There is a feeling that the leading ideals by which our fathers and

grandfathers guided their lives, and to which we, who were born in the

last century, also aspired, have proved false ideals. And, coupled

with this [p158] feeling, there is, in the first place, the growing

conviction that we should have done better, and shown ourselves more

expert in managing our affairs, if, instead of trying to act up to

those ideals, we had renounced them altogether; and secondly, that now

that we see ourselves compelled to abandon these old ideals, we are

stranded without any guiding principles whatsoever.

The old ideals have proved worthless and even dangerous, and we are

therefore abandoning them; but no new ideals have been created to take

their place.

It is this feeling that now constitutes the disease in all men’s

hearts--the feeling of the enlightened child of besotted and degenerate

parents, who, looking back upon them calmly and dispassionately in his

maturity, is ashamed of the guileless filial passion he once felt for

them in his childhood, and yet knows himself to be terribly cold and

alone in his spiritual orphanage.

“Progress,” that toughest among our grandfathers’ and fathers’

ideals, has been the last to perish; but with it perhaps went our

stoutest hopes and our firmest beliefs. We have now buried it, to the

accompaniment of the gravest doubts concerning not merely whether we

are better, or better off, than the men of the 16th and 17th centuries,

but also whether we are better, or better off even than the Cro-Magnon

men who lived thirty thousand years before the present era.

To those who could believe in the existence of an all-powerful,

beneficent deity--and which of us had grandfathers or fathers who did

not?--there was something supremely [p159] logical and inevitable

in this idea of Progress. How could life fail to improve seeing

that a beneficent deity was controlling it, and must therefore be

directing all things towards a common good?

But now the objections to this belief scarcely require to be stated.

Everybody knows, everybody sees, that it must be wrong. And those

exceptional people whose minds and eyes still need some assistance

before they feel able to reject it, have only to examine certain

statistics in order to become assured that their conservatism is

without foundation.

And how many ideals have not gone the same way as “Progress”? Who

believes in “Democracy” nowadays? Who believes in Parliamentary

Government, in the ultimate triumph of Altruism, in the Brotherhood

of mankind, in Universal Suffrage? In short, who believes in the

desirability of the whole of Western civilisation, or of its extension

to countries that are still uncontaminated by it?

How could the contemplation of such a hecatomb of perverted ideals fail

to create despondency, seeing that despite the lack of other ideals to

take their place, and everybody’s horror at what has occurred, every

sane man in every civilised land is convinced that, had the hecatomb

not already been made, he would have been compelled to pile it up with

his own hands?

Perhaps it may sound to some an unwarrantable assumption to maintain

that a complete negation of the beliefs of a former century--aye, and

in some cases, of a former [p160] millenium--necessarily constitutes a

state of deep distress.

Those who entertain this view can only be recommended to ponder the

enormous influence that strong, deep-rooted beliefs play in the lives

of large communities, particularly when these beliefs constitute the

very confidence, trust and faith which such communities feel in the

worthiness and the value of their common aims and endeavours. Shake

these beliefs, and the energy which theretofore had been directed

evenly towards a certain bourne, a definite goal, finds itself dammed

up or lost on the high road; remove them altogether, and it is not

impossible that the very generation of energy itself will cease. People

become listless, indolent, hopeless; and the acute stage of danger is

soon reached when everyone cries openly or in his heart: “What is the

good of it all? _Cui bono?_”

The repercussion of this state of distress upon language has already

been discussed. It is clear that, with the loss of guiding ideals

and beliefs, the important leading words connected with these ideals

and beliefs become entirely meaningless and devoid of any distinct

associations. In addition to finding himself completely astray,

therefore, modern man’s forlorn condition is complicated by serious

bewilderment. A large number of the words which, owing to their

long association with deep-rooted beliefs and guiding ideals, still

stimulate great emotional excitement in him, have no corresponding

meaning in reality--in fact, have no meaning at all. The sounds remain,

and from sheer habit evoke certain sensations; but the [p161] beliefs

which gave these sounds some reality have departed.

Thus even the least sensitive man of the present age, has gradually

become conscious of no longer having any secure footing. The ground

under his feet seems to be slipping away and he throws out his arms

desperately to catch at some support.

