one, and that the truth which the intellect grasps after

toilsome effort is but that which the moral sense reaches by a quick

intuition, a flood of light breaks in upon the problem of individual

life. These countless millions like ourselves, who on this earth of

ours have passed and still are passing, with their joys and sorrows,

their toil and their striving, their aspirations and their fears, their

strong perceptions of things deeper than sense, their common feelings

which form the basis even of the most divergent creeds—their little

lives do not seem so much like meaningless waste.

The great fact which Science in all her branches shows is the

universality of law. Wherever he can trace it, whether in the fall

of an apple or in the revolution of binary suns, the astronomer sees

the working of the same law, which operates in the minutest divisions

in which we may distinguish space, as it does in the immeasurable

distances with which his science deals. Out of that which lies beyond

his telescope comes a moving body and again it disappears. So far as

he can trace its course the law is ignored. Does he say that this is

an exception? On the contrary, he says that this is merely a part of

its orbit that he has seen; that beyond the reach of his telescope the

law holds good. He makes his calculations, and after centuries they are

proved.

Now, if we trace out the laws which govern human life in society,

we find that in the largest as in the smallest community, they are

the same. We find that what seem at first sight like divergences and

exceptions are but manifestations of the same principles. And we find

that everywhere we can trace it, the social law runs into and conforms

with the moral law; that in the life of a community, justice infallibly

brings its reward and injustice its punishment. But this we cannot

see in individual life. If we look merely at individual life we cannot

see that the laws of the universe have the slightest relation to good

or bad, to right or wrong, to just or unjust.[68] Shall we then say

that the law which is manifest in social life is not true of individual

life? It is not scientific to say so. We would not say so in reference

to anything else. Shall we not rather say this simply proves that we do

not see the whole of individual life?

* * * * *

The laws which Political Economy discovers, like the facts and

relations of physical nature, harmonize with what seems to be the law

of mental development—not a necessary and involuntary progress, but a

progress in which the human will is an initiatory force. But in life,

as we are cognizant of it, mental development can go but a little

way. The mind hardly begins to awake ere the bodily powers decline—it

but becomes dimly conscious of the vast fields before it, but begins

to learn and use its strength, to recognize relations and extend its

sympathies, when, with the death of the body, it passes away. Unless

there is something more, there seems here a break, a failure. Whether

it be a Humboldt or a Herschel, a Moses who looks from Pisgah, a Joshua

who leads the host, or one of those sweet and patient souls who in

narrow circles live radiant lives, there seems, if mind and character

here developed can go no further, a purposelessness inconsistent with

what we can see of the linked sequence of the universe.

By a fundamental law of our minds—the law, in fact, upon which

Political Economy relies in all her deductions—we cannot conceive

of a means without an end; a contrivance without an object. Now, to

all nature, so far as we come in contact with it in this world, the

support and employment of the intelligence that is in man furnishes

such an end and object. But unless man himself may rise to or bring

forth something higher, his existence is unintelligible. So strong

is this metaphysical necessity that those who deny to the individual

anything more than this life are compelled to transfer the idea of

perfectibility to the race. But as we have seen, and the argument could

have been made much more complete, there is nothing whatever to show

any essential race improvement. Human progress is not the improvement

of human nature. The advances in which civilization consists are not

secured in the constitution of man, but in the constitution of society.

They are thus not fixed and permanent, but may at any time be lost—nay,

are constantly tending to be lost. And further than this, if human

life does not continue beyond what we see of it here, then we are

confronted, with regard to the race, with the same difficulty as with

the individual! For it is as certain that the race must die as it is

that the individual must die. We know that there have been geologic

conditions under which human life was impossible on this earth. We know

that they must return again. Even now, as the earth circles on her

appointed orbit, the northern ice cap slowly thickens, and the time

gradually approaches, when its glaciers will flow again, and austral

seas, sweeping northward, bury the seats of present civilization under

ocean wastes, as it may be they now bury what was once as high a

civilization as our own, And beyond these periods, science discerns

a dead earth, an exhausted sun—a time when, clashing together, the

solar system shall resolve itself into a gaseous form, again to begin

immeasurable mutations.

