His strength demanded a gigantic task, just [p83] as the nasal horn of

the rhinoceros drives the animal who possesses it to uproot the soil.

He could not help himself. Martin Luther likewise had no choice. Before

the famous Diet of Worms, he openly avowed this lack of freedom. He

said: “Here I stand. I cannot act otherwise. God help me.”

Indeed the character of all strength is precisely that it gives those

who possess it no choice, no “freedom.” The moment choice enters

into the domain of action, the moment there is apparent freedom or

self-determination, weakness, or a lack of native impetus may be

suspected.

Thomas de Quincey, that profound psychologist of the artist’s soul,

explained the matter very well in his Autobiography. Discussing the

nature of true poetry, he said: “By far the larger proportion of what

is received in every age for poetry, and for a season usurps that

consecrated name, is not the spontaneous overflow of real unaffected

passion, deep, and at the same time original, and also forced into

public manifestation of itself from the necessity which cleaves to all

passion.”[17]

It will be seen that de Quincey here speaks of a “spontaneous overflow”

which is “forced into public manifestation of itself from the necessity

which cleaves to all passion.” There is no freedom about it, no choice.

It flows from an impetuous and imperious abundance.

In the light which this throws on all human greatness or strength, what

does the value of freedom appear to be?

Does it not seem as if freedom and the apparent liberty to choose

belong essentially to a lack of strength, to an absence of necessity in

the characteristic action of man? To be able to weigh and select either

one of two alternatives,--say action or inaction,--implies that no

overwhelming native impetus forces a man to the one and blinds him to

the other. Is it possible then that the very cry of “freedom” belongs

essentially to weakness? to feebleness of character?

Let another example be taken. A young man A. has just reached the age

of one and twenty without having had a serious affair of the heart. His

friends regard him as free to pursue any pastime, any sport. When once

he has discharged the duties by means of which he earns his livelihood,

he is always free to join a tennis party, a cricket team, a bridge

party, or a debating circle. His mind can devote itself to the task of

choosing what he shall do,--is it to be tennis, cricket, bridge, or

argument? He has no overpowering inclination for anything particular,

consequently he is free to choose.

Suddenly, however, he meets a young lady B, who strains a certain fibre

in his being almost to snapping point. The tension of this strain is

so powerful that, like the main spring of a watch, it presses its host

to constant activity in a certain direction. The direction in this

case is B’s person. Now choice falls out of the question altogether.

It is no longer a matter of dwelling critically upon cricket, tennis,

bridge or argument, and selecting that which seems for the moment the

most alluring pastime. The tension in A’s being relaxes only at one

sound, at one [p85] call. It is B B B --B recurring. When urged by his

whilom tennis companions to join them, these friends now encounter,

not hesitating freedom, but formidable resistance, immovable decision,

determined refusal. When approached by his debating society, he

declares that all his spare time is now taken up. He is in fact no

longer free. Something strong in him has been roused. He cannot help

himself. His actions are no longer voluntary.

But who would long for freedom in such circumstances? Who longs for

freedom when bondage is sweet?

It may be taken for granted, then, that strength and greatness know

nothing of freedom. The strong man is not free; the great man is not

free;--nor for that matter, as history or the observation of our

fellows can show, do they wish to be free. Only weakness is apparently

free, or is conscious of desiring freedom; because, having no strong

native impetus to drive it willy nilly in any given direction, it

appears to be able to choose its own direction. Thus only weakness can

even desire freedom.

The obvious inference would be that as fast as the mass of mankind

decline in strength and greatness, the louder would become the cry for

freedom. Is this conclusion valid?

It is only partially so; for there are cases when freedom is demanded

not from weakness, but from strength.

Let us abide by the examples we have chosen.

Napoleon, driven by the iron necessity of his native strength, leaves

Egypt to make [p86] himself master of France. But suppose that he had

been conquered and kept as a harem servant in Egypt, or restrained in

some other way from exerting his strength,--what then?

It is conceivable, in that case, that he would have longed for the

freedom which would have allowed him to fall into the bondage of his

own overpowering impulses to rule and to direct the destiny of France.

For the first time the idea of “freedom” begins to assume a definite

shape. It begins to acquire the appearance of a genuine reality.

Judging by Napoleon’s case, therefore, we may say of the desire for

freedom, that although it never arises in normal conditions, it begins

to make a definite appeal when it signifies a release from bondage that

is incompatible and inharmonious with strong innate impulses, for a

bondage that is compatible and harmonious with strong innate impulses.

The bondage consisting in being a harem servant is incompatible with

innate impulses of a stronger order; therefore, although the obedience

to impulses of a stronger order also constitutes bondage, Napoleon,

as a harem servant, would have longed for the freedom to fall into

the bondage of his stronger impulses, because it was there that his

“calling” lay.

Reverting to the case of the young man A who became enamoured of a

young lady B, we are confronted by a case that is somewhat different;

because, although A was apparently “free” before meeting B, he

nevertheless [p87] prefers the bondage of his attachment to B to his

former freedom. Why,--obviously because his former apparent freedom,

was freedom for nothing, a state of being constrained to nothing in

particular, a lack of bondage to anything, which was tantamount to a

lack of everything.

He finds his strength on meeting B. He finds one of his powerful

impulses taking possession of him. He is therefore happy, because,

though he is in bondage, a vital impulse is directing his life, a

necessity of his being has found a pursuit for him. If his cricket

club now kidnap him and imprison him in the cricket field, in order to

play in a cricket match, he will make a determined attempt to escape.

He will endeavour to obtain freedom. Freedom for what?--Freedom from a

bondage incompatible with the powerful impulses of his being, for the

purpose of falling into a bondage compatible with the powerful impulses

of his being.

Has the “liberty” of our political agitators this meaning? Has it any

meaning?

We know that man can never be free. We have seen that from his very

birth conditions are imposed upon him which direct his subsequent

career as inevitably as railway lines direct the course of a train.

Nothing that lives in finite conditions can be free. And no other

conditions are known. Life even in the animal world means work, battle,

struggle, the observance of certain very strict habits. Human life

means work, the observance of social conventions; even the necessity of

eating, drinking, breathing and performing the other bodily functions

entails responsibility. [p88] Work may be altered, the particular

social conventions of a nation may be changed; but it is merely a

matter of altering one kind into another kind, exchanging one rule for

another rule.

What then does the political agitator mean when he offers “Liberty” to

those whom he would induce to support or follow him?

It has been seen that the only sense in which liberty as an idea bears

any relation to reality, is when it signifies the opportunity that can

be given to a man to enable him to exchange a bondage incompatible with

his strongest impulses for a bondage that harmonises with them.

Is this the meaning of the cry for freedom to-day? When the newspapers

told us that the Great War was fought by us in the cause of “freedom”,

is this the freedom they meant?

How many of those who believe they aspire to something definite and

real when they aspire to “freedom,” fully understand the limitations

of their ideal? How many of them really possess stronger impulses than

those that actually find expression in their daily work?

Some people might reply, “very few.” I reply that the number of men

and women to-day, who yearn for freedom vaguely, fretfully, and

insistently, because they realise dimly that they seek a kind of

bondage in which their stronger impulses would have more scope, is very

much greater than is generally supposed.

One of the results of the industrial revolution, and of the vast

increase of mechanical [p89] appliances and machinery generally,

has been the creation of occupations by the hundred thousand, which

are in every way besotting, heartrending, and depressing. Sometimes

it is their asinine simplicity and their monotony, that destroy the

heart of those employed in them, frequently it is their extreme

disagreeableness, noisiness or unhealthiness. The particular objection

that is common to almost all of them, however, is that the natural

impulses which most strongly animate a human being at his work, the

impulse to make “a good job” of the task he is occupied upon, the

impulse to excel his neighbour in his skill, care or foresight, the

impulse to earn the praise of those for whom he is producing the work,

the impulse to improve day by day in his own speciality and to derive

fair profit from this improvement,--all these natural impulses scarcely

ever get an opportunity of expressing themselves in the whole of the

week’s round; and when the weekly wage is received, it is felt that

it has been earned by a species of prostitution rather than by an

occupation of which the wage-earner can justly feel proud.

This, as I understand it, is the fundamental meaning of the cry for

freedom to-day. In any case it is the only meaning it can have.

For freedom in the sense of non-relation, non-dependance, absence

of duties, absence of work, and absence of responsibilities or

conventions, is utterly impossible. Not only is it utterly impossible

to-day, but it has always been impossible. Even animals in a state of

nature cannot achieve that condition.

It behoves all those, therefore, who nowadays [p90] feel this craving

for liberty, and who are tempted to follow wherever and whenever it

is upheld before them as a cause, thoroughly to understand what it is

they are invited to fight for. They must not allow themselves to be

led astray by those who would promise them unconstrained freedom of

action, for that is a physical impossibility, a lie, an illusion, and a

mirage only of the ignorant. They must not be deceived by agitators who

lead them to imagine that this “freedom” for which they are invited to

strive, is a sort of paradise of fairies, from whom the natural cares

and responsibilities of this world have been miraculously lifted. Nor

must they suppose that it has much to do with the kind of government

which their country enjoys,--whether monarchical, aristocratic,

plutocratic or Bolshevik.

Modern governments in their nature can do little for the spiritual

requirements of the working man. As far as that freedom is concerned

which consists in finding expression in one’s daily duties for the

strongest impulses of one’s being, the masses of the working people

in this country were infinitely more “free” under the despotic Tudors

than they are at present under the benign rule of the people’s elected

representatives.

Thus the only kind of freedom that the most honest politician can

definitely promise, political freedom--is in itself one of the most

wanton deceptions ever practised upon humanity. For what does this

political freedom consist of?--It begins and ends with the vote. But in

what manner does this constitute freedom? To what extent does [p91]

the voter at the poll secure or realise his own freedom by the vote he

registers? He gives his vote on a programme which frequently has only

a very remote relation to his private life or interests. What can his

vote accomplish then in the cause of his own freedom? In registering

his vote he is bound to choose one out of two or three men who stand

as candidates for his constituency. He may heartily dislike every one

of them, and yet be driven to vote for A because A’s programme is a

little less pernicious than that of B or C. After having voted for A,

if our voter is lucky, A may get into Parliament. Every time A votes

in the House itself, however, he may be out-voted by other members,

so the very reason for which our voter elected A may be frustrated

when once A is an M.P. If, however, our voter does not succeed in

getting A into Parliament, he may be one of six or even ten thousand

in his constituency who will not be represented in Parliament for four

or five whole years. Every Parliament that sits in England fails in

this way to be representative of millions of voters. In what manner

have these millions of voters achieved their own freedom, or in what

manner are they safeguarding it? For even if we grant that it is

right that millions of voters should not be represented in Parliament

because they belong to the out-voted minority, can we reasonably speak

of this vast minority as having secured their political freedom by

their vote? But the case is in fact worse than this; for John Stuart

Mill, that whole-hearted believer in “democracy,” has shown, not only

that the minority in the land is bound to be unrepresented in every

Parliament, [p92] but that it is also possible for the majority in the

land to be unrepresented.[18] How then the promise even of political

freedom, which is the only promise of freedom that an honest politician

may make, can even appear to possess any reality, so long as it is

dependent entirely upon the vote, it is difficult to discover.

There is only one kind of freedom that bears any relation to reality,

only one kind of freedom therefore that can be striven after, that can

be realised; and that is the freedom to exchange a bondage incompatible

with our strongest impulses for a bondage that harmonises with them.