Deep, almost rancorous disappointment, coupled with the suspicion that

he has been duped and left stranded--this compound, it is suggested,

constitutes the sentiment which is now lodged in the heart of every

European. And it is this sentiment which is the cause of the present

universal and stubborn pessimism in all countries where Western

civilisation prevails.

Unfortunately the only cure for this kind of chronic melancholy is the

promulgation of new beliefs, new goals, new values. A new faith is

perhaps the most crying need of all. But where are the great men of

to-day who could undertake this task?

In the masses, or proletariat, of all countries, this pessimism,

arising out of the sentiment analysed above, expresses itself, as is

only natural, in the most irreconcilable discontent. What does the

man in the street know of remote causes, particularly when they are

spiritual? As we have already hinted above, material causes are the

first he thinks of; because they are the first that lie to hand. And

when, moreover, he finds every self-seeking agitator ready to prove

that material circumstances are the cause of his trouble, how can he

any longer doubt that here indeed he has traced his misery to its

source? [p162]

Thus among the masses, the prevailing pessimism takes the form of an

economic struggle, which has little or nothing to do with the actual

amount of happiness or unhappiness that is to be gained. And in the

leisured classes, the same affliction is leading to mad hedonism,

neurasthenia, lunacy, and a thirst for new religions and movements,

which is frequently out of all proportion to the sanity of the

interests these have to offer.

While, however, the masses, owing to the more precise nature of their

demands (always confined to the economic field and never touching upon

spiritual needs) and also to the greater volume of their clamour, have

succeeded in directing the attention of all would-be reformers upon

themselves, the cultivated also, partly hypnotised by the insistence of

the proletariat’s outcry, have made the mistake of supposing that in

material reforms alone can salvation be found.

In the absence of new ideals, sound beliefs, and a great new faith,

that would once again knit modern mankind together in a united effort

and a common aim, not only the proletariat, but also large numbers

of the cultivated classes, have come to the conclusion that it is in

economic changes that a recovery of the _joie de vivre_ is to be found.

And such ideals as Communism, Socialism, and Bolshevism, which are

purely economic (_i.e._, material), in their objects and methods, are

now held up as panaceas for the ills of the whole world.

To suppose, however, that economic changes alone will make any

difference to the present [p163] deep depression of man, is to

misunderstand the whole nature of his trouble.

If there is anything in the analysis contained in the preceding

paragraphs; if the diagnosis of modern pessimism which it offers is

not entirely wrong and beside the mark, it is obvious that economic

changes, however drastic, can and will do nothing to alleviate

the state of distress in which everybody who lives where Western

civilisation prevails, now finds himself.

Improve the conditions of the indigent how you will, elevate the

standard of living as high as you choose, you are nevertheless

powerless to reduce even by one gush of tears, the misery and

discontent that prevails among all classes in the modern civilised

world, unless you understand and can deal with the more profound and

more complicated spiritual cause that lies at the root of this misery.

Nobody in his senses denies that there is yet room for improvement in

the standard of living among large sections of the proletariat; nobody

who has studied the question doubts for one instant that the conditions

of the indigent are frequently directly conducive to both physical and

spiritual disease, and therefore that they require modification; but to

suppose that the need for this departmental improvement is sufficiently

pressing and promising of good far-reaching results, to justify the

upheaval of the whole of the existing system of life, is to confess

yourself so completely fascinated and hypnotised by a particular aspect

alone of modern unhappiness, as it is manifested in one particular

section of society, as to have remained blind [p164] to all other

aspects of it which are to be observed in other sections.

Posterity will certainly look back upon this Age as an epoch in which

there existed but one really strong obsession. It will recognise that

in matters of religion we were independent, individualistic, disunited,

and scattered. It will also see that in the domain of art, literature,

and science, divergence of opinion, to the extent of open civil war,

was general and commonplace. On one question, however, it will be

compelled to acknowledge our complete unanimity and concord, and that

question is Social Reform.

All classes and all political parties at the opening of the 20th

century in Great Britain will be declared to have been solidly bent on

achieving this one object; and for some obscure reason, which perhaps

will for ever remain a mystery even to an enlightened posterity, that

social reform will be characterised as having had in view always the

amelioration of but one section of the community--the poorer section,

from the standpoint of material wealth--that is to say, that it was

certainly a downward glance, a downcast eye, that constituted the

attitude of its most fervent advocates and their followers.