* * * * *

What then is the meaning of life—of life absolutely and inevitably

bounded by death? To me it seems intelligible only as the avenue and

vestibule to another life. And its facts seem explainable only upon a

theory which cannot be expressed but in myth and symbol, and which,

everywhere and at all times, the myths and symbols in which men have

tried to portray their deepest perceptions do in some form express.

The scriptures of the men who have been and gone—the Bibles, the Zend

Avestas, the Vedas, the Dhammapadas, and the Korans; the esoteric

doctrines of old philosophies, the inner meaning of grotesque

religions, the dogmatic constitutions of Ecumenical Councils, the

preachings of Foxes, and Wesleys, and Savonarolas, the traditions of

red Indians, and beliefs of black savages, have a heart and core in

which they agree—a something which seems like the variously distorted

apprehensions of a primary truth. And out of the chain of thought we

have been following there seems vaguely to rise a glimpse of what

they vaguely saw—a shadowy gleam of ultimate relations, the endeavor

to express which inevitably falls into type and allegory. A garden in

which are set the trees of good and evil. A vineyard in which there is

the Master’s work to do. A passage—from life behind to life beyond. A

trial and a struggle, of which we cannot see the end.

Look around to-day.

Lo! here, now, in our civilized society, the old allegories yet have a

meaning, the old myths are still true. Into the Valley of the Shadow of

Death yet often leads the path of duty, through the streets of Vanity

Fair walk Christian and Faithful, and on Greatheart’s armor ring the

clanging blows. Ormuzd still fights with Ahriman—the Prince of Light

with the Powers of Darkness. He who will hear, to him the clarions of

the battle call.

How they call, and call, and call, till the heart swells that hears

them! Strong soul and high endeavor, the world needs them now. Beauty

still lies imprisoned, and iron wheels go over the good and true and

beautiful that might spring from human lives.

And they who fight with Ormuzd, though they may not know each

other—somewhere, sometime, will the muster roll be called.

* * * * *

Though Truth and Right seem often overborne, we may not see it all.

How can we see it all? All that is passing, even here, we cannot tell.

The vibrations of matter which give the sensations of light and color

become to us indistinguishable when they pass a certain point. It

is only within a like range that we have cognizance of sounds. Even

animals have senses which we have not. And, here? Compared with the

solar system our earth is but an indistinguishable speck; and the solar

system itself shrivels into nothingness when gauged with the star

depths. Shall we say that what passes from _our_ sight passes into

oblivion? No; not into oblivion. Far, far beyond our ken the eternal

laws must hold their sway.

* * * * *

The hope that rises is the heart of all religions! The poets have

sung it, the seers have told it, and in its deepest pulses the heart

of man throbs responsive to its truth. This, that Plutarch said, is

what in all times and in all tongues has been said by the pure hearted

and strong sighted, who, standing as it were, on the mountain tops of

thought and looking over the shadowy ocean, have beheld the loom of

land:

“_Men’s souls, encompassed here with bodies and passions, have no

communication with God, except what they can reach to in conception

only, by means of philosophy, as by a kind of an obscure dream. But

when they are loosed from the body, and removed into the unseen,

invisible, impassable, and pure region, this God is then their leader

and king; they there, as it were, hanging on him wholly, and beholding

without weariness and passionately affecting that beauty which cannot

be expressed or uttered by men._

FOOTNOTES:

[68] Let us not delude our children. If for no other reason than for

that which Plato gives, that when they come to discard that which we

told them as pious fable they will also discard that which we told them

as truth. The virtues which relate to self do generally bring their

reward. Either a merchant or a thief will be more successful if he be

sober, prudent, and faithful to his promises; but as to the virtues

which do not relate to self—

“It seems a story from the world of spirits,

When any one obtains that which he merits,

Or any merits that which he obtains.”

