DAVOSTHAL--ALVENEU--THE SCHYN--THUSIS--HOHEN RHÄTIEN.
How poor are they that have not patience!--SHAKESPEARE.
The cigar mentioned at the close of the last chapter had come to
an end. This brought me to the question of where I would go next?
Where and how? Had I stood alone in the world, that is to say, on
this afternoon at Davos am Platz, without having to consider the
incapacities and wishes of so uncertain an instrument as my neophyte
porter, I should by whatever conveyance might have offered have sent my
belongings some dozen miles down the valley, and have followed them on
foot. Now, however, I was tied to him, and there were symptoms that he
was not disposed for any more work to-day. First he had in the morning
complained much of the ascent of the Strela; and again when we had
arrived at Davos am Platz, I had told him that we would have a halt of
two hours, and would then decide on what was to be done with the rest
of the day: but he had allowed nearly three hours to pass before his
reappearance. This I interpreted to mean that he wished to shorten the
afternoon’s work as much as possible; or, if he could so manage it, to
prevent anything at all being undertaken in the afternoon. These, then,
were disturbing elements in the question: if I were to proceed on foot,
he might be somewhat crippled for future work, or demoralized from a
consciousness that his devices had been seen through and thwarted. I
decided, therefore, to go on that evening to Alveneu Bad, 16¹⁄₂ miles,
by _char_. We soon found that at this time of day our inquiries were
too late: all the public vehicular resources of the place had been
taken up by the numerous afternoon excursionists. I then bethought
myself of trying its private resources in this matter. In this, by the
assistance of the porter of the Kurhaus, I was successful; and at 5
P.M. we started for Alveneu Bad in the private carriage of one of the
magnates of the little town. The carriage and harness were quite new,
and the horse was, evidently, well cared for. The good man and his wife
stood by to see the departure of their lately acquired turn-out, and to
impress to the last on the driver the necessity of care and caution.
When we had been gone about half an hour, a passing shower drifted down
the valley. I hoped that those drops did not reach as far as Davos am
Platz, that they might not be felt by the anxious old couple, though
I was sure that even in that case their hearts would revive within
them when they thought of the 22 francs they were to receive to-morrow
morning.
There is a new and excellent post-road all the way to the Bad which is
on the new Albula road. This new Davos road is a continuation of that
of the Prätigäu. It is carried at first along smooth prairies, backed
by lofty wooded mountains. The stream by its side is the Landwasser,
which as it drains many valleys has a considerable volume of water. At
last the mountains close in, and completely squeeze out the prairies.
There is then no more room for the road, which is, therefore, at
this point carried up and over the mountain on the right bank of the
Landwasser to Wiesen. Beyond Wiesen the road runs along the mountain
flanks above, and some way back from, the Landwasser. This gives you
commanding views of the ranges and summits to your left between the
parallel valleys of Davos and the Engadin. The scene is impressive.
Below you is the deep valley of the Landwasser. Towards the bottom
on the opposite side are bright green prairies and dull green pine
woods; these are overtopped by lofty mountains, streaked by long
deep slaty-coloured _couloirs_ from top to bottom. Other mountains,
behind these, seen through gaps, after showing a zone of black rock,
were capped with snow from which the rays of the western sun were now
gleaming. One in particular appeared to invite climbing, for its zone
of black rock slanted up with what seemed to be a practicable slope
to the snowy summit: of course, however, till a trial has been made
one can only speak of such appearances as possibilities. In several
places along the valley the new road, though only just completed, had
already led to the erection of new houses and hotels. This will go on
everywhere in Switzerland; and by the time all the available sites
are occupied there, tourists will have begun to flood the Tyrol and
overflow into the Carpathians.
Our horse was willing, and the driver not unwilling, and so we reached
the Bad before dark. I found here about fifty people just seated down
to supper. I was told that they were chiefly Swiss, many of them from
the eastern cantons. Family parties, in which the middle-aged element
largely entered, were in preponderance. It was evident that they had
much to say to each other; and saying this probably did them as much
good as drinking the waters.