Subsequent generations, if they are sufficiently philosophical, will

perceive the error here, without perhaps being able to explain it. It

may be possible now, however, to forestall their speculations and to

shed upon the question some light that may be helpful to them.

It has been said that misery is at present [p165] general, that it

runs through all classes in all countries.

Furthermore, it has been suggested that this misery has its root in

a sentiment which is a compound of rancorous disappointment and the

feeling that we have been duped and left stranded.

This sentiment has been traced to the failure and demonstrated

emptiness of all the leading beliefs and ideals of the last century,

and even before that.

Now the particular expression of this misery which is at present given

by the more indigent sections of the community, is discontent with

their condition, leading to an economic struggle.

The expression of this misery which is at present given by the

wealthier sections of the community consists in an unusually fierce

form of hedonism, insanity, neurasthenia, and religious mania.

Strange to say, however, the cure for the misery which is being

recommended by the proletariat and in the general terms of which large

numbers of the plutocracy are already acquiescing, is Social Reform,

which, in its more moderate guise, aspires simply to the elevation of

the standard of living among the labouring classes; and in its extreme

form (as in Russia, for instance) envisages the overthrow of the

present system in favour of Communism, Socialism, or Bolshevism.

Now even if the analysis of modern misery given above were only

approximately accurate, it must be plain that:--

(1) To set out to relieve the misery of only one section of the

community--the [p166] poorer section--when all the community is

unhappy, amounts obviously only to attempting a partial cure, in

fact to concerning one’s self only with one aspect and secondary

manifestation of the general trouble.

(2) To concentrate upon social reform, even in its most moderate form,

is to assume that which has yet to be demonstrated: that an improvement

in the material conditions of the proletariat is really all that the

world wants in order to recover happiness.

(3) To suppose that any such purely material or economic reform as

Communism, can effect a complete cure all round, is to assume that

the causes of modern unhappiness are purely material or economic--an

assumption which, so far from being supported by the facts, has all the

evidence of the unhappiness of the wealthy classes against it.

Now let these objections be taken one by one in their order, and

considered more fully.

(1) Is it, or is it not a fact, that all classes, rich and poor alike,

are now suffering from deep spiritual depression? If it is a fact,

it is obviously ridiculous and unfair to attempt even along economic

lines (that is by material reforms alone) to alleviate the pain only

of one class; and the concentration of attention upon proletarian

unhappiness, constitutes an absurd and utterly unjustifiable obsession.

If, on the other hand, it is not a fact that all classes are suffering

equally from deep spiritual depression, a somewhat formidable

array of unpleasant facts are left utterly unexplained [p167] and

unco-ordinated. These are: the steady spread of apathy, cynicism,

listlessness and recklessness--always signs of great unhappiness--among

the wealthy classes; the frenzied search for new creeds, new movements,

new interests, however childish, always a sign of despair; and the

unceasing pursuit of pleasure among the non-religious sections of the

wealthy classes--a sign of intense boredom, weariness and gloom.

Now it is only due to the characteristic obtuseness and shallowness

of this Age, that no attention has been paid to the unhappiness of

the wealthier classes, which in many instances is very severe indeed;

and it is due to the absurdly exalted notion of their prestige, and

their own extravagant estimate of their dignity, that they themselves

have not made more clamour to call the attention of the community to

their misery. Labouring under the utterly unsupported modern belief

that where economic conditions are sound, everything is sound, we do

not find the leaders of the Church organising missions to the mansions

of the wealthy in order to make sure that their spiritual life is

healthy and free from the blights of gloom and despair; obsessed as

everyone is by the supposed inaccessibility of wealth to the common

spiritual distempers of the Age, we never hear of charitable charwomen

undertaking a course of district visiting to the women of the wealthier

classes, in order to investigate the cause of their despondency and

to help them to overcome it. And yet, strange as such a procedure

would sound to modern ears, is it really so palpably offensive to good

sense? The very fact [p168] that most people would suspect a man of

joking who recommended such action, shows conclusively how far we are

from realising the extent of the spiritual misery, besottedness and

turpitude prevailing among our wealthier classes.

Is this misery to be left entirely suspended in the air by the proposed

economic reforms of the coming era? As a symptom it has been shown

that the unhappiness of the wealthier classes is as important and

significant as any other phenomenon of modern times. Do people really

suppose that certain economic changes, certain improvements in the

standard of living of the poor, are going to set the whole world right,

including the chronic unhappiness of the present wealthy classes?