INDEX.

Bagehot, Walter, arrest of civilization, 480-481;

why barbarians waste away, 497-498.

Bastiat, cause of interest, 176-186.

Bisset, Andrew, knight’s service, 381_n_.

Buckle, assumes current doctrine of wages, 18;

on Malthus, 92-93, 100;

interest and profits, 158;

relation between rent, wages and interest, 170.

Cairnes, J. E., high wages and interest in new countries, 20-22.

California, economic principles exemplified in, 19-20, 61-63, 78,

144-146, 174, 255-256, 271-275, 290-291, 344, 383-385, 392, 398,

434-435.

Capital, current doctrine of its relation to wages, 17-18;

idle in industrial depressions, 21;

theory that wages are drawn from, 20-23;

deductions from this theory, 24-25;

varying definitions of, 32-34;

difficulties besetting use of term, 36-37;

exclusions of term, 37-38;

distinguished from wealth, 41-47, 71-72;

used in two senses, 56-57;

definitions of Smith, Ricardo, McCulloch, and Mill compared, 41-45;

wages not drawn from, 23-29, 49-69;

does not limit industry, 26-29, 57-58, 80-86;

does not maintain laborers, 70-78;

modes in which it aids labor, 79, 186-188, 195-196;

real functions of, 79-87;

may limit form and productiveness of industry, 80-82;

apparent want of generally due to some other want, 82-85;

limited by requirements of production, 85-86;

poverty not due to scarcity of, 85-86;

not necessary to production, 163-164;

a form of labor, 164, 198, 203;

its essence, 179;

spurious, 189-194;

not fixed in quantity, 195;

if the only active factor in production, 201-202;

its profits as affected by wages, 308-309;

wastes when not used, 311;

invested upon possessory titles, 385.

Carey, Henry C., on capital, 34;

rent, 225.

China, cause of poverty and famine, 121-122;

civilization, 480-481.

Civilization, what, 475-476;

prevailing belief as to progress of, 476-479;

arrest of, 479-486;

differences in, 487-502;

its law, 503-523;

retrogression, 482-486, 536-537;

to endure must be based on justice, 543-546;

character of European, 518, 526.

Civilization, modern, its riddle, 10;

has not improved condition of the lowest class, 281-284;

development of, 372-382;

superiority, 519-520;

may decline, 524-528;

indications of retrogression, 537-540;

its possibilities, 452-469, 549.

Communities, industrial, extent of, 197.

Confucius, descendants of, 111-112.

Consumption, supported by contemporaneous production, 72-75;

demand for determines production, 75-76;

only relative term, 133;

increase of shows increasing production, 149.

Co-operation, not a remedy for poverty, 314-317;

but will follow from the extirpation of poverty, 452-469.

Debts, public, not capital, 189-190;

origin and abolition, 381-382, 453.

Demand, not fixed, 243, 245-247. (See Supply and Demand.)

Deutsch, Emanuel, human nature, 495.

Development, concentration the order of, 325.

Development Philosophy, relations to Malthusianism, 100-101;

insufficiency of, 473-486.

Discount, high rates of, not interest, 21_n_.

Distribution, terms of exclusive, 37, 38, 162;

laws of, 153-222;

their necessary relation, 160-164;

as currently taught, 160-161;

contrasted with true laws, 218;

equality of, 450-451.

Education no remedy for poverty, 305-306.

Exchange, functions of, 27-29, 76-77;

a part of production, 47;

brings increase, 182-183, 186-187;

extends with progress of civilization, 197;

promotes civilization, 508-509.

Exchanges, credit in, 276-277;

effect of wages on international, 309-310.

Fawcett, Prof., Indian expenditures, 120_n_;

value of land in England, 287.

Fawcett, Mrs., laborers maintained by capital, 70;

land tax, 421.