Nothing else has any meaning.

The very success with which voluntary recruiting proceeded directly

after the declaration of war against Germany in 1914 is one of the

best demonstrations of the truth of this conclusion. For it was the

opportunity to exchange an occupation incompatible with the strongest

impulses of their being, for an occupation that harmonised with those

strongest impulses, that led the majority of those young men to embark

for the shambles in France. I mixed with them, so I ought to be able to

speak with some knowledge of the subject.

Now the fight for this freedom, for the freedom that, as we have seen,

has some meaning, really is worth while. It is a noble fight, and

a decent fight. But it is a fight with which no modern Government,

Liberal, Socialist, or Bolshevik, can possibly have any sympathy. For

Liberal policy has always meant commercial and industrial expansion;

Socialist policy must, if it is honest, include in its programme,

compulsory labour, whether compatible or incompatible with the

strongest impulses of our being; and Bolshevik policy, as we have

already seen, insists upon this kind of labour. It is, however,

precisely the Liberals, the Socialists, and the Bolsheviks who have

been loudest in their cries for freedom. If, therefore, this humble

attempt at investigating the meaning and limitations of the idea of

freedom has done nothing more than demonstrate the hollowness of this

Liberal catchword, it cannot have been written or read in vain. [p94]

Thus, it is not merely a matter of caution, it is in the highest degree

wise, to test every yearning and every demand for freedom, even in

one’s own breast, with the practical question, “What for?”--“What is

the strongest impulse that would find expression if the bondage of

the present task were exchanged for the bondage of a new occupation?”

Only those who can answer that question satisfactorily, only those who

feel that they would increase the fullness of their lives, and thus

add to the sum of beauty and happiness in the world, have any right to

“freedom,” or have any understanding of the only sense in which the

idea of freedom can have some meaning.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 16: But even this amount of freedom in the mediocre is

limited by the fact that the mediocre cannot choose a means of

livelihood in which super-mediocre endowments would be necessary.]

[Footnote 17: Collected Writings. (London: A. C. Black). Vol. I., p.

194.]

[Footnote 18: See _Considerations on Representative Government_,

Chapter VII., par. 4:--“There is not equal suffrage when every single

individual does not count for as much as any other single individual

in the community. But it is not only a minority who suffer. Democracy

thus constituted does not even attain its ostensible object, that of

giving the powers of government in all cases to the numerical majority.

It does something very different; it gives them to a majority of the

majority, who may be, and often are, but a minority of the whole. All

principles are most effectually tested by extreme cases. Suppose then

that in a country governed by equal and universal suffrage, there is a

contested election in every constituency, and every election is carried

by a small majority. The Parliament thus brought together represents

little more than a bare majority of the people. This Parliament

proceeds to legislate and adopts important measures by a bare majority

of itself. What guarantee is there that these measures accord with the

washes of the majority of the people? Nearly half the electors, having

been out-voted at the hustings, have had no influence at all in the

decision; and the whole of these may be, a majority of them probably

are, hostile to the measures, having voted against those by whom they

have been carried. Of the remaining electors nearly half have chosen

representatives who, by supposition, have voted against the measures.

It is possible therefore, and not at all improbable that the opinion

which has prevailed was only agreeable to a minority of the nation,

through a majority of that portion of it whom the institutions of the

country have erected into a ruling class.”]

[p95] CHAPTER V

SOCIALISM AND COMMUNISM

“There is at the present day too great a tendency to believe that

it is impossible to resist the progress of a new idea.” Disraeli’s

speech on the Compensation for Disturbance Bill. (August, 1880).

A certain fatalism seems to have overtaken the people of Europe, a mood

under the dominion of which they are prepared to regard even their

own vagaries and whimsicalities as heretofore most men have regarded

the weather, that is, as something inevitable and fore-ordained which

nothing can modify, resist or avert.

If a particular group manifest a disposition for war, then it is war

to which they resign themselves; if it is female suffrage, then lo!

Votes for Women come upon them with the certainty of the monsoon or

the mistral. Nobody moves, nobody holds up a hand to ward off the

approaching scourge, because everybody is either too indolent to make

an effort, or too thoroughly persuaded beforehand that nothing can

avail, to attempt to interfere with what he calls “the natural course

of events.” The scrub on a wind-swept moor offers more resistance to

the elements than does modern man to his fellows’ restless tinkering at

the social structure; and as for the gentle fine rain which, falling

athwart the fiercest blast, ultimately constrains it to abate its fury,

and to die down, modern man has no knowledge of such tactics, and even

[p96] if he had a knowledge of them he would not put it into practice.

Despite the enormous amount of apparent hostility aroused by the

immense progress that Socialism and Communism have made since the

war, it must not be supposed that with regard to them modern men are

feeling any more actively indignant than they have felt towards any

other impending change. The hostility, as we have pointed out, is only

apparent. For, in their heart of hearts the men of the present day are

just as much prepared to resign themselves to Socialism as to civil

war, class war, or any other kind of social upheaval.

The factor in the threatening reform which makes certain sections

of the public stand as if they really meant to offer resistance, is

unfortunately not their intellectual conviction that Socialism or

Communism is so palpably wrong that it must be resisted at all costs;

but rather the negative quality of inertia, which in this case assumes

the appearance of positive resistance because, as it happens, Socialism

and Communism propose to oust from positions of ease a great number of

people who have not only grown accustomed to ease, but to whom life

without ease presents few if any attractions.

Otherwise, Socialism, Communism, Bolshevism, Nihilism--who cares? They

appear right because so many millions seem to believe in them. Any

“ism” seems to be right to modern man, provided a sufficient number of

people raise their hands in favour of it. In this sense, be he a Tory,

a Conservative, or a Monarchist, modern man is essentially democratic

in spirit. [p97]

In the circumstances, with this very doubtful weight of inertia alone

on his side, that man may very easily be suspected of quixotic candour,

who at this late hour of the day pretends to stand up in face of the

approaching wind, not only to resist it, but also to beat it down. And

yet this is what the present writer proposes to do, provided only he

can demonstrate the validity of his standpoint in a sufficient number

of convincing ways to emulate that fine gentle rain which ultimately

beats down any wind.

Moreover, in order to do this, it will not be necessary to examine

the proposals of Socialism and Communism in detail, but simply to

concentrate upon their basic principles, and to show how entirely

untenable are the very first positions they take up. Stated in the

fairest possible way, their position is as follows:--

The leading Socialist and Communist thinkers are men as a rule whose

hearts have been moved by the spectacle of sorrow and hardship which

is the lot of a large number of their fellow-creatures on earth; and

they are earnestly desirous so to modify the organisation of society as

to render that burden of sorrow and hardship lighter for the mass of

mankind.

They see all about them inequalities of the crudest kind, sharp

contrasts, and abysmal chasms, and they wish to achieve greater

evenness among men.--Why?--Not because the spectacle of mankind thus

evened up will necessarily be more picturesque or more harmonious to

behold; but because on the whole it will be less heartrending, less

revolting, less inequitable. [p98]

They detect in society, as it is at present constituted, an element

which they maintain has no business to be there, an element which they

honestly believe is not human; and they feel confident of being able to

eliminate it if only they are allowed to effect certain readjustments

and re-arrangements of the whole which will radically change the

relation of every member of the community to every other member.

This element, which the Socialist and Communist detect in modern

society and which they wish to eliminate because it is not human, is

Violence.

According to the present writer’s belief this is, in a few words, a

fair statement, if not the fairest possible statement, of the Socialist

and Communist’s position.

Assuming at all events that it is correct, it is now possible to

examine it and to call attention to the amount of error it contains.

For, let the Socialist and Communist say what they will, let them

wish rather to substitute the word Predatoriness, or Oppression, or

Exploitation, or Slavery, for the word Violence, or for the particular

quality in modern society which they would fain eliminate, it does not

signify much. All these words in their essence are reducible to the one

notion Violence, and Violence we shall therefore name the feature that

Socialists and Communists propose to remove from human communities, and

which we propose now to examine.

Violence as a phenomenon is not presented to us chiefly in our own

societies. Where we recognise its sway to be most general and most

rigorous, is in Nature herself, and all [p99] life outside human

communities. The life of the jungle, the life of the prairie, the

life of the ocean, in all these departments of life, Violence reigns

supreme. Indeed we are so familiar with its existence there that we

should be astonished if we failed to find it. We open the stomach of a

shot leopard and we find in it the mangled remains of some other animal

or bird. When we kill a bird and inspect its viscera, we discover the

remains of insects, small quadrupeds, or smaller birds. Life outside

human societies is little less than a process of preying and mutual

suppression and incorporation. Every species behaves as if it alone

had the right to prevail, and it endeavours by every means in its

power--self-preservation, propagation, rapine and parisitism--to make

its own kind predominate on earth.

We ourselves are guilty of violence towards the lower animals, and

there are few people who, upon dying a sudden death, would not betray

this violence by the contents of their stomachs or intestines.

Violence, therefore, constitutes no novelty to the human being. He

knows of it in Nature and he knows he is guilty of it towards those

lower animals which he consumes as food. At a first glance then it

would appear that violence of a sort is an essential factor in all

life, even in human life.

The kind of violence, however, that the Socialist and Communist wish to

eliminate from human society is not the violence which men perpetrate

against the lower animals; though there are certainly some Socialists

who would wish to eliminate that also; but chiefly the violence between

man and man, [p100] man and woman, adult and child, or child and

child: violence by means of which some man, woman, or child is made

the instrument or the tool or the chattel of some other man, woman, or

child.

This you may protest is what all societies since Moses, and even before

him, have tried their utmost to suppress. To some extent this is true.

Murder and assault have been prohibited by most moral codes. The kind

of violence, however, that the Socialist and Communist wish to suppress

is the violence that is at present tolerated by law, that receives its

sanction from society at large, and that men now perpetrate with clean

consciences.

How does this violence chiefly arise?

--By means of the inequalities of human advantages. One man A finds

himself by birth or by his own efforts (frequently the outcome of

his endowments at birth) in possession of something that somebody

else B very much requires; and before A relinquishes a particle of

it, convention allows him to exact some service from B. According to

the urgency of B’s needs and the quality of B’s gifts that service

is either very strenuous or comparatively light. For instance, if A

happens to be a man of rare genius, holding in his mind the secret

of his country’s salvation B, the country, may voluntarily offer him

fabulous wealth from her own coffers to divulge his secret knowledge,

and may even involve herself in a crushing debt in order to do so. Or

A may be simply a producer of corn, and B an impecunious starving man

begging corn of A because he needs it as food. In the latter case,

short of an act of immorality [p101] or one involving the certainty

of B’s immediate injury or demise, there is scarcely anything the law

forbids A from exacting from B. The service may involve B’s gradual

injury. To this the law says nothing. The service may be debasing or

degrading from an intellectual or spiritual point of view; it may

deteriorate B’s eyesight, impair his physique or his good spirits: to

all these things the law says nothing.

While the service is being performed and B is obtaining corn from A,

B who cannot pay cash for the corn, may be asked to do pretty well

anything, with the gloomy alternative before him of going without corn

altogether. This I take it is the meaning of the word violence in the

mouth of the Socialist and Communist: it is the power that one man can

exercise over another, in determining his occupation and in exacting

service or else withholding food from him.