_August 6._--Having been delayed three quarters of an hour by the
dilatoriness, or the scheming, of the circumnavigator, did not get
under weigh till 5.45. As we left the house a funeral was passing the
door. To us this might seem an early and a cold hour for taking a
deceased relative to his last earthly resting place. We might almost
feel as if there was in such an arrangement something hurried, some
impatience, an unfair curtailment of his last glimpse of the sun.
But, then, it reduces to a minimum the demand which the ceremony must
make on the working hours of the mourners’ day. We were now on the
Albula road. It here skirts the stream of the Albula, which our late
companion, the Landwasser had now joined. In a little more than an
hour, Tiefenkasten was reached, where the Oberhalbstein Rhine enters
the Albula. In an hour more we were on the bridge of Solis. Upon this
part of the road we crossed a long array of diligences and _chars_.
They were from Thusis, which had been reached from Reichenau on the
Coire-Andermatt road, or by the Splügen; and were on their way to the
Engadin by the route either of the Albula, or of the Julier.
At the bridge of Solis you cross the Albula, chafing and fretting
below you at a depth of 250 feet. From this point you enter on the
new Schyn-strasse, a grand piece of road, and similar in character to
its neighbour, the Via Mala of the Splügen route. For three miles,
or more, it is grooved out, or built upon the side of a narrow deep
ravine, several hundred feet above the rushing, tumbling Albula, and
with several times as many hundred feet above the road; sheer and
sharply shelving precipices below and above; and with the corresponding
opposite parallel side of the ravine closely confronting you, to
demonstrate to you how utterly impracticable was the construction
of the road along which you are walking with unusual ease, for it
has throughout been engineered, with scarcely any gradients, on one
general level. Of course a road of this kind must have some tunnels,
and, in places where it is crossed by _couloirs_, galleries to protect
it from being occasionally buried, or carried away; and its bridges
must be made capable of withstanding storm-swollen torrents. Some
will think it worth while to give a passing glance at these bridges
to see what were the difficulties the engineer had to contend with,
and the dangers he had to provide against. In one place I saw that
provision had been made below a bridge, to prevent the torrent from
deepening its bed back to the bridge in any direction except at right
angles to a line drawn across the centre of the arch of the bridge,
because a deviation from this line to the right, or left, would have
destroyed the foundation of one or other of the piers of the bridge.
A torrent towards the western end of the Strasse had cut the strata
of rock over which it fell into a somewhat regular flight of steps.
The layers of rock were two or three feet thick, and each was cut down
perpendicularly by the stream, some three or four feet in advance of
the one which was above it. So almost down to the bridge, where the
stream entirely disappeared, in consequence of the stratification
having here been abruptly tilted into an inclination that was not
far from perpendicular; and here the torrent had formed for itself a
channel by eroding only one of the layers of rock, and that to such a
depth that the layers on our right completely overlapped and concealed
the stream which had been carried down some way below in the eroded
layer.
The ravine of the Schyn nowhere admits of any kind of cultivation,
not even of an occasional patch of grass. Pines are its only produce.
Among these I saw towards its western extremity many fine specimens
of the silver fir, which I had nowhere previously noticed. I do
not see why the Douglas pine, one of the most rapid in growth, and
valuable as timber, of all the conifers, should not be grown largely in
Switzerland. Some of its moist and sheltered valleys would seem to be
the very stations that might in every respect be exactly suited for it.
It has been proved that it will grow rapidly in such places. In this,
as in many other ravines, a track for removing the trees that have been
felled below the road, is out of the question. If, therefore, they are
to be used for fuel, they are cut into pieces, six feet in length,
and pitched into the torrent, which transports them rapidly to their
destination. Fuel that has been torrent-borne in this way may readily
be distinguished, as it stands piled against the walls of the houses,
by the manner in which the ends of the pieces have been bruised and
frayed. If, however, what has been felled is to be used as timber for
building, the length required would make it impossible to float it down
such narrow, rocky, and tortuous streams. In this case winter must be
waited for, and when it has frozen the torrent, and buried it beneath
the snow, the hardy and industrious peasants avail themselves of the
temporary pathway nature has provided, and haul their timber along it.