Feudal system, recognition of common rights to land, 372-375, 381;

infeudation, 396-397.

Fortunes, great, 193-194, 386-387, 451.

Franklin, Benjamin, his economy, 303.

Government, improvements in increase production, 227, 252;

will not relieve poverty, 298-301;

simplification and change of character, 452-469;

tendency to republicanism, 526-527;

transition to despotism, 301, 527-528.

Guizot, Europe after fall of Roman Empire, 372-373;

the question that arises from a review of civilization, 553.

Hyndman, H. M., Indian famine, 119-120.

Improvements in the arts, effect upon distribution, 242-252;

in habits of industry and thrift, will not relieve poverty, 301-308;

upon land, their value separable from land values, 341-342, 422-423.

India, cause of poverty and famine, 114-121;

civilization, 480, 481, 497.

Industrial depressions, extent and significance,

5-6, 537-538;

conflicting opinions as to cause, 10-11;

their cause and course, 261-279;

connection with railroad building, 272-274;

passing away, 279.

Industry, not limited by capital, 26, 56-57;

may be limited in form and productiveness by capital, 80-86.

Interest, confusion of term with profits, 156-163;

proper signification, 161-162;

variations in, 174;

cause of, 174-188;

justice of, 187;

profits mistaken for, 189-194;

law of, 195-203;

normal point of, 198-199;

formulation of law, 202.

Interest and wages, evident connection, 19-21;

relation, 171-172, 199-203, 218;

why higher in new countries, 221.

Inventions, labor-saving, failure to relieve poverty, 3-5;

advantage of goes primarily to labor, 179, 195-196;

except when not diffused, 251;

effect of, 242-252;

brought forth by freedom, 521-523.

Ireland, cause of poverty and famine, 123-128;

effect of introduction of potato, 303-304.

Labor, purpose of, 27-29, 244-245, 396;

meaning of term, 37-38;

produces wages, 27-29, 49-69;

precedes wages, 55-58;

employs capital, 163, 195;

eliminated from production, 201-202;

productiveness varies with natural powers, 205;

no fixed barriers between occupations, 210-211;

value of reduced by value of land, 221-222;

supply and demand, 268-269;

land necessary to, 270, 292-294;

cause of want of employment, 271-272;

family, 304;

combination, 308-314;

only rightful basis of property, 332-335;

efficiency increases with wages, 441-442;

not in itself repugnant, 465.

Labor and Capital, different forms of same thing, 163-164, 198, 203;

whence idea of their conflict arises, 189, 194;

harmony of interests, 198-203.

Laborers, not maintained by capital, 70-78;

where land is monopolized, have no interest in increase of

productive power, 281;

made more dependent by civilization, 281-284;

organizations of, 308-314;

condition not improved by division of land, 321-325;

their enslavement the ultimate result of private property in

land, 345-355.

Land, meaning of term, 37;

value of is not wealth, 39, 165-166;

diminishing productiveness cited in support Malthusian theory, 97;

how far true, 133-134, 228-241;

maintenance of prices, 274-275;

estimated value of in England, 287;

effects of monopolization in England, 288-289;

relation of man to, 292-294;

division of will not relieve poverty, 319-325;

tendency to concentration in ownership, 319-321;

necessity for abolishing private ownership, 326-327;

injustice of private property in, 331-392;

absurdity of legal titles to, 340, 342-344;

aristocracy and serfdom spring from ownership of, 294, 348-355,

514-515;

purchase by government, 357-358;

development of private ownership, 366-382;

commons, 375-376;

tenures in the United States, 383-392;

private ownership inconsistent with best use, 395-400;

how may be made common property, 401-427;

effects of this, 452-469;

increase of productiveness from better distribution of population,

449_n_.

Land owners, power of, 167, 292-294, 345-355;

ease of their combination, 312-313;

their claims to compensation, 356-365;

will not be injured by confiscation of rent, 445-469.