The Socialist would admit that service must be exacted from all at

some time or other, but he suggests that the State should exact it,

so that the power may be exercised corporately, and the profit, if

any, allotted, not to individuals, but to the whole body. The extent

to which an element of violence adheres even to the proposition that

the State should exact service and not the individual, would be an

interesting speculation; for the fact that some violence still remains

implicit in the proposition everybody will see at a glance. But the

present writer hopes to point to other means by which violence must

inevitably enter into the Socialistic State, just as forcibly as it

does now into any well ordered capitalistic State. [p102]

Quite apart then from the violence which is inherent in the proposition

that the State must exact service under the Socialistic régime, it

is suggested that no one, who has been following the analysis of the

Socialist and Communist’s first principles given above, can up to the

present be satisfied that violence would be eliminated from society

under their régime any more than it can be under the present régime,

and for the following reasons:

So far the Socialist’s proposals appear to contain no measures for

ridding human stock of its pronounced inequalities. It is, however,

from inequalities that apparent injustices and violence ultimately

arise.

Men of great talent and men of the most miserable endowments, will

continue to be born in any State, whether Socialistic or capitalistic.

So long as the individual right to procreate be admitted there will

continue to be pressed into the community, not only the offspring of

the virtuous man, the sage, and the craftsman, but also the offspring

of the knave, the mediocre and the fool. So long as the individual’s

right to parenthood is accepted as inviolable, society will therefore

continue to be perturbed as it is now by an uninvited access of

one, two or even half a dozen to a dozen, new mouths, from certain

individuals, the low quality of whose accompanying bodies may be out of

all proportion (in regard to the services they can render) to the high

quantity of food and other supplies they can account for. New members

will be forced into the community by procreation which, according

to the quality of [p103] their endowments will either considerably

enhance its efficiency or considerably cripple it. If they are to

enhance it, and it is in the interest of the community that they should

enhance it, then they will require to be encouraged for so doing;

on the other hand, if they are going to cripple it, their crippling

influence will recoil on each member of the social body, and each will

suffer from the presence of the new arrivals.

Further to elucidate this point, let two extreme examples be given:--

(1). A man of singularly high gifts, C by name, presses upon the

community in his lifetime eight children all of which take more or

less after him. Their endowments are so conspicuous that they plainly

overshadow all the other higher men of the community. It happens,

moreover, that the community has reached a crisis in its affairs when

it urgently needs men of C’s type. Obviously then C, by presenting

the community with eight singularly gifted replicas of himself, has

profoundly affected its life and its constitution. By elevating the

standard of the administrative work, some of the whilom administrators

will have been driven from office and forced to take up an inferior

form of service. A perturbation will have occurred. In its ultimate

analysis it will have amounted to a coercive act, an act which though

tolerated by the State (assumed in this case to admit the individual’s

right to procreate) thus turns out to be an act of violence. It was not

deliberate, or of a kind savouring of malice aforethought, but it is

nevertheless an act which forces a change on the community at large,

and a marked change of position on a [p104] certain number of the

community’s members. It is therefore tantamount to an act of violence:

it is in fact an act of violence.

(2) Now suppose the case of a man who is the butt of everybody’s

ridicule for his stubborn stupidity and intractable indolence. Suppose

his condition of utter unworthiness, from the intellectual and moral

point of view, to be moreover aggravated by poor health. This man, too,

we presume, claiming by law the right of parenthood, forces upon the

community half-a-dozen new members in the form of his offspring, who

are so far like him that the competent authority can scarcely cover the

cost of their clothes and food by the produce of their labours, and

has to encroach upon other resources of the State in order to provide

for them. Here again we have a profound perturbation, resulting from

the pressing of a new set of members upon the community by the act of

procreation. Nobody asked for them, nobody wanted them. But now they

have come, everybody has to work a little more or a little longer in

order to provide for them. In its ultimate analysis this is once more a

coercive act, an act which, though tolerated by the State that admits

the individual’s right to parenthood, thus turns out to be an act of

violence. It certainly was not deliberate, or designed particularly to

harass the community; but it forces an extra burden on the social body,

it is therefore tantamount to an act of violence: it is in fact an act

of violence.

Now here we have two extreme instances of violence entering a

socialistic society against which it would appear to be impossible

[p105] to take any preventive measures.[19] And how did the violence

enter?--In the same way as it enters all life, all Nature, all

societies: through the act of procreation. Between the two extreme

cases given the imaginative reader will easily be able to supply a vast

number of intermediate cases, which though perhaps less powerful in the

ultimate violence of their effect on the community would nevertheless

partake each in its way of the nature of violence.

The act of procreation is thus an act which in the long run amounts to

a means of pressing any number from one to a dozen (sometimes more) of

new members upon a community, which members may, in one way or another,

cause a profound perturbation of the balance of that community.

The act of procreation is, therefore, an act of violence, of trespass,

of invasion. The continuity of a species in Nature is secured by

procreation; but the balance of Nature is constantly made to fluctuate

around a mean by the act, notwithstanding loss from predatory and other

causes.

In human society the continuity of the species is secured by

procreation; but since reciprocal destruction does not occur to

nearly the same extent among human beings as it does among the lower

animals[20], in a healthy society, which is an increasing society, the

balance of the community, far from fluctuating around a mean, tends to

be thrown ever more seriously out with each successive generation.

Thus in a healthy society, which is an increasing society, procreation

is not merely a transitory but a perpetual source of violence.

The present writer is not arguing that this is right or wrong; he

is only trying to state a fact. Whether it be a pleasant fact, or a

desirable fact, is for the moment beside the point. It is at all events

a fundamental truth of life, and as such it would be idle to devise any

new scheme of society in which it is not allowed for.

It may be objected that the whole of a man’s offspring in modern

society may elude their destiny of impinging violently against that

society by becoming emigrants.

This appears to be forcible enough. But is not emigration in itself

merely a means of postponing the act of violence by one stage?

Besides, is not emigration--say to the colonies--possible to-day

only because we happen to be living at a period subsequent to an

act of violence on a grand scale, by which the land constituting the

colonies, whether of France, England, Holland, or Italy, was wrested

from other people? And even so, have we not seen recently, during a

time of serious unemployment in England, certain politicians object

to Mr. Lloyd George’s schemes of emigration on the ground that, to

send our unemployed to Canada, Australia, or New Zealand, where labour

conditions were also unfavourable, would be an act of provocation to

those colonies?--Why an act of provocation?--Because to impose a number

of extra mouths on a community unless there is a genuine industrial

demand in that community for the able bodies possessing those mouths,

is an act of gratuitous violence.

It serves no purpose to revile life and the world because we happen

to have lighted upon a fundamental fact that is unpleasant to our

cultivated sensibilities. Life is as it is, and Nature is as it is,

and no bewailing or reviling on our parts will alter them. The brave

attitude, the healthy attitude, indeed the only dignified attitude, is

to accept life and Nature as they are, and to endeavour to discover the

most desirable method of dealing with both of them.

This primary act of violence, which is procreation, cannot be cancelled

out or annulled; it cannot be expunged from the essential character

of existence. It must be accepted. This much, however, should be

immediately understood; _you cannot have at the very portals of life an

act of violence, and hope to build upon it a form of society in which

violence in some form, however attenuated, [p108] will not appear_.

To make any promises to this effect is the plainest humbug. It may

appear an alluring prospect; it may sound an attractive picture; it

may deceive and it may delude; but it is an impossible undertaking

notwithstanding; and those who declare that they are prepared to embark

upon it are either too ill-informed to realise the true data of their

problem, too dishonest to admit that they know these true data, or too

inept properly to deal with them.

Starting out then with this original act of violence which is rooted in

life and in Nature and enters into every form of human society willy

nilly, it is obvious that its reverberations must proceed rhythmically

throughout all the sections of any human community whatsoever, be its

organisation what you will. Thus inequalities, apparent injustices

and even bondage, appear only as the necessary ultimate repercussions

of the original perturbing influence. And in every society hitherto,

such regrettable repercussions of the original act of violence have

always been regarded as inevitable. As a rule the authorities have,

according to their lights, endeavoured to mitigate the asperity of

these perturbations; but to eliminate them completely they have always

known is an impossible achievement, _because they are not man-made, but

created by the laws of life itself_.

All societies hitherto appear to have recognised with varying degrees

of liberality the sacredness of man’s right over his procreative

powers. But what a large number of recent sociological thinkers

appear to have forgotten is, that since procreation and its [p109]

consequences are part of the original elements of life and nature,

which are allowed to persist in the more or less artificial arrangement

called society, this artificial arrangement must partake of the

harshness, the inequalities and the apparent injustices of life and

nature, to the extent to which it allows these original elements of

life and nature to operate freely in its midst. To check procreation,

or limit it by law, would involve the violation of the sanctity which

has hitherto been accepted as the one attribute shielding every man’s

right over his procreative powers.[21]

Acquiescing in the inviolability of this right, then, the utmost

society could do, was to mitigate the worst consequences of its free

operation, by ordering as far as possible the union of couples, and

by properly allocating the general burden of responsibility for the

support of the offspring arising from these unions.

Albeit no amount of order introduced into the joining of couples,

could possibly place a check upon man’s procreative powers when

once he had fulfilled all the formalities that the State demanded;

consequently, despite all its attempts to regulate the relations of

the sexes, society’s ultimate control over the act of procreation

and its results remain more or less ineffectual, and in so far as it

attempts to establish any reasonable proportion between a man’s powers

of procreating and his powers of providing for the consequences of

his act--or for that matter his children’s power of providing for

themselves in after life--the outcome of all society’s efforts have

been practically nil.

Evidently mankind seems to have come to the conclusion fairly early in

the history of civilisation that if there is one kind of interference,

one kind of control or of constraint that his fellows can with

difficulty brook, it is that which would presume to meddle with their

right over their procreative powers. But the consequences of this

attitude in regard to so vital a function as procreation should not

be overlooked by shallow political thinkers and other romanticists.

This consequence, which cannot be repeated too often, is _that with

the free operation of the right to parenthood every society hitherto

has incorporated in its organisation a piece of life and nature, raw

and unmitigated by any softening influence_. And, having done this,

it cannot hope to eliminate from its organisation that modicum of

violence, harshness and inexorability which attaches to the free

operation of all natural and vital laws.

The lack of candour and bravery in the Socialist’s and Communist’s

position, is that they do not refer to this basic natural element

in all human societies, and furthermore that they propose a form of

society in which this basic natural element is not even reckoned with.

For it must be clear that to hope on such a basis to build up a social

structure that will be all mutual help, mutual give and take, [p111]

and mutual good will--quite apart from the known character of human

beings--is simply romantic reverie; and in refusing to recognise that

more than three-quarters of the apparent injustices, asperities and

disabilities of human society, are the inevitable repercussions upon

individuals of the incessant working of the primitive act of violence

at the base of the social edifice, the proclaimer and preacher of a

Utopia free from violence publishes broadcast either his own ineptitude

or his own dishonesty.

But this is not the only form in which the dishonesty of Socialist and

Communist propaganda manifests itself. For the Socialist and Communist

not only refuse to recognise the violence inherent in the consequences

of the free operation of the right to parenthood, they also lay to the

score of man’s legislation the injustices and inequalities which are

clearly the outcome of that right alone.

In all societies, however wisely controlled and directed, there are

certain to be thousands of malcontents. Those malcontents who owe their

position of failure, obscurity, or impotence to circumstances over

which no organised community ever has had or ever can have control, are

however easily won over to an attack upon society, if they can be shown

by unscrupulous or incompetent thinkers that their position is due, not

to an essential law of life or nature, but to the peculiar conventions

or rules regulating the community of which they happen to form a

part. Men who are congenitally inefficient, beneath even mediocre

attainments in their intelligence, their physical strength or their

health, very naturally find [p112] themselves relegated to inferior

responsibilities, subordinate places and menial tasks. In any community

in which there is a high appreciation of quality, or a conscious effort

towards good qualitative results--and no other community is worth

considering--this must be so.