It has been suggested that this unhappiness of the wealthy has a

deep root, and that at its root it joins with the unhappiness of the

indigent. How can any tinkering at material conditions possibly be

expected to reach that root?

If social reformers had their way, if in their superficial analysis of

modern misery, they were allowed to proceed with their “improvements,”

the changes they would be able to bring about would leave absolutely

intact the whole of the major cause of the trouble that obsesses them.

In a trice the “improved” conditions would become habitual conditions,

and then, once the diversion had spent its force, the old unhappiness

would return with possibly even greater malignity. Anybody who doubts

this is invited to dwell on the economic improvements already achieved

among the poorer classes of the nation, and to assess the proportionate

[p169] amount of increased happiness that has accompanied them.

(2) Many years ago, George Gissing, than whom no English writer was

better qualified to speak with authority on the question of rich and

poor, made the following remark: “A being of superior intelligence

regarding humanity with an eye of perfect understanding would discover

that life was enjoyed every bit as much in the slum as in the palace.”

In other words, it must have occurred to most thinking people that

laughter, if heard at all, is heard quite as frequently in the kitchen

as in the drawing-room,--that is to say, that happiness is relative,

and that the possibility of ultimate adaptation to all conditions

makes the degree of happiness enjoyed by each human being more or

less uniform. At all events, the fact that material conditions are

the first, which, if constant, cease to be noticed, and therefore

cease to contribute actively to happiness, must have been observed

by most people of ordinary acumen. It would therefore constitute a

gross misunderstanding both of human nature and of life in general,

to suppose that standards of living, even very much lower than those

of our present unskilled labouring classes, would necessarily destroy

happiness for those compelled to endure them. And, conversely, it would

constitute a grave misconception of the nature of happiness to suppose

that an improved standard of living necessarily brings happiness in its

train, or has anything to do with happiness. All those who, for five

years of the Great War, had to live on indifferent food, imperfectly

cooked, served [p170] in inconvenient and frequently filthy quarters,

and on unsightly and grubby utensils, will bear the present writer out

in this, and will agree with him when he says that material conditions

cannot possibly bear the deep causal relation to happiness that so

many thousands of solemn would-be philosophers now allege. Beyond a

certain point--that is to say, _when once the possibility of daily

repletion with wholesome foodstuffs, and sufficient daily repose has

been attained_, material conditions, so far from being conducive to

happiness or unhappiness, are not even noticed.

To improve the material conditions of the proletariat beyond the stage

of comfortable security, therefore, will not and cannot increase their

general happiness by one iota. It may urge them to the mad hedonism of

the rich, it may drive them to the surfeited apathy and neurasthenia of

the plutocratic classes and stimulate their appetite for new-fangled

creeds and movements, but it will not increase their happiness, neither

will it do anything to alleviate the misery that was analysed in the

first half of this chapter, under which they, like the wealthier

classes, are now groaning.

(3) Assuming, however, that the whole of the above reasoning is

hopelessly wrong and even vicious; taking it for granted, as many

undoubtedly will, that the misery here alleged to be common both to

the modern rich and the modern poor, which social reform cannot alter,

is a pure myth, an ingenious fiction, inspired by the trumpery aims of

reaction alone; it may still be asked whether those who concentrate so

painstakingly [p171] upon material and economic reforms, have satisfied

themselves that their diagnosis of the trouble is the correct one.

The implication underlying their activities and their programme, is

that material and economic conditions should be the principal concern

of all. They pin their faith to the amelioration of the standard

of living, and whether they wish to achieve this end by Communism,

Socialism, or Bolshevism, they confess by the principles they adopt,

that they recognise no other avenue to salvation.

But it is surely no quibble to demand of them some proof that their

proposed cures have been conceived as the result of a scrupulously

careful investigation into the causes of the disease. Without

necessarily incurring the suspicion of undue prejudice, it is surely

not unreasonable to request them, before inaugurating their subversive

reforms, to give their critics some demonstration of the accuracy of

their diagnosis.

Has this been done? Has any conclave of accredited psychologists,

thinkers and social reformers, ever sat to deliberate upon the true

causes of modern misery? And having deliberated, have they published

to the world any conclusion to the effect that everything in modern

society _except only the condition of the poor_, can be continued and

maintained with impunity, without fears of a recurrence of the present

malady?