Latimer, Hugh, increase of rent in Sixteenth Century, 288-289.

Laveleye, M. de, on small land holdings, 324-325;

primitive land tenures, 369;

Teutonic equality, 372.

Lawyers, confusions in their terminology, 335-336;

their inculcation of the sacredness of property, 366;

influence on land tenures, 370_n_.

Life, quantity of human, 109-110;

limits to, 129-134;

reproductive power gives increase to capital, 181;

balance of, 196-197;

meaning of, 561.

Macaulay, English rule in India, 116;

future of United States, 534.

Machinery. (See Inventions.)

McCulloch, on wages fund, 22-23_n_;

definition of capital, 33-34;

compared, 42-44;

principle of increase, 101;

Irish poverty and distress, 125-126;

rent, 232;

tax on rent, 420, 422-425.

Malthus, purpose of Essay on Population, 98;

its absurdities, 104-105, 137;

his other works treated with contempt, 105-106_n_;

fall of wages in Sixteenth Century, 288;

cause of his popularity, 98-100, 336-337_n_.

Malthusian Theory, stated, examined and disproved, 91-150;

as stated by Malthus, 93-94;

as stated by Mill, 94-95, 140-141;

in its strongest form, 95;

its triumph and the causes, 95-96;

harmonizes with ideas of working classes, 98;

defends inequality and discourages reform, 98-99, 140-141,

336-337_n_;

its extension in development philosophy, 101;

now generally accepted, 101-102;

its illegitimate inferences, 103-139;

facts which disprove it, 140-150;

its support from doctrine of rent, 97, 132-133, 228-229;

effects predicated of increase of population result from

improvements in the arts, 242-252;

the ultimate defense of property in land, 336-337_n_.

Man more than an animal, 129-131, 134-136, 307, 464, 473-475, 492-493;

his power to avail himself of the reproductive forces of nature,

131-132;

primary right and power, 332-333;

desire for approbation, 456-458;

selfishness not the master motive, 460-461;

his infinite desires, 134-136, 243, 245-247, 464-465, 503;

how improves, 475;

idea of national or race life, 485-486;

cause of differences and progress, 487-502;

hereditary transmission, 492-502;

social in his nature, 506.

Mill, John Stuart, definition of capital, 34, 71-72;

industry limited by capital, 56-57_n_, 70-71;

Malthusian doctrine, 94-95, 111;

effect of unrestricted increase of population, 140-141;

confusion as to profits and interest, 158;

law of rent, 168;

wages, 213;

government resumption of increase of land values, 358-360;

influence of Malthusianism, 360-361;

tax on rent, 420-421.

Money, when capital, 45;

in hands of consumer, 46_n_;

confounded with wealth, 60-61;

lack of commodities spoken of as lack of, 266.

Monopolies, profits of, 191-194;

cause of certain, 408-409.

More, Sir Thomas, ejectments of cottagers, 289.

Nature, its reproductive power, 180-182;

utilization of its variations, 182-183, 185-187;

equation between reproduction and destruction, 196-197;

impartiality of, 333-334.

Nicholson, N. A., on capital, 35.

Nightingale, Florence, causes of famine in India, 118-119, 119_n_,

120_n_.

Perry, Arthur Latham, on capital, 34;

rent, 225.

Political Economy, its failure, its nature and its methods, 10-13;

doctrines based upon the theory that wages are drawn from capital,

24-25;

importance of definitions, 30-36;

its terms, abstract terms, 47;

confusion of standard treatises, 56-57, 158-161, 218;

the erroneous standpoint which its investigators have adopted,

162-163;

its fundamental principle, 12, 204, 217, 560;

writers on, stumbling over law of wages, 215-216;

compared with astronomy, 219-220;

deals with general tendencies, 278-279;

admissions in standard works as to property in land, 356-358;

principles not pushed to logical conclusions, 421;

the Physiocrats, 421-422;

unison with moral truth, 230, 484;

its hopefulness, 557;

effect on religious ideas, 555-556.