Now nothing is easier, nevertheless, than to convince this class of

malcontents that their subordinate positions and menial tasks are

the result of a social rather than of a natural injustice, and the

dishonesty of Communistic propaganda, consists very largely in the

fact that it will not scruple to delude this class of malcontents into

believing that in a perfectly realisable ideal state of society their

disabilities would be removed. Nay, it goes further than that, it adds

to the small list of remediable injustices which are really of man’s

creating, the long list of gross injustices which are the work of life

and nature, and flinging the whole sum of these injustices at the head

of society, leads the ignorant and the thoughtless to believe that the

grand total of the account can legitimately be charged against man and

his institutions.

And this brings us to the next step in the argument.

So far we have seen:--

(_a_). That procreation acts as a perturbing force in society, and that

in its consequences it is therefore an act of violence.

(_b_). That tradition and recent investigation lead us to believe that

it is not advisable to meddle with the individual’s sacred right over

his procreative powers.

(_c_). That therefore in any community where [p113] the individual’s

right to parenthood is regarded as inviolable, violence must

reverberate throughout the whole social structure and in its

repercussions must impinge with more or less severity against

individuals.

The next step in the argument is the consequence of (_c_) and it is

that where there is violence, however slight or however carefully

regulated, its results must redound with more or less severity to the

disadvantage of certain individuals, that is to say, _there must be

someone or some group that suffers_. And this appears to be another

of the fundamental social truths without allowing for which it seems

hopeless to set forth to rebuild society.

To deny it may sound pleasant, kind, humane, charitable, and

chivalrous; but it is not candid; and although to the ignorant, to the

sentimental and the thoughtless, that which is pleasant frequently

makes the appeal of truth itself, in the end that man or party who is

not straightforward about these matters is bound to be discovered and

reviled.

Those therefore who wish to reform all future societies, and who wish

to make it unnecessary for sufferers or suffering to exist in the

world, except at the will of the legislature, can do so only in one

of two ways.[22] Either they must close the backdoor through which

the violence of nature and life enters the community--that backdoor

being the free operation of the right to parenthood--or else they

must do what no society hitherto has ventured to do, _i.e._, they must

determine by law beforehand who is and who is not to be sacrificed.

The suffering which in society is the necessary outcome of the act of

violence which is procreation, that suffering which is the only means

of balancing this violence, does not necessarily fall on the heads of

all. It selects its victims as it were with a certain caprice. And

hitherto, while endeavouring to mitigate the severity of it as far as

possible, society has been content to leave its incidence more or less

to chance, to the blind forces which ultimately determine, as they do

in nature, the fate of all individual beings.

It is only in war time, when the kind of person to be sacrificed for

the whole is definitely indicated, that society proceeds by legislation

to select those who should suffer from those who should be spared. And

even then, a certain element of chance remains over by means of which

it is possible for large numbers of young men to escape the ultimate

price.

If, however, it is proposed to reform society so that it shall either

contain no violence, or that the effects of that violence shall be

annulled for the majority by legislative means, then whatever the

Socialist or Communist may have to say to the contrary, this can be

done only in one of two ways:

(_a_) Either man’s right to parenthood must be violated.

(_b_) Or the section of society which is to be sacrificed to balance

the original act of violence must be deliberately decided upon by

legislative means. [p115]

And since these are the only two alternatives, the Socialist, the

Communist, and the Bolshevist, are just as hopelessly committed to

them as any other advocate of a new social scheme, from which the

inequalities and injustices inseparable from all human communities

heretofore are to be absent.

_The fact that they are impossible alternatives invalidates the whole

of the Socialist and Communist’s position._

To promise a Utopia from which inequalities and injustices will have

been removed, without stating frankly that one or the other of the

above alternatives is necessary, is therefore the acme of dishonesty;

and in this respect the present writer has reluctantly to admit that

the Socialist, Communist and Bolshevist, whether from ignorance,

ineptitude or design, appear to be radically dishonest.

It has been shown, however, that their dishonesty does not stop at

this. In addition they fasten the few remediable injustices which are

of man’s own creating, on to the grosser and more flagrant injustices

in modern society which are only the inevitable repercussions from the

original act of violence we have been examining, and then proceed to

declare that the whole sum of injustices are of man’s own making. This

is their greatest perfidy, their most misleading and most dexterous

feat of _legerdemain_. The ignorant and the thoughtless are very

naturally deceived, and it is always too late when they discover how

clumsily and how cruelly they have been deceived.

It has been pointed out that it is an indispensable portion of life and

of nature which [p116] in all our societies introduces the element

of violence and leads to inequalities and injustices; but this aspect

of the matter is the darkest and most displeasing that could possibly

have been put forward, and in dealing with it first the present writer

has postponed to the end of the discussion the more grateful duty of

considering it on its more valuable and deeply attractive side.

True in its repercussions it leads to some of the chief asperities of

human life; but is it not accountable for most of humanity’s principal

joys as well? On its shadow side it may appear harsh, but seriously

would we have it otherwise? And are not those who pretend that it can

be otherwise merely romanticists who want all life to be the perpetual

white glare of a noonday sun without any shadow?

Consider, to begin with, the sanctity of the individual’s right over

his procreative powers. How many of humanity’s finest emotions and

most treasured virtues arise out of it? This is not sentiment, but

psychological fact. And what does society expect to become if it

succeeds in suppressing the source of these virtues and emotions? How

many sober-minded men, actually faced with one of the two alternatives

stated above, as the essential first measure to the establishment of a

Utopia without violence or accidental suffering, would give that Utopia

a second thought?

There is nothing the present writer deprecates more sincerely than

an appeal to the emotions alone. He is aware that in the above

paragraph he has made a frank appeal to the emotions. But surely in

this particular instance it is amply justified? Having made [p117]

his principal intellectual appeal, he now confronts his readers with

the æsthetic aspect of the alternatives proposed. For is not life and

the enjoyment of life largely a question of æsthetics? Is not our

emotional nature competent therefore to decide upon a question of

taste or pleasure? Life offers many alternatives; human life presents

hundreds of possibilities. In the end it is our emotional nature and

our æsthetic sense that decide which road leads to the greatest amount

of happiness, although the intellect may have directed us all along.

Can we really suppose then, that a change that can cut at the root of

so much virtue and so much traditional sentiment, can possibly be one

that is going to bring us happiness?

And even in its inevitable repercussions--the inequalities and

injustices of which so much has been said above--has the free operation

of the individual’s right to parenthood not also immense advantages?

In nature it is the violence and inexorable character of the forces at

play that give life its manifold beauties and contrasts, the mountains

and the valleys, the rivers and the lakes, the tableland and the gorge,

the forest and the open plain. In the animal world it is the difference

between the tiger and the antelope, the vulture and the hare, the lion

and the jackal, that lends to life that panoramic charm of variegated

virtue and adaptation to ends. While in the domain of plants it is the

divergences of the oak from the shrub, of the palm from the cactus, of

the poplar from the plum tree, that combine to produce that harmony and

dissonance which the landscape painter converts into graphic music.

[p118]

Is it now contended that in human society we can dispense with

inequalities and injustices without also sacrificing three-quarters

of its beauties? Apart altogether from the fact that it is utterly

impossible to achieve this end, would it be desirable? How much of the

joy of life does not spring from the thirst and thrill of adventure,

from the consciousness of being an individual trying to establish one’s

right of citizenship among people who are sufficiently unlike one

(_unequal to one_) to introduce an element of uncertainty, of sport if

you will, into the undertaking? How much of the charm of life does not

arise from the vast repertory of different powers and virtues which

inequality alone makes possible? A beautiful medal has its reverse

side. And is not so-called injustice merely the reverse side of the

medal of inequality? The multifariousness which lends social life

its variety and its incidents, the pronounced divergences from life

which give it its light and its shade: all these things have hitherto

constituted the essential conditions out of which the thing we know as

human society has grown. Even if we could alter these conditions we

cannot even picture the kind of result we should obtain. We know of no

society wherein inequalities and their consequent injustices do not

exist. We cannot imagine such a society.

This is not empty imagery and grandiloquent sentiment, it is the

plainest truth. It is impossible to conceive of a society at all unless

we presuppose among its members the presence of those particularly

happy results of inequality which are higher men. Even the lowest

forms of gregariousness--the wolf [p119] pack and the herd of

antelopes--benefit from this kind of inequality by the function that

it enables their leaders to perform. For a society implies cohesion,

it implies unity of purpose and desire; it also implies a more or less

uniform outlook on life. But how are these things possible without

higher men? When in the history of the world have these results been

achieved without the help of superior beings? But the idea of something

superior immediately suggests inequality, and inequality right down to

the lowest man; but with this inequality we must as we have seen accept

so-called injustices and consequently suffering.

To inveigh against the necessary consequences of life is not to open a

“class war,” as the Socialist and Communist claim to have done, but to

open war against life itself; and this conclusion supplies me with the

terms of my last charge against them.

The Socialist and Communist do not really know their true objective;

they do not really know against whom they are marching and levelling

their attacks. In addition to being dishonest, therefore, they are

utterly confused.

It is life itself that causes the chief among the grievances that they

propose to redress, and thus their description of their campaign as a

class war is the outcome of a most complete misunderstanding.

They are the advocates of a principle of death, or putting it more

mildly, at least of a movement hostile to life, and they do not know

it and never have known it. Their banners are sewn with false and

meaningless devices calculated to delude only the ignorant [p120]

and the thoughtless, and they are not even frank about the necessary

logical conclusions of their own first principles. If they really wish

to put an end to violence in human society, they would sew on their

foremost banner the device: “Down with procreation.”

This might prove unpopular, it might even sound less alluring than

“Down with the bourgeoisie!” but at least it would be honest and might

help them to achieve their real aim.

The present writer does not suggest that the mass of the people of

England or France understand the real errors in the Socialist and

Communist’s position. He does not even believe that when once these

errors have been made known to them they will be able to grasp or

understand them; but certainly the capacity which very large numbers of

them are showing for resisting the seductive appeal of these so-called

“class-war” doctrines, points to a certain instinctive insight on their

part which does them credit, and may possibly be a sign that they are

moved by a vague, but none the less powerful, suspicion that all is not

as golden as it glitters in the Socialistic creed, and therefore that

there is still a chance for those who would win them back to a wisely

controlled capitalism, and to a future in which reform rather than

revolution is the general programme.

* * * * * * * *

Is the case against Socialism as strong as this? Is there really

nothing to be said for the position that the Socialist and Communist

assume?--Certainly there is nothing to be said for it. Then what gives

it its seductive plausibility? What is it that makes three-quarters

[p121] of those who have interested reasons for opposing it, suspect in

their heart of hearts that Socialism and Communism may be right after

all?

Those among the possessing classes who, while opposing active Socialist

propaganda, yet believe in their heart of hearts that Socialism is

right, are usually as confused as the Socialists and Communists

themselves, and as incapable of tracing political propositions back to

first principles. They make the same mistakes as the Socialists, and

confound life and nature’s injustices with the remediable injustices

which are the outcome of human legislation, and after adding the two

together charge the whole sum to the account of society or civilisation.