Nobody can contend that the advocates of social reform in so far as

this is confined to material and economic changes, have even satisfied

themselves--still less the rest of the world--that economic causes

are the most potent in accounting for the [p172] misery prevailing

in Western Civilisation. Nobody would even argue that they had begun

to question the correctness of their materialistic interpretation of

“Social Unrest,” and since the reforms they propose are drastic and

destructive, as witness the Utopia in Russia, the world has a right,

and more particularly have the working masses in all countries a right,

to insist upon the disease of modernity being thoroughly understood

before it is treated.

It is not claimed for an instant that the analysis given in the first

part of this chapter is necessarily the right one; but it is certainly

hoped that by suggesting perhaps a new avenue of approach to these

problems, it will not only show that there are more ways than one of

solving them, but also stimulate thought along lines not habitually

followed by social reformers.

The present writer himself is, at any rate, convinced of two things:--

_First_, that social reform, either moderate or in its extreme

expression as Communism or Bolshevism, is a modern obsession, resulting

from a gratuitous concentration upon the material conditions alone of

one class only of the community; and that all changes that are inspired

by this obsession are certain to be wrong and utterly disastrous,

seeing that it takes no cognisance of the great unhappiness that is

unconnected with the state of indigence.

_Second_, that the relation of happiness to material conditions is

a subject of such deep misunderstanding at the present day that, at

all events, reforms which rely too obstinately upon the accepted and

general [p173] view of this relation, are sure to lead to the most

distressing blunders, without relieving by one iota, the burden of

misery that is borne by the whole population, rich and poor alike.

In conclusion, the following considerations may prove of value in

regard to the general question of social reform, and to the particular

question of happiness:--

_The present state of settled despondency in all classes may be the

result of a number of agencies, with the continued operation of any

one of which it might be fatal to start a new era with any hope of

achieving greater happiness._

_The world has come to its present pass by means of the observance

of hundreds of values, among which it is possible that the most

unsuspected are the most powerful causes of the general decline in the

joie de vivre._

For instance, to make a few suggestions at random, it is possible

that the general European attitude of toleration towards disease,

crippledom, congenital debility and physical disabilities of all kinds,

may be totally wrong. It may be that the steady infection of the

healthy mass of the people by the careful perpetuation, preservation

and propagation, of the population’s unhealthiest elements, may

have acted as a gradual poison in four ways: (_a_) as a depressing

spectacle and therefore as a destroyer of joy to the sensative; (_b_)

as an unnecessary burden upon the hale and the hearty, exacting too

heavy a toll from their energy and good spirits; (_c_), as a source

of deterioration to the healthiest elements in the race; and (_d_)

negatively, by making it difficult for the desirable percentage of

very successful creatures to be [p174] born,--those creatures who,

by their beauty, grace and wanton spirits, ennoble life, by holding

up a lofty example of Life’s highest possibilities. It is possible,

that is to say, that Humanitarianism is merely an inverted form of

cruelty; in other words, instead of directing their cruelty against

the undesirable, humanitarians direct it against the desirable, and

cheerfully sacrifice the hale and the hearty to the physiologically

botched.

It is also conceivable that democratic institutions, by levelling

competition and rewards down to the plane of the meanest attainments,

have introduced a sort of craft-apathy, or eagerness-mute-stop,

into the hearts of all those superior workmen who, along ordinary

unrestricted and unconstrained paths, would have delighted in

displaying the higher gifts that differentiate them from their

fellows, and would thus have increased the sum of general happiness by

their contribution of triumphant spirits and the expression of their

gratified effort.

It is possible, too, that life in very large cities, like London,

Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Edinburgh, etc., by bringing each

individual man and woman too constantly into touch, in fact into

daily irritating contact, with thousands of their fellows,--so that

in the thoroughfares of these large cities human beings may truly be

said to stand as rank as weeds,--has led to a kind of semiconscious

misanthropy, which steadily depresses the _joie de vivre_, by

destroying the joy that all should feel in the contemplation and

society of their fellows. The struggle for room, for sheer air space,

is sometimes so acute in these large cities, and in the fight [p175]

for unobstructed progression each advantage is contested with so much

malice and spite, that it is not extravagant to suppose that a natural

and perfectly instinctive impulse to be friendly and philanthropic, may

step by step, be turned to the most irreconcilable hatred and contempt

of humanity. It is not even impossible for this change to occur without

the person in whom it has taken place being in the least conscious

of the true causes of his mental transformation. But upon convinced

misanthropy of this sort it is impossible to build a happy and

contented community. Hence possibly a goodly portion of the unhappiness

of modern times in large cities.