Population and Subsistence, 91-150. (See Malthusian Theory.)

Population, inferences as to increase, 103-104;

of world, no evidence of increase in, 107-110;

present, 113_n_;

increase of descendants not increase of, 112;

only limited by space, 133-134;

real law of increase, 137-139;

effect of increase upon production and distribution, 228-241;

increase of increases wealth, 140-150;

puts land to intenser uses, 320;

increase in United States, 390.

Poverty, its connection with material progress, 6-10;

failure to explain this, 10-11;

where deepest, 222;

why it accompanies progress, 280-294;

remedy for, 326-328;

springs from injustice, 338-339, 541-542;

its effects, 354, 456-464.

Price, not measured by the necessity of the buyer, 185;

equation of equalizes reward of labor, 204.

Production, same principles obvious in complex as in simple forms,

26-29;

factors of, 37, 162, 203, 270, 292-294;

includes exchange, 47;

the immediate result of labor, 64-67;

directed by demand for consumption, 75;

functions of capital in, 79-87, 162-164;

simple modes of sometimes most efficient, 84-85;

only relative term, 133;

increased shown by increased consumption, 149;

meaning of the term, 155;

utilizes reproductive forces, 179-182;

time an element in, 180-185;

the modes of, 186;

recourse to lower points does not involve diminution of, 229-232;

tendency to large scale, 320-321, 325, 531-532;

susceptible of enormous increase, 431-434, 466, 547.

Profits, meaning of the term and confusions in its use, 158-162,

189-194.

Progress, human, current theory of considered, 473-486;

in what it consists, 487-502;

its law, 503-523, 541-549;

retrogression, 524-540.

Progress, material, connection with poverty, 7-11, 222;

in what it consists, 227;

effects upon distribution of wealth, 228-241;

effect of expectation raised by, 253-258;

how it results in industrial depressions, 261-279;

why it produces poverty, 280-294.

Property, basis of, 331-334, 340-342;

erroneous categories of, 335;

derivation of distinction between real and personal, 377;

private in land not necessary to use of land, 395-400;

idea of transferred to land, 514-515.

Protection, its fallacies have their root in belief as to wages, 19;

effect on agriculturists, 447-449;

abolition by England, effect of, 252;

how protective taxes fall, 447-448.

Quesnay, his doctrine, 422-423, 431.

Rent, bearing upon Malthusian theory, 96-98, 132-134, 228-241,

242-252;

meaning of the term, 165;

arises from monopoly, 166;

law of, 168-170;

its corollaries, 171, 217-218;

effect of their recognition, 171-172;

as related to interest, 201-203;

as related to wages, 204-216;

advance of explains why wages and interest do not advance, 221-222;

increased by increase of population, 228-241;

increased by improvements, 242-252;

by speculation, 253-258;

speculative advance in the cause of industrial depressions, 261-279;

advance in explains the persistence of poverty, 280-294;

increase of not prevented by tenant right, 322;

or by division of land, 324-325;

serf, generally fixed, 353;

confiscation of future increase, 357-359;

a continuous robbery, 362-363;

feudal rents, 372-375;

their abolition, 378-381;

their present value, 381-382;

rent now taken by the State, 397-400;

State appropriation of, 401-427, 514-515;

taxes on, 406-419;

effects of thus appropriating, 431-486.

Reade, Winwood, Martyrdom of Man, 478_n_, 479_n_.

Religion, necessary to socialism, 318;

promotive of civilization, 509, 519-520;

Hebrew, effects on race, 495-496;

retrogression in, 536-537;

change going on, 540;

animosities created by, 507_n_;

consensus of, 560-561.

Ricardo, definition of capital, 33;

inference as to population, 71;

enunciation of law of rent, 168;

narrow view of, 168-169, 225;

tax on rent, 420.

Royce, Samuel, Deterioration and Race Education, 538_n_.