They belong to the class of thoughtless people who are in the habit of

saying in the face of every impending reform good or bad, “The thing

must come”; and their attitude of forestalled acquiescence offers so

little opposition, that as a rule the thing to which they refer _does_

come.

But the reason why the claims and proposals of the Socialist and

Communist succeed in displaying a certain modicum of plausibility is

not because, on examination, they impel the inquirer to agreement;

for, as we have seen, the more thoroughly they are investigated, the

more impossible does it become to accept them; it is rather because in

modern European society certain unnecessarily gross evils which are

truly the creation of man and which seem to lend a colourable warrant

to the revolutionist’s position, are too glaring to be overlooked.

We have seen that where there is violence [p122] some one or some

group must ultimately be victimised or sacrificed. This does not

necessarily involve death or annihilation, it may simply amount to

failure, failure to hold their own.

Now it is the first duty of rulers, as we have seen, to watch

vigilantly that the violence is not of man’s making, for that can be

helped, but only of life’s making, for that cannot be helped. The

second duty of rulers, however, most certainly is to assuage as far

as possible the asperities resulting from the violence that is life’s

making.

Charles I. was an ideal monarch in this respect; not only did he

suppress fraud, profiteering, and the exploitation of the poorer

classes, all means by which violence of man’s making breaks loose

in society; but he also sheltered those whom natural disaster had

overtaken.[23]

Now the gross evils of modern European society which lend a colourable

warrant to the otherwise absurd proposals of the Communist and

Socialist, are the multifarious deeds of violence of man’s making, that

have been allowed to break loose on the community.

Among those deeds of violence we may mention:

(1) Sweating.

(2) The act of inviting the proletariat to engage in unhealthy

occupations, frequently resulting in permanent ill-health or premature

death.

(3) Profiteering and the turning of any form of temporary distress to

advantage.

(4) Speculating in the first necessaries of life.

(5) Unwise and wasteful disposal of property after death: as for

instance for the support of cranky and faddist societies, of useless

and non-productive people in unnecessary affluence; the endowment of

institutions that have a degenerating effect on the general standard of

health of the nation.

(6) Class cleavage and snobbery.

(7) The encouragement by the legislature of the growth of large urban

centres, and the ill-health and general unwholesomeness of the poorer

quarters of such centres.

(8) The purveying of inferior food to the masses, and of food that is

not strictly life-supporting, such as vegetable margarine, dried fruit

and vegetables, adulterated beer, tinned foods of all kinds (except

possibly tinned tomatoes), dirty milk and adulterated bread.

(9) The lack of protection afforded to the masses against: (_a_)

usurious money lending (a penny a week per shilling is not uncommon),

(_b_) pollution and demoralisation through inferior and pernicious

literature, (_c_) pollution and demoralisation through alien

immigration.

(10) The failure to impart to the masses by means of education any

thorough grasp of any branch of knowledge which might ennoble their

outlook, add dignity to their characters, and lend support to their

self-esteem.

In addition to all this, not a single item of which deals with any

evil that is not susceptible of reform, it should be borne in mind

that modern western civilisation has in some way failed so miserably

to mould her values [p124] so that the successful in life’s struggle

should in all cases be the most virtuous, the most intelligent, and the

most desirable, in the minds of tasteful people, that a certain stigma

now attaches to the materially successful--particularly those who have

attained material success in commerce and industry--which cannot be

said to be altogether unmerited, and which the Communist and Socialist

naturally exploit to the utmost in their propaganda.

The greatest indictment of modern society is perhaps the frequency with

which vulgarity and the meanest attainments in virtue and intellect

achieve phenomenal material success; and since this is the outcome of

values, and the laws governing commerce and industry, it is obvious

that in this direction reforms must be effected, if the Communist

and Socialist are to be deprived of the small amount of validity

which appears to attach to their sweeping condemnation of society and

civilisation.

On the other hand, while we have seen that the original act of violence

at the base of all society, must lead to suffering somewhere and

somewhen, the characteristic about modern western civilisation which

lends so much colour to the Socialist and Communist’s schemes, is the

frequency with which this suffering seems to be borne by people who are

by no means the unworthiest in the community.

The values of modern society have become so vulgar and mercenary that

again and again it happens that the section of the social body which

the chance play of forces selects for sacrifice, is superior to the

section which is [p125] spared, and which not infrequently wields the

most power in the community.

Thus it is not the suffering in modern society that lends support to

the so-called class-war doctrines; for as we have seen suffering of

some kind is inevitable where there is inequality and injustice; but

it is the fact that the suffering in question often falls upon the

most desirable members of the community, or at least upon those who

are capable of the greatest virtue and the greatest industry, and this

is the outcome purely of the vulgarity and coarseness of our values

which are quite as susceptible to modification and reform as any other

man-made feature of our lives.

The fact that after all these reforms, however, there will still

remain a residuum of violence in all civilisation, which it will be

impossible altogether to eliminate, so long as nations recognise the

individual’s inviolable right to parenthood, should nevertheless be

carefully remembered and reckoned with; for, both as a check upon any

too romantic schemes of our own, as well as a means with which to

criticise our enemies’ proposals, the recollection of this unpleasant

but ineluctable principle is one of the most valuable measures of

caution by which it is possible for us to abide; and he who, by

forgetting it, fancies he has discovered a royal road to his Utopia,

will find perhaps too late that life, nature and society are not easily

made the sport of false ideals and shallow fantasies, but are ruled by

inexorable and frequently unpleasant laws the rigour of which it is

safer to acknowledge than to ignore.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 19: The present writer has purposely avoided reducing the

violence to an act of depredation in regard to food, air and space;

although in a steadily increasing community, which is the only healthy

community, surrounded by other steadily increasing communities, this

aspect of the question would have to be taken into account. In such a

community every baby born may rightly be said to constitute a menace

to every other baby’s food, air and space. Nor has any mention been

made of the multiplication of people who become a burden to the rest

of the community by the sheer inferiority of their physique. But again

in their case provision would have to be made by the administrators of

a Socialistic State, just as it is made by capitalistic States; and

the parents of such physically inferior people would thus, by the act

of procreation alone, have pressed a burden upon their fellow citizens

which would virtually amount to an act of violence against them. Though

the parents of such physically inferior people might scruple to put

their hands in their fellow members’ pockets for food or money, by

means of their offspring they thus indirectly perpetrate a predatory

act against them.]

[Footnote 20: There are reasons for believing that Socialists promise

to make it cease altogether among human beings.]

[Footnote 21: The wisdom of ancient societies in never checking or

limiting this right is now becoming more than ever apparent in the

light that psycho-analysis has thrown upon the disastrous effects of

interfering too drastically with this function in human beings.]

[Footnote 22: Sufferers and suffering are to be understood here as of a

kind which the inequalities of life and nature alone bring about--not

the sufferers and suffering resulting from ordinary human passions

and the accidents of their manifestation: love, hate, indifference,

childlessness, spinsterhood, etc.; for it is presumed that no reformer

has ever been so foolish as to pretend that he could eliminate these.]

[Footnote 23: This I have demonstrated with sufficient detail

elsewhere. See my _Defence of Aristocracy_, Chapter IV.]

[p126] CHAPTER VI

EDUCATION

“A city can be virtuous only when the citizens who have a share in

the government are virtuous, and in our state all the citizens share

in the government.”--Aristotle (Politics. Bk. VII., 13).

Education, as organised by the state, can have but one object--the

rearing of people who are fit to be decent and worthy citizens. A man

may educate himself privately in vice, in jazzing, in motoring, or

in crime; he is at liberty to do this at his own expense and in his

own time; but if he is educated at the expense of his fellow-men, the

intention of these fellow-men must be to train him into a desirable

member of society. Only thus can the huge outlay be made worth while.

Now a desirable citizen is above all a well conducted citizen. He may

know French and fencing, and be able to beat all comers at billiards

or biology, marbles or mathematics; but he is only a nuisance if he is

not, in addition, well conducted--that is to say, reliable, sensible,

understanding, and honest. It is more important that he should

thoroughly grasp the first principles of sound conduct and thought,

than that he should know the whole of counterpoint or conchology.

When once he has mastered the first principles of sound conduct and

thought, he is prepared to do well at anything, according [p127] to

his gifts; whereas the most exhaustive knowledge of counterpoint and

conchology will, in the most favourable circumstances, only make him a

good musician or a good classifier of shells.

In short, happiness and harmony are more easily achieved by a people

holding deep and sound views concerning Life and Humanity, than by

people deeply versed in science, and top-heavy with information.

Happiness has been achieved again and again upon earth by people

possessing not a billionth part of the knowledge that has been

accumulated by modern man. A sound instinct in regard to food, a

correct understanding of one’s self and one’s fellows and a decent

appreciation of the limits of individual caprice in a social community,

are, after all, more precious than a large accumulation of facts. And

thus education, if it is to be valuable, should consist very much more

in a training in manners, sound views, and means of intercourse, than

in the acquisition of knowledge about facts.[24]

All adults know how very few of the facts they learned at school

are ever remembered in later life, and how only those elements of

the scholastic curriculum are turned to practical account, or even

remembered, which come into daily use throughout life. Thus, a boy of

the working classes may remember a little elementary arithmetic and

a little geography--apart from that, all he recalls is the trick of

reading, because he practises it every day of the year.

Now, since the masses of the people form the bulk of the nation,

and are ultimately the determining factor in the nation’s character

and achievements, nothing could possibly be more important than

working-class education. State education of the masses, therefore,

offers the finest opportunity that the legislature could obtain, to

express its concern about the nation’s welfare, and to secure that

welfare by inculcating upon everyone, except the minority constituting

the well-to-do, who cannot matter nearly as much, decent manners, sound

views, and a proper, adequate means of intercourse.

It is certainly one of the most ugly features of our elementary

education in this country, that manners--which ought to be the first

among the foremost objects of all education--are entirely omitted from

the curriculum. As if, forsooth, it were better for master Tommy and

his sister Jane, to know of the existence of the trade winds, than

to know how to behave when an adult addresses them! In this way the

legislature imposes quite an unnecessary burden of discomfort and

sorrow upon the poor, because without good manners life is made so very

much more difficult and wretched, and so very much less smooth and

harmonious. How the idea of education ever came to be divorced from

manners, it is hard to explain; but that it has been thus divorced is

unquestionable. The consequences of this gross [p129] initial error

fall with greater severity upon the poor, or the masses, than upon the

rich; perhaps that is why so little is done to correct it. The reason

of this unfair incidence of the evils resulting from a lack of manners,

is not, however, due to the fact that the rich are necessarily good

mannered, or better educated in manners than the poor; for there is

ample evidence to the contrary; but that the lack of manners of the

rich is not so keenly felt by those in their immediate circle, because

they live in larger rooms, larger houses, larger areas, and they are

thus able to get away from one another’s bad manners--an escape which

is denied the poor.

But while no attention is given to manners in elementary education, it

must not be supposed that training in sound views, whether concerning

Life or Humanity, is the subject of more careful attention. Apart

from copy-book maxims, nothing whatever is done for the masses of the

people in this matter. It is true that the Church and its teaching are

supposed to cover precisely this ground in the mental upbringing of the

nation, but even if we admit that the Church is capable of teaching

sound views concerning Life and Humanity, how many of the working

classes still believe in Christianity to-day? How many of them believe

so fervently as to insist upon their children observing all the tenets

of Christianity? Moreover, it is only fair to judge this department

of education by its fruits. Where is the evidence at present, after

generations of Church teaching, that the mass of the people have been

taught any views at all [p130] about Life and Humanity--not to mention

sound views?