But these winter pathways are not free from danger, for it sometimes
happens that a rock, detached by the frost from an overhanging summit,
falls on those who are at work below.
As you descend from the Schyn to Thusis everything is changed. You
again find yourself among prairies, fruit trees, and scattered
dwellings. A broad green valley lies before you expanding to the right
and left, in which are the towns of Sils and Thusis; and beyond the
valley is lifted up the broad shelving expanse of the eastern side
of the Heinzenberg, a wide, unbroken expanse of trees and prairies,
enlivened with many villages, and innumerable detached _châlets_. You
see that every rood of it is turned to the best account, and that it is
on the spot supporting a large and industrious population.
As you descend you pass the still solid remains of an old castle on the
right, perched on a cliff overlooking the Albula. Another is above you
on the mountain side. At the foot of the descent you reach the little
town of Sils, separated by three-quarters of a mile of bottom land from
Thusis, which you see on the first rise of the opposite bank, beyond
the Hinter-Rhein, the stream of the valley. A third old castle, that
of Hohen Rhätien, looks down on Thusis from the brow of a cliff, 400
feet above the stream, on what is still your side of the valley. As
you cross the bridge, on its up stream side you see the Rhine rushing
beneath it in a flood of whitish green. Immediately below the bridge
the inky Nolla, more inky than the Tyne at Newcastle, its blackness
is that of the skin of an unfledged rook, pitches its torrent of
defilement into the whitish green stream. You feel that this is an
act of disrespect to a main branch of so famous a river. Two hundred,
or so, yards further on you pass a second bridge, that of the Nolla
itself. You now see above the bridge what a vast amount of small black
shaly _débris_, the cause of its inkiness, this stream brings down in
its course from the summits of the Heinzenberg, and of the Piz Beverin.
You had also just noticed some acres of this dark _débris_ outspread on
the broad, and now dry, sides of the channel below the Rhine bridge.
The Nolla, then, you will remember as a kind of natural ink factory;
and may think, too, that it has been pouring forth its torrent of ink
from a date long anterior to the Chinese or Egyptian manufacture of the
pigment.
Thusis commences a few steps beyond the bridge of the Nolla. The first
house on the right side of the long street of which it is composed is
the chief hotel of the place. We walked up to the door, and stood on
the step. A four-horse carriage was about to start for the Splügen, and
the landlord was impressively reiterating his adieux, and his wishes
for a pleasant journey, to its occupants. For two or three minutes I
waited, but as he did not think it worth his while to salute with a
word the coming guest, or to beg to be excused for a moment, that he
might pile up still higher his good wishes for his departing guests,
I asked the circumnavigator to resume his burden, and went on to the
hotel de la Poste, at the further end of the opposite side of the long
street. Mine host that might have been now saw that, though it was well
done to speed the guest parting with four horses, it was ill done not
to welcome also the guest arriving on foot. But in this case the coming
guest hardened his heart, and no place was given for repentance. The
hotel de la Poste had its advantages. It was not yet 12 o’clock, and as
my companion had been limping for the last hour, I saw that I should
be obliged to sleep at Thusis; and when you have nothing to do, it is
something to have even the arrivals and departures of the diligences
to look at. Some of those who come, or who are waiting to go, by them
will perhaps have something to say; at all events you see something of
what manner of people they are. And then the telegraph bureau is at
hand, and you can, which it is always pleasing to do, in a few moments
ask your travelling friends what they are about, and tell them where
you are. This is very different from, and far better than, writing
and receiving letters. It is so near an approach to direct, actual
conversation. Letters belong to quite a different category. By the
time a letter is received all your plans, or those of your friends,
may have been altered. You may be going in an opposite direction to
that announced. Your feelings may have become the reverse of those
described. Regrets, or rejoicings, may have been called into being on
grounds that never came to have any existence. But telegrams, which
tell friends where they respectively are, and how they are, at the
moment, are present indubitable realities.