Slaveholders of the South, their view of abolition, 351-353.

Slavery, chattel, comparatively trivial effects of, 347;

modifying influences, 353-354;

not truly abolished in United States, 355, 392;

never aided progress, 522-523.

Smith, Adam, definition of capital, 32-33, 36-42, 44, 45-46;

recognizes truth as to source of wages and then abandons it, 50;

influence of Malthusian theory upon, 92;

profits, 157;

how economists have followed him, 159;

differences of wages in different occupations, 207-208, 209-210;

his failure to appreciate the laws of distribution, 215;

taxation, 416-419.

Socialism, its ends and means, 317-319;

practical realization of its ideal, 431-469.

Social organization and life, possible changes, 452-69.

Spencer, Herbert, compensation of land owners, 357-358, 362;

public ownership of land, 402;

evolution, 478, 485;

human progress, 478-479;

social differences, 502.

Strikes, 310-314.

Subsistence, population and, 91-150;

increases with population, 129-133;

cannot be exhausted, 133-134;

included in wealth, 142, 244;

demand for not fixed, 245-246. (See Malthusian Theory.)

Supply and demand, of labor, 208-209;

relative terms, 266-267;

as affected by wages, 308-310.

Swift, Dean, his Modest Proposal, 126.

Taxation, eliminated in considering distribution, 155;

reduction of will not relieve poverty, 297-301;

considered, 406-427;

canons of, 406;

effect upon production, 406-412;

ease and cheapness in collection, 412-414;

certainty, 414-416;

equality of, 416-419;

opinions on, 420-423;

objections to tax on rent, 422-427;

cause of manifold taxation, 425-427;

how taxation falls on agriculturists, 447-450;

effects of confiscating rent by taxation, 431-469.

Tennant, Rev. Wm., cause of famine in India, 115-116.

Thornton, Wm., on wage fund, 18_n_;

on capital, 35.

Values, equation of, 196-197.

Wages, current doctrine, 17;

it coincides with vulgar opinion, 18;

but is inconsistent with facts, 19-22;

genesis of current theory, 22;

difference between it and that herein advanced, 23-25;

not drawn from capital but produced by labor, 23, 25-29, 49-69;

meaning of the term, 31-32;

always subsequent to labor, 56-58;

fallacy of the assumption that they are drawn from capital, 56-57;

for services, 59_n_;

connection between current doctrine and Malthusian theory, 92-95,

96-97;

confusion of terms produced by current theory, 159;

rate of, 204;

law of, 204-216;

formulated, 213;

in different occupations, 207-212;

as quantity and as proportion, 216;

not increased by material progress, 303-304;

minimum fixed by standard of comfort, 303;

effect of increase or decrease on employers, 308-309;

equilibrium of, 310-311;

not increased by division of land, 323-325;

why they tend to wages of slavery, 346;

efficiency of labor increases with, 442.

Wages and Interest, high or low together, 19-22;

current explanation, 19;

Cairne’s explanation, 20-22;

true explanation, 170-172, 199-203, 221;

formulated, 218.

Wages of Superintendence, 159;

used to include profits of monopoly, 191.

Walker, Amasa, capital, 35.

Walker, Prof. F. A., wages, 18_n_;

capital, 35.

Wayland, Professor, definition of capital, 34.

Wealth, increase of not generally shared, 8-9;

meaning of term, 38-40;

interchangeability of, 47-48, 142, 181-182, 244-247;

confounded with money, 60-61;

increases with population, 141-150;

accumulated, 147-149;

laws of distribution, 153-216;

formulated, 218;

nature of, 147-149, 180, 205;

political effects of unequal distribution, 300, 527-535;

effects of just distribution, 438-444, 450-451, 452-469.

* * * * *

Transcriber's Notes

Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected. Variations

in hyphenation have been standardised but all other spelling and

punctuation remains unchanged.

Italics are represented thus _italic_.