At all events, this is obviously a factor in education that ought never

to have been left to an independent and uncontrolled body--particularly

a religious body. It ought to have been included as an essential

element in any scheme of secular education that was devised. What,

indeed, could be more important than the necessity of imparting to your

growing citizen sound views about himself, his kind, society, and life

in general? What could be more vital in the formation of his character,

his outlook, and the moulding of his ultimate conduct? It scarcely

requires to be pointed out, however, that, like manners, this is a

factor in education which the State schools leave entirely aside.

People will tell you that there is no time for such a branch

of learning. _No time_--to attend to one of the most important

prerequisites of a sound education!

It would be a mistake to suppose, however, that the wealthy and

well-to-do classes are any better off than the poor in this respect.

On the whole, they are a little worse off. For, while the children of

the working classes are sufficiently in touch with life’s realities to

have a number of fundamental truths forced upon their attention, the

children of the wealthy and well-to-do classes live in an atmosphere

so perfectly truth-proof, so far removed from life’s realities, and

their schools do so little to correct the benighting influence of their

homes, that there is probably no creature on earth more hopelessly

devoid of sound views on any subject than the public schoolboy of

seventeen. [p131] Everything has been done, no pains have been spared,

to inculcate upon him every false doctrine and valuation of which the

present age can boast.

In a complicated society like ours, the means of intercourse in

education cover practically everything that does not come under

the head of “vocational training.” Men and women must know how to

understand other people and how to make themselves understood. They

must know how to count money, how to read and comprehend a letter or a

book, and command such general information as will protect them from

deception, from going astray, or from otherwise failing to hold their

own among their fellow beings.

Now it is precisely in this department that the State education of

England really does pretend to accomplish all that is desired; and yet

nowhere is the inadequacy of its achievement more conspicuous. We have

seen that it does not even pretend to teach manners, and that it does

not claim to inculcate sound views upon the masses whom it professes

to educate; but it does claim to teach them the means of intercourse.

Countless millions are spent upon this instruction annually. Hundreds

of thousands of children are bored to stultification while they are

supposed to be acquiring it, and the net result is that 99 out of 100

of them neither know how to understand other people, nor how to make

themselves understood. They do not even know how to understand what

they read. And nothing is done to equip them in this all-important

branch of knowledge. [p132]

Anybody would have thought that one of the first concerns of any

educational body dealing with “national” education would have been

to secure to all citizens of the same nation, irrespective of rank,

at least a thorough knowledge of their native tongue. For what,

indeed, could be more vital? It is the first pre-requisite of all

satisfactory communication, whether from or to the subject; it is the

first essential weapon of the rational faculties. A particular native

language may have faults and shortcomings as compared with other native

languages; it may be poorer in words, more complicated in syntax, less

copiously supplied with racy idiom, etc., but surely any national

scheme of education that fails to make the mastery of this native

language--such as it is, perfect or imperfect--the foremost object on

its programme, is guilty of a gross dereliction of duty. For whatever

its faults may be, the masses, at least, have no other means of

communication, and if they are going to be made articulate, they must

be taught their native tongue.

At present the situation of the English working classes is in this

respect, pathetic in its helpless and infantile humility. Their talk

is the babble of babes, their vocabulary the means of expression

for creatures whose feelings and thoughts are no more complicated

than those of primitive savages. Not only are they incapable of

understanding complex states of feeling or complex thoughts when

they hear them accurately and carefully expressed, but they are also

utterly unable to give expression to at least three-quarters of their

own thoughts and emotions. [p133] In regard to a very large number of

thoughts and emotions, which, to the cultivated man, are commonplace

matters, the masses of England are therefore literally inarticulate.

The same word answers for a hundred meanings in their conversation, all

of which it but inadequately expresses; while for those emotions and

thoughts for which they have no words, there can exist only mute and

mystified suspicion.

This is bad enough. Life is sufficiently tragic for millions of

creatures to-day, without its being either necessary or desirable to

aggravate it with the additional affliction of dumbness. And yet the

fact that this inarticulateness, which ignorance imposes, is equivalent

to dumbness, or at least to partial dumbness, is surely incontestable.

But there is a consequence of this ignorance which is even more serious

than that discussed above. And that is the danger to which it exposes

its sufferers of falling under false guidance, misdirection and

pollution from outside. Whereas dumbness, although a sad affliction,

is often merely another form of constraint; misunderstanding,

misinterpretation, or the inability to criticise and to reject the

expressed thoughts of others, may be a source of pollution, a source of

grave error, and a speedy means of complete and incurable perversion.

If people are to be protected from misconceptions, false leaders,

demagogues, and all those smart and slippery unemployed who are ever

ready to exploit ignorance, and take advantage of simplicity, they

must be in a position to listen critically to an address or an appeal

made to them in their [p134] own language. They must be in a position

to tell to what extent their proposed leader or misleader understands

what he is talking about. How much false sentiment, false doctrine,

inflammatory teaching, is simply an abuse of language, a forcing of

terms, in fact, catachresis! How much of it would be detected and

exposed, if the majority of the nation possessed that precision and

understanding in the use of words, which would come with a proper

knowledge of their native tongue.

To-day the man who is ever ready to mislead, to confuse, and to

inflame, the minds of ignorant people, encounters no check, no critical

scrutiny of his pronouncements, for his listeners are hardly able

to understand correctly the simplest words he uses. The temptation,

therefore, to use language loosely and even unscrupulously is as

powerful as it is repeatedly unresisted.

The huge and flatulent press, that has grown up within the last fifty

years, cares as little for accuracy of expression, or for sober

precision in language, as it cares for any other ideal which formerly

seemed worth striving after. The power of the press is enormous. It

guides opinion, it influences the hearts of the people, it has the

united effort of nations under its direction; and yet where does it

show any signs of being chastened by the awful duties which, it is

true, it may never deliberately have intended to shoulder at the outset

of its career?

The traditions of the Middle Ages, at least, included certain

principles which led to the protection of the poorer and more ignorant

classes; the Church of the Middle [p135] Ages also protected the

poor and the ignorant according to its lights. It may be questioned,

however, whether this new force, the press, has as yet even considered

the function of protecting the ignorant as among its most sacred

privileges. And by this protection there is no intention here to imply

a conspiracy to withhold truth from the uncultivated, or to distort

facts for their digestion; what is meant is that necessary vigilance

and caution which, if observed by all editors and publishers of

journals and periodical literature, would induce them to regard as a

public crime, as an unsocial act, the inculcation upon those who are

ill-equipped for self-guidance, of any notions, sentiments, or points

of view concerning life and human relationships that were not sound,

proper, or healthy--not to mention noble.

Unlike that other force, the Church, the press was ushered in with

scant ceremony, almost imperceptibly. It grew to omnipotence with but

a fraction of the solemnity and pomp which attended the development

of the Church; hence, too, it has come to ripeness, to the zenith of

its power, without any of that centralised organisation, without any

of that self-conscious administration of its enormous powers for good

and evil, and assuredly without any of that insight into the immensely

sacred responsibility of its functions, which characterised the Church

from the beginning.

Now its shrieking headlines, its catchpenny exaggerations, its

hysterical falsehoods, do not even savour of sanity. How, then, could

it be suspected of a sense of [p136] responsibility? Sensationalism

as a moneymaking method, ruthless and frequently thoughtless attacks

on the existing order, without any guarantee of being able to supply

a better order in the place of the one attacked, abuse of language as

a method, as _the_ journalistic technique for all occasions, and the

determination not to enlighten, but to dazzle, dumbfound, scare, thrill

and excite at all costs, willy nilly--_après moi le deluge_,--these

are among the characteristics of the modern press, and indicate the

direction in which its power is tending.

To overthrow or to curb this power has again and again proved too

great a task even for the most popular government. It is invincible,

impregnable. The “Freedom of the Press” may mean the freedom to abuse

the credulity and the ignorance of the masses; but powerful claims are

not frustrated by exact definition, however condemnatory.

There is only one way of curbing the wantonness of the press and of

bringing it to a sense of the responsibility with which its power ought

to have inspired it, and that is to make the masses who are its readers

capable of reading it critically, capable of detecting its flagrant

abuse of language, and of nailing to the counter its flame-words, its

decoy cries, its whole apparatus of sensationalism.

And the only means to this end is to give to the masses a knowledge of

their own language.

Who doubts that the mountains of vulgar, inept and thoroughly

deleterious literature that is being published to-day depends wholly

[p137] and exclusively upon those countless hordes to whom the State

has failed to impart that which is every man’s direst need--a sound

knowledge of his native tongue? Who doubts that all this literature

would be swept away in an hour if a generation arose which was equipped

to detect its solecisms, its vulgarity, its false sentiment, and its

tumid claptrap?

The newspaper press, and the flood of vulgar literature which daily

accompanies its productions into the homes of almost all British

people, are together partly responsible for the steady enfeeblement

of the nation’s moral fibre and intelligence; and the so-called

“education” with which the mass of the nation is equipped is one of the

necessary conditions to the success both of the present newspaper press

and of the vulgar literature which supplements it.

Thus it amounts to this, that the huge outlay which this country makes

every year for the purposes of education, is virtually a subsidy to its

most incompetent, most unscrupulous and most despicable writers.

In order to render the outlay worth while, in order to convert it into

a profitable investment, which at one and the same time would produce

desirable citizens and lay the foundations of order among them, the

present writer suggests as a leading reform, to be placed at the head

of every party’s programme, that the English language should be made

the principal subject of study in our State schools.

What subject is there that is not touched upon in the learning of

the precise meaning of words? And what subject is of any [p138] value

whatsoever if the precise meaning of words has been neglected in

tuition?

This may sound revolutionary enough; but on examination it will be

found to guarantee a much more stable and orderly form of society than

the present system. For if it be asked what a man, educated in our

elementary schools, remembers in after life of all the information he

has been given as a child, the answer is: a little arithmetic--enough

to make the everyday reckonings involved in buying and selling--and the

trick of converting signs into sounds.

It is, however, precisely upon this trick of converting signs into

sounds that his powers of subsequent self-education will chiefly

depend. For, when once he has left his school career behind him, the

working man who wishes to increase his knowledge and grasp of vital,

human and social principles, will rely almost entirely upon the

literature he can obtain and understand.

If, therefore, he approaches this literature, not equipped to

understand, criticise and test its soundness, as matter, or the care

and accuracy of its form, but only practised in the trick of converting

signs into sounds, his attempts at subsequent self-education will be a

futile waste of time.

For there is all the difference in the world between this acquired

trick of deciphering, or converting signs into sounds, and true

_reading_.

What is precisely meant by this antithesis?

By the “power of reading” most people understand not merely the power

of deciphering signs, but also the ability to understand the meaning of

the decipher once it is [p139] made. Reading in the ancient Anglo-Saxon

sense of the word (_rædan_) “to discern,” is the only reading that can

possibly be of any value, “discerning” therefore is the only valuable

meaning that the word reading can have.[25]

But reading in this, its true sense, implies an understanding of the

language deciphered.

Now can it be truly said of the children that leave our elementary

schools that they have been taught reading in this sense?

They have certainly been taught to decipher; they have certainly been

given the mastery of converting signs into sounds; but have they been

taught to “read”?

At the most it might be conceded that they are partially taught to

read--that is to say that they have a partial knowledge of reading; the

amount being limited by the extent of their acquaintance with their

native tongue. For the rest they know only a trick, which consists in

turning signs into sounds.