Being then obliged to remain at Thusis for the rest of the day, I went
in the afternoon to see the old castle of Hohen Rhätien. The ruins of
one of these mediæval strongholds cannot, generally, be regarded with
much interest, because gratitude is no ingredient in the feelings which
the sight of it awakens. The stage of history to which they belong was
rather a painful interruption, than a satisfactory continuance, of the
progress of human affairs. Its units, represented by these castles,
were small fragments of rude force; and these were but ill-compacted
into rude wholes, that hardly deserved the name of states. The strong
owners of these castles were prompted by a consciousness of their
strength to lives of violence and oppression, and the weak were
obliged to attach themselves to the strong, only to be oppressed. The
physical ruled the moral and intellectual without disguise and without
mitigation, except so far as it was counteracted by what soon became
the moral and intellectual tyranny of the Church. Of the evils of this
system we even suppose that we have not yet reached the end, but that
we are still in some degree suffering from them. For reasons of this
kind we are indisposed to see in it, what history tells us we ought,
the first step in the new order of things to which we belong, and which
we may hope has grander possibilities for us than the preceding order
of things in the old world had for those of its day; or, indeed, to
see in it anything but an assertion of force and injustice, which for
a long period altogether forbad, and the consequences of which may be
still somewhat hindering, the advance of society in the direction of
fair and reasonable institutions. It is with very different feelings
that we contemplate the monuments of Greece and Rome, and even of old
Egypt; for they do not, as these do, remind us of mere individual brute
force. They were works of organized societies, whose wants were of a
more human and cultured kind, and whose mistakes and misdeeds, as their
consequences are now no longer felt, are almost lost to memory. At all
events we owe them much. The very ruins of their buildings remind us
of one part of the debt. But we cannot, or will not, feel in this way
towards the owners of these old castles. In passing, therefore, the
remains of one of them many of us have no wish to inspect it. It is not
sacred ground to us. What pleases us most in the matter is the fact,
visible in passing it, that it is in ruins.
For such reasons as these, while a little before midday I had looked
up at the ruins of the old castle of Hohen Rhätien, I had not thought
them worth the hour or so that would have been required for going up
to see them; but now in the afternoon, having nothing else to do, I
inspected them with some attention. To get to them I had to recross
the two bridges. I then, about 200 yards beyond that over the Hinter
Rhein, crossed a small mill-race running parallel to the road, and
went straight up a steep timber-slide, which is visible from the road.
At the head of this you come on the regular horse-track, from Sils to
the castle. Three or four hundred yards of this bring you to a steep
turfy slope, where you may desert the horse path which winds round the
summit to the top, and in five minutes you will be on the top among
the ruins. They consist of several detached buildings. The first is a
square tower with thick walls. It has no door, or constructed entrance,
in the walls that now remain, the only access to the interior being
by a hole in one of the angles. We may, therefore, suppose that this
was an advanced outwork, that was entered either by a subterranean
gallery which connected it with the castle some hundred yards off,
or by a ladder which was applied to some aperture in an upper story
which has now disappeared from the walls. It may also have been useful
as a storehouse for provisions of some kind or other. Next to this
is a structure, which evidently was a small church. It is in good
preservation. The tower still stands. Alongside of the tower is a
chamber with a groined ceiling, which may, possibly, have been the
chancel. In line with, so as to be a continuation of, this chamber is
the nave of the church. The two windows that alone lighted it are very
narrow; but, then, in this part of the world windows are made as small
as possible, for to admit a sufficiency of light would, for the greater
part of the year, be to admit an intolerable quantity of cold.
Close to the church, in the direction of the castle, is a building
about twenty feet square. The walls are about three feet thick. Their
stones in some courses are laid horizontally, in others in a slanting,
or herringbone, position. Close to this is another building similarly
constructed, but more dilapidated. This is not quite so wide as it is
long. It has remains of a floor above the ground floor.