Thus the neglect of English in our elementary schools to the advantage

of other subjects, most of which are entirely forgotten by the pupils

in later life, imposes upon our working classes, not only _dumbness_,

not only susceptibility to infection by unsound opinion and doctrine,

but also the inability successfully to achieve self-education by means

of reading, when once the school career is done.

The question remains, are these distressing results sufficiently

counterbalanced by the advantages supposed to derive from the study of

other subjects?

There surely can be but one answer to this question, and that is an

emphatic negative.

What greater asset can a man have then a sound knowledge of his native

tongue? What surer safeguard could be given him against corruption,

pollution, false doctrine, and inflammatory counsels? What more coveted

power could he hope to acquire? And, above all, in this age of loose

thinking and even looser speech, what nobler check could he have upon

the vagaries of his fancy or the intemperance of his tongue?

It would constitute his greatest possession, and it is the nation’s

soundest policy to endow him with it. If the principle of State

education be admitted at all, it is incumbent upon a people to teach

its working classes to “read” before anything else, because reading in

itself is at once a lofty accomplishment and the most certain means to

all other accomplishments. Among the State’s foremost and ineluctable

duties, therefore, is the teaching of their native tongue to the

masses. For, without this, reading is an impossibility.

We have seen how social disturbances--aye, and even revolutions,

have been the outcome of falsely interpreting a single word; we have

seen how national disillusionment and depression can arise out of

the pursuit of ideals that are ultimately found to be [p141] empty,

simply because the words in which they were originally framed, though

capable of creating much emotional activity never had any precise

meaning. We have seen, moreover, how difficult it is to ascribe any

genuine significance to such popular decoy words as Justice, Equality,

and Liberty, than which no words in the English language can make

a stronger emotional appeal to a crowd. If these remarks have been

carefully considered, can there any longer be any question concerning

the most vital, the most urgent reform in our educational system?

It now remains to discover what modifications would have to be made in

our elementary school teaching in order to effect this reform.

The children who attend our elementary schools work about 22 hours a

week--certainly not more--and they start their school career at about

six years of age, and finish it at fourteen.[26]

The boys’ curriculum at an average elementary school consists of the

following subjects[27]:--

English, Arithmetic, Geography, History, Nature Study or Hygiene,

Physics, Drawing, Singing, Physical Exercise, Manual Work.

The reader will only need to glance at this curriculum in order to

realise how varied the programme is, and how assiduously the subjects

would require to be studied in the eight years of school life, in order

to leave in the minds of the scholars a sufficient knowledge of them to

be of use in later life.

Eight years, with 22 hours a week for forty-four weeks[28] a year, and

such a programme! Can it be possible for the boys to acquire anything

more than a mere smattering of each subject?

Subtracting from the total 22 hours, the hour and forty minutes per

week allotted to Physical Exercise, there remain twenty hours and

twenty minutes during which English, Arithmetic, Geography, History,

Nature Study or Hygiene, Physics, Drawing, Singing and Manual Work have

to be taught to children who reach school not yet knowing how to read.

And elementary school teachers affirm that it is impossible to insist

on the children doing any homework.

Of these 20 hours and 20 minutes in Standard VII.:--_English_ occupies

5 hours 10 mins. per week, or 227 hours 20 mins., _i.e._, 32 seven-hour

days per year.

This leaves 15 hrs. 10 mins. per week for other subjects, and of this

total:--

_Arithmetic_ occupies 4 hrs. 20 mins. per week, or 190 hrs. 40 mins.,

_i.e._, about 27 seven-hour days per year.

_Geography_ occupies 2 hrs. per week, or 88 hrs., _i.e._, 12½

seven-hour days per year.

_History_ occupies 1 hr. per week, or 44 hrs., _i.e._, 6¼ seven-hour

days per year.

_Hygiene_ occupies 30 mins. per week, or 22 hrs., _i.e._, 3⅛ seven-hour

days per year.

_Physics_, the same as Hygiene.

_Singing_, the same as History.

_Drawing_ occupies 2 hrs. 45 mins. per week, or 121 hrs., _i.e._, a

little over 17 seven-hour days per year.

_Recreation and Registration_ occupy the remaining 3 hrs. 5 mins. per

week, or 139 hrs., 20 mins., _i.e._, a little over 19 seven-hour days

per year.

Seeing that there is little or no homework in elementary schools, it is

obvious that none of these subjects, except, perhaps, Arithmetic, can

be taught sufficiently well to be of any use whatever to the child in

after life. For, in the lower standards, although the apportionment of

time varies somewhat, the variation is not material. When, moreover,

it is remembered that most of the boys take 3 hours a week for Manual

Work, and that these hours have to be subtracted from the time allotted

to other subjects, it is clear that the ultimate result, in so far as

that knowledge is concerned which represents a permanent asset to the

individual, cannot be very satisfactory.

In fact, take it how you will, it must be acknowledged without either

bitterness or malice that elementary education is nothing more than a

very expensive and very elaborate farce.

It teaches the boys two things that they undoubtedly remember: the

trick of deciphering letterpress, which constitutes them purchasers

and readers of the lowest and most fatuous literature that sweated

literary hacks can produce, and enough arithmetic [p144] for them to

master the ordinary numerical problems that may arise in the daily

routine of their adult lives. Of History nothing, literally nothing, is

remembered, except, perhaps, that there was once a king who spoilt some

tarts (they are not quite certain whether it was Alfred the Great or

the King of Hearts), and that there was once a monarch called William

the Conqueror. Of Geography only the vaguest notions are retained, and

these relate more often to the world as a whole than to their native

land. Of Hygiene, Physics, not a trace is left--not even a recollection

of the names of the subjects. While Singing and Drawing, except to the

few, are a pure waste of time.

It is safe to say that this is true of the majority of the scholars,

and since it is the majority of the children that constitute the great

mass of the nation, it is on them we must concentrate our attention.

Since the object of all our expensive elementary school organisation

ought to be to impart to them some valuable knowledge that they can

retain throughout their lives, some valuable knowledge, moreover, in

the acquisition of which the highest faculties of their mind would

be disciplined and trained, surely it would be an advantage in the

first place to concentrate on a fewer number of subjects, and secondly

to select only those which could be of service to them in later

life (for they are the only subjects that are ever remembered), and

thirdly, to confine the study of the subject or subjects chosen, as

far as possible, to those limits which, while they guarantee a solid

foundation of learning, allow of further [p145] unassisted progress

when once the school career is over.

Now it seems to the present writer that no subject in the whole

curriculum of schools answers these requirements more satisfactorily in

every way than English itself.

It is at once an ideal means of disciplining and training the mind,

of clarifying thought and of correcting vagueness and looseness of

reasoning; it is an excellent preservative of natural nobility of

character, by opening up to the student the whole treasury of lofty

thought and sentiment that the language contains; it is a mental weapon

against befoulment by prurient and other deleterious influences; it

is an instrument of criticism that can be employed at any moment,

in any contingency, against the appeals of demagogues, agitators,

and corruptors of all kinds, and it is a means of lucid and logical

communication, without which no man can be said to be safe against

misunderstanding or confusion. Above all--and this is its principal

value to-day--a knowledge of English is essential to anyone who wishes

to know how to “read.”

Now what would be the extent of the reforms required in order to make

our elementary education chiefly a means of imparting a good and

serviceable knowledge of English to the masses?

In the first place, the elementary school teacher himself would have

to be selected from a rather higher grade of educationalists. He would

have to be qualified to teach English not only by precept but also by

example. To-day, in the majority of cases, he could not teach English,

even if he had [p146] the time. As to expressing a thought in good

English, the elementary school teacher and his boys are a case of the

blind leading the blind. This is not the teacher’s fault. He does his

best, and in view of his training, his best is sometimes very good.

Wherever the present writer has been, moreover, he has been compelled

to recognise the efficiency and conscientiousness of this class of

State official, and to applaud the result he obtains with the material

at his disposal. Nevertheless, able as he is within his own limits, the

elementary school teacher is, as a rule, incapable of teaching English,

and if it is ever decided to extend the programme on the English side,

the teacher himself will have to be the object of the first reforms.

As regards the curriculum, the changes would be more simple.

To begin with, the hours allotted to Arithmetic might well be reduced

to a maximum of three per week. This would be ample to enable the

least proficient scholars to master all the method they could ever be

expected to require in after life, and at the same time would afford

adequate opportunities for the detection of any mathematical genius who

might be lurking in the school, and for whose case special provision

might be made.

The time for Geography, the study of which might with advantage be

confined to the general relations of England to the rest of the world,

without any specialisation in home topography, which is invariably

forgotten, might be reduced to half an hour a week.

History might be cancelled altogether, [p147] and the teaching of the

subject confined to such historical knowledge as the scholar could not

help acquiring in learning the meaning of certain English words such

as: Peer, Parliament, Constitution, Rebellion, Regicide, Suffrage,

Reformation, Prime Minister, etc.[29]

Hygiene, Physics and Singing might also be cancelled with advantage,

and the detection of specially good voices, or musical talent, left to

that part of the English lessons given to the learning of old English

folk-songs, canons and ballads.

With regard to drawing, it seems ridiculous that all boys should devote

two hours 45 minutes per week to this subject. To thousands it must

mean the most intolerable drudgery. Surely one hour per week would be

enough to reveal any exceptional talent in the school, and for the

teacher to discover all those who could not possibly profit from the

subject, even if they continued at it to the end of their lives. The

latter could then be weeded out of the class, and the hour allotted to

drawing, in their case, could be sacrificed to Manual Work.

At all events, the hours set aside for Manual Work, seeing that

it is a form of exercise, might be taken from the time allowed for

Recreation[30] and the time allowed for Drawing (in the case of

untalented boys), or from the time allowed for Recreation and the time

allowed for Arithmetic (in the case of artistic boys).

By this means it would be possible to add 7 hrs. 40 mins. per week to

the time occupied in teaching English, or 337 hrs. 20 mins., _i.e._,

48 seven-hour days per year, making a grand total, with the existing

hours allotted to English, of 12 hrs. 50 mins. per week, or 564 hrs. 40

mins., _i.e._, 80½ seven-hour days per year.

Although this still appears to be an exiguous allowance, in view, not

only of the importance of the subject, but also of the home influences

which for a generation at least would prove a serious obstacle to

progress, it is sufficient for much to be made of it; and in this

period, for seven years, it ought to be possible to give each boy a

very considerable mastery of English. In any case, it would enable a

foundation to be laid upon which subsequent self-education could safely

repose.

The teaching would have to consist principally of exercises in the

precise meaning and proper use of words, the aim being to give each

child, not only a very much larger vocabulary than that which he learns

at school to-day, but also a mastery in the use of each word, which

would prevent both confusion in expression, and misunderstanding in

reading or listening. Good, careful reading would therefore be exacted

from all, and the excellence of the performance of each boy would not

be judged so much from the standpoint of glibness or fluency, as from

the ease and accuracy with which he understands the meaning of what he

has read.

In the process of teaching the correct meaning of words, the boys

would necessarily acquire their stock of sound and proper ideas about

life and humanity, because it is impossible to teach the meaning of

certain abstract words relating to society and life, without imparting

true ideas. Thus, without feeling any of the natural repulsion that

healthy boys would instinctly feel towards a moral or philosophical

lesson, they would nevertheless be able to absorb a philosophy of life,

the lack of which in their education to-day is one of its principal

blemishes.[31]

More stress would also be laid on the teaching of grammar than is the

custom to-day. The present system, inspired by the Board of Education,

deliberately neglects grammar, and the results are noticeable in every

sentence that proceeds from the lips of a working class child.[32]

Since logical expression, and the understanding of the logical

construction of a long sentence are impossible without a complete

mastery of Grammar, it is most important that Grammar should be

properly and specially taught. And with English as the only big subject

of the school curriculum, this ought to be perfectly possible.