Just beyond these two last mentioned buildings is the true castle. It
is of very solid construction, but of no great extent. I paced it,
but do not remember its exact dimensions. My impression is that it is
not so much as a square of forty feet. Neither the door, nor windows,
were arched. The latter are in the form of embrasures, much recessed,
of course to admit to the interior as much light as possible through
such small openings, and to enable its defenders to command as much
space as possible outside. The lowest of these embrasures is at a
considerable height from the ground. Half the basement is occupied by
a spacious excavation in the living rock, which doubtless was the
cellar. This is the first necessity in every dwelling place in this
part of Switzerland, where the winters are so severe, and some days
in summer very hot. If the cellar of a house does not prove good,
that is to say, if it should prove incapable of keeping wine, cheese,
milk, beer, meat, and in these days potatoes, from the cold of winter
and the heat of summer, the house itself is of little value. This
large rock-cellar doubtless answered well the purpose for which it
was designed. I pictured it to myself stored with hogsheads of wine,
barrels of flour, salt beef and bacon, and tiers of cheese, against the
annually recurrent siege of winter, or an expected summer siege from
the lord of some neighbouring castle. There was plenty of everything,
for those were days when rapid digestion waited upon vigorous appetite,
and eating and drinking were the great business of life. There were
three stories. The large stone fire-place of the first of these
remains. Its chimney is carried up, and against, the inner wall, almost
as if it had been an after-thought. Does the existence of this chimney
throw any light on the date of the structure? We can hardly suppose
such a chimney of earlier date than the fourteenth century, but as it
appears to have been applied to the wall, and not constructed in it,
the wall may be of much greater age than the chimney. There are no
traces of chimneys elsewhere in the building. A court-yard surrounded
the castle. This included at the angle, between the two precipitous
faces of the extremity of the mountain, a space that might have been
a garden, or a yard for the live stock in troublous times. It is now
laid down in grass for mowing. The castle itself did not stand upon the
edge of the precipice. Between it and the precipice, indeed on the very
edge of it, are the remains of some small buildings. These, as probably
did the three other buildings first mentioned, must have supplied the
stabling for horses and cattle, and storehouses for provisions and hay
in ordinary times. The church could not have been intended for more
than thirty or forty people. This, and the small dimensions of the
castle itself, furnish us with some data for forming an estimate of the
wealth and power of its original builder, and of his successors. One
cannot suppose that his retainers comprised more than about a dozen
families. And perhaps the same may be said of the retainers of those
who possessed the dozen other castles of the immediate neighbourhood.
In descending I took the regular old road down to Sils, for I wished
to go the way the old feudal chief and his retainers had used. To one
either going to, or coming from Thusis, this way is quite a mile longer
than the timber slide.
These may, as we are told they are, be the remains of the oldest castle
in Switzerland; but their situation, as well as their character,
demonstrate that the explanation given of the name is erroneous. Livy
tells us that, at the time of the settlement of the Gauls in northern
Italy, the Etruscans they displaced moved off to, and took possession
of the district of which the Grisons of our day form a part. In
classical times it was called Rhætia, to explain which name, a leader
of the emigration of the name of Rhætus was invented. This tradition
is supposed to be supported by the assumptions that the name of Thusis
is derived from Tuscia, and that the name by which this old castle is
now known has come down from the times of Rhætus, its presumed original
founder. The tradition, however, affirms an improbability. No invaders,
settling themselves among a dispossessed and hostile population, would
have constructed so small a fortress, which could have given shelter
to only a very small garrison. Nor would they have placed it in such
a situation: for there being then no road below Thusis, it would have
been at the bottom of a _cul de sac_, and any one who could have held
and devastated the valley, would have starved out the little garrison
of the castle. We may, therefore, pretty safely conclude that it
belongs to the same date as the church, that is to say, to the times,
when feudal lords, who under the conditions of the period implied
castles, were a necessity. The great number there was of them at that
time in the valley was a kind of common insurance to each against some
of the risks to which they would otherwise have been exposed.
We read a good deal in Swiss histories of the way in which in many
places the peasants rose against their feudal lords, expelled or
killed them, and dismantled or burnt their castles. At all events
there was once an abundance of these lords, and we cannot suppose
that they voluntarily abandoned their strongholds, and their lands.
We see the ruins of a great many of these strongholds, and we see the
peasants now in possession of the lands which once supported these
strongholds. This, if like things are to be called by like names, is
neither more nor less than what French, German, Italian, and Spanish
Internationalists are aiming at. Here, in these valleys, as far as
the land is concerned, their scheme has for many generations been
thoroughly carried out. Lands which feudal lords once held peasants now
hold. The substitution of one proprietary for the other was in many
cases brought about by the direct use of physical force, in others
by the peaceable, it might have been, expression of the will of the
community, backed, however, by physical force: which comes to precisely
the same thing. And now this peasant proprietorship has had several
centuries to develop its nature completely, without any retarding, or
disturbing causes operating against it. Whatever merits, therefore,
and whatever demerits the system may have, may be seen here, for no
one would assert that it can be without either the one, or the other.
Some estimate of each I endeavoured to make in my first ‘Month in
Switzerland’ of two years back; and in my second ‘Month’ of last year,
I endeavoured to direct attention to the history, and to the present
action, in this age of capital, of the Allmends, or commonable lands
of Switzerland, which in the days anterior to accumulations of capital
were, in Switzerland at all events, a necessary appendage to peasant
proprietorship. All that I now wish to remark is that that portion of
the land which is held as private property, has for a long time been
divided into such small holdings, and from absence of settlements,
trusts, and charges, has been so completely at the disposal of
existing proprietors, as would probably satisfy the most extreme
Internationalist, who was in favour of permitting any private rights at
all in the land.
In human affairs, however, nothing continues long in one stay; and
their progress has at length given rise in these valleys to a new and
enlarged development of one of the instruments of production, which
formerly existed in them only in the germ, but is now seen to have
greater capabilities than have hitherto been found in the land itself:
at all events it is one to which the uses of, and the property in,
land must now accommodate themselves. This disturbing element, this
instrument of production, the powers of which have of late been so
much enlarged, is capital in money. And neither the Internationalist,
nor anybody else who interests himself about the mixed questions of
economics and politics, can arrive at any safe or workable conclusions,
unless he so far understands its uses, action, and power, as to see
that without it society would collapse, and revert to barbarism. We
may, perhaps, get a little glimpse into the question of what are
its uses, action, and power, if we divide the inhabitants of these
thriving valleys into those who are supported by capital in money, and
those who are supported by capital in land, and then endeavour to see
how each class is living. I propose the division in the above form,
because I suppose that ultimately, and in the nature of things, there
is no scientific ground for the assumption, implied in popular usage,
of there being a fundamental difference, when they are regarded as
means of production, between land and money, or even between either
of these two and labour. They are all I imagine, in a broad and true
generalization, capital. They seem to be all means of production, and
so only different forms of capital. Still the division proposed is
one with which we are familiar, and which is intelligible, at least
to the eye. To proceed, then, with it: it is clear that a man, and
one, too, who was the son of a peasant, can now live here, and live
better, than any of the peasant proprietors have for generations lived,
without owning, or occupying, a _klafter_ of land. Many are doing
this. Every year a greater number do it. What is required for doing
it is thought, knowledge, the power of seeing far, and of combining
divers facts and considerations, energy, perseverance, and character.