Next in importance would be the study of good authors in and out of

class. The boys would have to learn to appreciate instances of happy

construction, or apt and vivid expression. In Standard VI. and VII.,

they would also be encouraged to call the teacher’s attention to what

they thought was a misuse or abuse of words, either in their father’s

newspaper, or in any literature of doubtful quality at home.

Daily practice in accurate expression, and in criticism of other

boys’ speech, together with the learning by heart of long passages

from the best poets, the Bible, and some of the best prose writers;

weekly exercises in composition, and a rigorous training in exact

definition--these with a leisurely training in the best old English

songs, canons and ballads, would complete a training that would send

every child forth into the world with at least one subject thoroughly

learned, with at least one weapon well mastered for the struggle of

life, and above all with a more or less certain guarantee that he

would be immune to the lure of vulgar taste in literature, and to the

deliberate deceptions and traps that all those quill-driving monsters,

who to-day stand enthroned over the minds and the hearts of our working

classes, daily and hourly prepare for the further stultification and

corruption of their victims.

Very soon a marked change would come over the nation. Its present

highly strung and hysterical condition, which has been induced chiefly

by the sensationalism of its vulgar newspapers and other cheap

literature, would yield before a more sober and more dignified state

of mind. Not a child whose spirits had been brought into vivifying

contact with the noblest of the nation’s thoughts and sentiments,

could help manifesting signs of this invigorating intercourse in later

life. Among the meanest of them it would leave behind at least the

dim recollection that there were things in heaven and earth that were

greater than themselves, that there were sacred and lofty heights in

the intellectual productions of their nation, which they had once gazed

upon as it were from afar, and while this memory would sustain them in

their patriotism and fortify them in their self-respect, it would also

tend to check that spirit of irreverence for all things which is one of

the most alarming features of the Age.

Again, instead of opening the school gates to let loose a flood of

fourteen-year-old hooligans, with no mental equipment except gutter

smartness, children taught in this [p152] way would be sent forth into

the world possessing at least a foundation of sound knowledge, a basis

of valuable ideas and principles concerning life and humanity, the

benefit of which they themselves and their neighbours would feel at

every moment of their lives.

And this immensely desirable result, this crying need of the present

day, could be obtained at what cost? At the cost of small smatterings

of History, Geography, Drawing, Hygiene, and Physics, which are

forgotten within nine months of leaving school, which even remembered

would be of little practical value, and which, so far from having been

introduced into the curriculum with serious intent, appear rather to

have found their way there by accident and to have been retained purely

from motives of idle and fruitless display.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 24: Even John Locke, who, as a thinker was, in many respects,

surprisingly superficial, exclaims with regard to education: “You will

wonder, perhaps, that I put learning last, especially if I tell you I

think it the least part.” (_Some Thoughts concerning Education_). While

Aristotle lays it down definitely: “That there is a sort of education

in which parents should train their sons, not as being useful or

necessary, but because it is liberal or noble.” (Politics VIII., 5).]

[Footnote 25: The German _lesen_ and the French _lire_, both have the

same implication. They both imply discernment, understanding. The old

high German _lësan_ meant to collect with discrimination, and, with

the French _lire_ was allied to the Latin _legere_, which may mean

to choose, to pick out, to single out, and to select,--all actions

implying discernment and understanding.]

[Footnote 26: They may now continue their studies at continuation

evening schools after fourteen years of age, if they choose, and earn

money the while in some daily employment.]

[Footnote 27: The girls’ curriculum, into which it will not be

necessary to enter here, is very much the same as the boys’, except

that it excludes Manual Work and Physics, and includes Laundry, Cooking

and Needlework.]

[Footnote 28: All the calculations that follow are based upon the

assumption that eight weeks are allowed for holidays each year.]

[Footnote 29: Owing to the great importance of history in inspiring

children to maintain the traditions of their country, it is only with

the greatest reluctance that this subject is not allotted special

hours to itself. It is, however, felt that in view of the short space

of years that elementary education covers in the life-time of the

working-class child, some drastic pruning of the curriculum must at all

costs be made, as anything in the nature of a compromise inserts the

thin edge of the wedge of superficiality in the teaching. Moreover,

seeing that the English lesson will draw largely upon historical

facts for the explanation of words, the subject cannot be regarded as

entirely neglected in this programme.]

[Footnote 30: As the whole week’s work amounts only to 22 hours, and

there is no home work, boys at an elementary school cannot in any case

be said to be overworked, and there would be no hardship involved

in curtailing the time allowed for recreation, or in cancelling it

altogether.]

[Footnote 31: It is true that in its _Suggestions for the Consideration

of Teachers_ (p. 28) the Board of Education does lay down that: “One

of the fundamental purposes of education is to ensure that the child

has an ample fund of ideas about the world in which it lives, and that

these ideas should be, as far as may be, full and exact”; but what

follows (pp. 28, 29) is so meaningless and reveals such an inadequate

appreciation of the value of ideas in adult life, that it stultifies

the value of the foregoing.]

[Footnote 32: _Ibid_, p. 39: “The minutiæ of Parsing should be

completely omitted.... There should be no Grammar teaching apart from

the other English lessons, it should arise naturally out of the reading

and composition lessons.” One headmaster of an elementary school with

whom the present writer discussed the question of Parsing, declared

that he greatly regretted that it had been dropped.]

[p153] CHAPTER VII

SOCIAL REFORM[33]

“Things are so bad that, to have any genuine insight to-day, any

special human feeling to-day, means perforce to devote these gifts to

the social problem, instead of to art and beauty. That is the curse

of having been born in this Age.”--Extract from a novel of last year.

A certain unaffected hopelessness characterises the mood of modern

men, for which it is difficult to find an adequate cause. There is a

pessimism rife to-day, which, far from being a pose or a pretence,

lies so deeply imbedded in the hearts of most people, that it is their

constant effort to conceal, rather than to proclaim it, when they are

in the presence of their fellows. A cheerful smile, a laugh that sounds

like merriment, a vivacious and buoyant manner--these outward signs of

unruffled gaiety may now be simulated by men when they are in company;

they may even be enjoined upon all as social etiquette; but when once

he is left to himself, modern man smoothens out his laugh-wrinkled

cheeks, compresses his relaxed lips, and abandons himself to that

attitude of mind now perhaps as universal as it is secret, which for

lack of a better term we may describe as settled despondency.

Among the cultivated this attitude remains more or less a private

concern of the individual. The thinking man, unlike the savage, does

not beat his wife and children, or blame his immediate surroundings, if

he feels hopeless. He knows the cause is probably more remote than the

behaviour of his kith and kin, or circle of friends; and though he may

be as incapable as the savage of finding the true cause, he withholds

his anger, or postpones the expression of his gloomy thoughts until

such time as their true cause becomes apparent to him.

Among the uncultivated, however, this mood of gloom or of convinced

despair, harbouring as it does in minds that are less inclined to be

philosophical, renders them litigious and vindictive. Some one or

some circumstance not too remote must be responsible, it is thought,

for their peevishness; they therefore become irascible and angry,

and seek to vent their spleen on that person or thing which, on the

strength of its proximity alone, appears to be the immediate cause

of their ill-humour. Conditions that satisfied them theretofore now

become insufferable and must be changed; prospects that smiled upon

them formerly now appear too black to be faced with calm. Pleasure--or

rather distraction--is sought feverishly, gluttonously, until, since

it leaves them still with the old langour at their hearts, it also is

rejected as part of the general conspiracy to depress their spirits.

Nothing pleases, nothing beckons. The same aching certainty of

discontent always returns, whatever else may go.

When a nation feels like this, when a [p155] whole continent feels

like this, there arises what politicians are pleased to call a state

of “social unrest.” By giving it a name it is hoped presumably that it

will be explained away. Unfortunately, however accurate the terms of

a description may be, they do nothing towards helping to remove the

trouble they describe. But in this particular case it may be questioned

whether the words “social unrest” form even an accurate description.

A society that is at rest is not necessarily the ultimate desideratum.

A society that is not at rest cannot therefore be necessarily bad.

On the contrary, social unrest has been characteristic of all the

greatest and most fertile moments in history. What could have been more

unrestful than the period that witnessed the spread of the Roman power,

or the period of the Renaissance?

To call the present period simply one of social unrest therefore does

not even give us an inkling of the true and alarming symptom of the

trouble--the settled despondency that is invading all hearts.

By the phrase “social unrest,” we might, for instance, be led to

suspect that the secondary and particular symptoms of the trouble

were the primary and general symptoms. What are the secondary and

particular symptoms of the trouble? Labour’s general and determined

dissatisfaction with the conditions of labour all over Europe.

Suppose we accept the secondary as the primary symptoms, how can we

then account for the deep pessimism and gloom of the cultivated--not

merely those among the cultivated who fear they may lose by [p156]

Labour’s attitude, but those who are disinterested enough to fear

nothing except the incurable canker at their hearts? Can they truly be

said to share Labour’s general and determined dissatisfaction with the

conditions of labour all over Europe?

Labour’s dissatisfaction, therefore, cannot possibly be a primary

symptom. It is only the proletariat’s adaptation to the primary

symptom; just as hedonism, neurasthenia, lunacy and frenzied interest

in new-fangled creeds and movements, may be the cultivated man’s

adaptation to the primary symptoms.

To call the present state of affairs simply social unrest is to magnify

unduly a secondary and particular, into the importance of a primary and

general, symptom.

Whatever the subsequent adaptation to it may be, the true primary

symptom must be common to both classes, the labouring and the employing

classes, and that true primary symptom, it is here suggested, is the

mood of unaffected hopelessness that characterises all modern men. And

since, as a primary symptom, it is common to all men, it must have a

common cause.

Doubtless a good deal of it may be easily accounted for in the manner

outlined at the opening of Chapter I. As everyone knows, physical and

spiritual weariness do not need to last very long in order to induce

the most stubborn dejection; and since there can be no doubt that, as

the result of life’s present unprecedented complexity and breakneck

speed, modern men of all classes are suffering from physical and

particularly nervous exhaustion, we might reasonably [p157] expect to

find depression as one of its accompanying features.

To the present writer, however, the recognition of this modicum of

melancholy that must be found everywhere wedded to bodily and spiritual

weariness, although important, does not seem sufficient to explain the

universality of the present existence of secret low spirits. It seems

to him that a deeper cause must be sought; for it has come to his own,

as it must have come to other people’s notice, that the low spirits in

question are to be found even where the harassing complications of life

and the present high speed of life are least often and least severely

felt. It is as if a sentiment, and not a material cause were the chief

source of the pessimism that we are now considering. And, since this

pessimism is everywhere rife, it must be supposed that the sentiment

also is universal, and must have preceded the former in all men’s

hearts.

As to the precise nature of this supposed sentiment, there may be

various and even conflicting opinions; the hypothesis favoured here,

however, is the following:--

The sentiment that is now lodged in all European hearts, irrespective

of class or country, and is responsible for the gloom that has

descended upon all nations, is a compound of deep and bitter

_disappointment_ on the one hand, with the _suspicion_ of having been

_duped_ and left stranded on the other.