It is to be done not so much by the hands as by the brain. That is the
chief human instrument to be used. The field to be cultivated is not
a little piece of land for supplying directly a man’s own wants, but
his efforts must aim primarily at the supply of the wants of others,
in a sense of the world. This, however, is only possible through the
existence and the use of capital in money. For this purpose money has
two distinct functions. First it is the common measure not only of all
the useful and exchangeable productions of the world and of man, but
also of all that contributes to their production, whether the human
means as labour, skill, and knowledge, or the material means as the
land and the requisite tools, implements, and machinery: in short,
it renders both the human and the material means of production, and
the commodities produced, all commensurable. In the second place it
enables us, practically, to store up surplus produce of any kind in
such a form as to be reconvertible at will into produce of any kind,
or into the means of production. In these ways it correlates all the
wants and all the capabilities of the whole family of man, dispersed
over the world, putting each country into reciprocal relations with
all the others. It enables each to produce whatever it may have any
natural capacity for producing, and to exchange it for whatever it
may want. And this it does not only between different nations, but
also between the different individuals of the same nation, and of the
same neighbourhood. This is a field, the cultivation of some part of
which generally yields to its cultivator a far greater return than
can by any amount of individual labour be extracted from two or three
acres with some appurtenant rights of fuel and pasturage. And now if
we turn to those who are living on the hard-won produce of their few
acres, we see that their lives, too, have been greatly elevated and
embellished by the existence and applications of capital in money.
It might be shown that to it they were indebted for their education,
and for the opportunities they have had for starting their children
in the world. It has given them the means of travelling very cheaply
at the rate of twenty miles an hour; it has given them the means of
communicating with the world by the post and by the telegraph; it
has brought to their door opportunities for earning something from
the travellers that visit their neighbourhood; to it they owe their
newspaper; it, too, has enabled them to procure coffee, sugar, wine,
cheap clothing, and many other minor advantages. Annihilate capital,
and every man throughout these valleys, and throughout the world, is
debarred from access to the products of the world, and reduced to the
miserable life that is limited to what he can produce with his own
hands. Increase capital, which means ultimately, and in its largest
sense, the store of useful commodities the whole world may be made to
yield, and the human and material means requisite for production, and
for distribution, and then there is opened to every man the possibility
of entering by his own labour, or skill, or knowledge, up to the amount
of their productiveness, into the possession of everything he needs,
that any part of the world is capable of supplying. The way to enter
on their possession is at all events opened to him, and the command
over them to which he may attain will depend mainly upon himself, that
is to say, upon the way in which he was brought up, and what he was
taught. Whether he is ever to rise to the possession and management
of any portion of the money capital of the world will depend almost
entirely on how he was brought up, and what he was taught. When all
this shall be seen more distinctly than it now is by some of us, the
Internationalist, who is himself a creation of money capital, will not
perhaps have so much to say as he has at present about the tyranny of
capital.
But to go back to our Swiss valleys. It is clear that there has issued
from the peasantry, who till recently were their only inhabitants, a
class of men who are living a higher life than the peasants, that is
than the landed proprietors. It is the life of those who accumulate
capital in money, and who live upon the employment of it. And this
capital in money is, under the circumstances of the country, within
the reach of every one to far higher amounts in value than is the
land, the old form of capital. What is needed for its acquisition
is cultivated intelligence, and certain moral qualities. This is
precisely the point to which the attention and the efforts of the
Internationalists should be directed. If society takes care, and it is
endeavouring to do this in Switzerland, to give to all its members as
fair a chance as is possible under existing circumstances to attain
to this culture of the intelligence, and to these moral qualities,
the majority will more or less avail themselves of the opportunities
offered to them; and so, having numbers, wealth, intelligence, justice,
and moral character on their side, will be too strong to be disturbed
by the _residuum_. The son of an Upper Engadin peasant, who had gone
out into the world like most of his countrymen, there learnt German
and French, and made some money, and now, having returned home with
what he had made, was turning it to good account, remarked to me, ‘Our
education is improving, but already we have enough of it to enable
those, who are disposed to avail themselves of it, to get on in the
world. The rest are brutish, and must live by brute work.’ For a moment
I was shocked at the hardness of the statement: but I made no reply,
for I saw that it was no more than the action of the inexorable law of
natural selection applied to moral and intellectual life. It would not
be a law were it not inexorable. The analogy, too, of nature requires
that it should be applied to man as well as to the lower animals and
to plants; and, indeed, if exemptions from it were admissible in any
part of the general scheme, they would be admissible least of all
in the case of man, for it is of more importance to guard against
deterioration that which is highest and best, if we may so speak of any
part of the general scheme, than that which is of inferior value--at
all events than that which to us appears to occupy a lower place in the
scale of being.