Again in regard to the very alternative of philanthropic or

misanthropic sentiment, in a well-known passage of the moral teaching

of most Europeans, there occurs the famous command “Love thy

neighbour.” And there are not a few sentimentalists who, accepting

this doctrine as the remedy for all social evils, proclaim with

full-throated fervour, that if only there were more love in the world,

all would be well. Now it must surely have occurred to a large number

of people, that if there is one human impulse known to all mankind that

responds with difficulty to the word of command, it is precisely the

impulse to love. A man may, by an effort of will, stop his breathing

and die,--it is said that negro slaves constantly did this in the holds

of humane British seamen’s ships in the 18th century;--a man may by

an effort of will obey the command to kill himself and unhesitatingly

raise the means of suicide to his throat;--in Japan this command

used [p176] frequently to be given and as frequently obeyed;--but by

no effort of will, however severe the command, can a man be made to

feel the impulse to love his neighbour. Love springs spontaneously

in the human breast. Its provocation is invariably, not a word of

command, not a behest, but the charm, grace, or other perfection of an

object contemplated. There is therefore little psychological insight

in the command “Love thy neighbour.” Nobody would deny that to love

one’s neighbour is an excellent prescription for happy social life;

but nobody who was not sadly ignorant of human nature, or divinely

insular, would dream of attempting to achieve this end by commanding

it. The only way to set about loving one’s neighbour, with benignity

aforethought, as it were, is, in the first place, _to make him

loveable_. For love is a spontaneous impulse springing up in the breast

through contemplation or comprehension of some charming or otherwise

alluring object.

Now it is possible that modern life, with all its besotting,

emasculating, and uglifying occupations, with its total absence of

any check upon the multiplication of the unsightly and unsavoury, its

sickness, and its second-rate, third-rate and fourth-rate healthiness,

is pursuing diametrically the opposite aim. It is destroying the

æsthetic basis of the impulse to love; and, except where sexual

attraction is at work, renders love of one’s neighbour a practical

impossibility. It would be ridiculous, and eminently unscientific, to

overlook this factor in the gradual disintegration and unhappiness of

modern society. For a community in which all the [p177] elements fly

asunder when they meet, is unlikely to be either harmonious or happy.

Thus the increasing unloveableness of one’s neighbour, as the result of

the increasing ugliness and unsavouriness of most European populations,

cannot be altogether disregarded.

The above are only a few among the unsuspected and possible

contributory causes of modern misery. It would be easy to continue on

the same lines at considerable length, and further suggestions will be

made in the last chapter; but surely, even at this stage, enough has

already been said, to persuade the thoughtful reader that social reform

alone, as it is generally understood, both in its moderate and extreme

guise, might be completely and even magnificently realised, and yet

leave some of the most potent causes of despondency as flourishing and

as prevalent as ever.

Some of our most respected values lie at the root of the contributory

causes just outlined. Would it not be wiser, before starting on our

wild goose chase in search of new world orders, to decide whether

such values as those which are radical to the contributory causes,

are sufficiently sound to be maintained? For these contributory

and unsuspected causes, which have been outlined above, are all

supplementary to the principal cause analysed in the first part of this

chapter.

Thus a good deal of spade work would appear to be both wise and even

indispensable, before we can proceed with any confidence to the facile

solution of modern misery, consisting in altering our economic [p178]

conditions;[34] and this spade work, which seems to the thinker to be

little more than a measure of ordinary prudence, overlooked though it

has been by the Bolshevists, may in the end prove the very means of

sustaining the success and ensuring the permanence of whatever economic

modifications may subsequently appear necessary and advisable.

At all events, to proceed along any other lines, would certainly mean

that a large number of essential and principal elements in the general

causation of modern misery, would run a grave risk of being overlooked;

it would therefore mean that the continued presence of these elements

would remain to mar any measure of success that any radical economic

reform might achieve, and would thus demonstrate to the whole world a

fact which, despite the example of Russia, is by no means sufficiently

clear: that social reform like Protestantism in the 15th century, like

Puritanism in the 17th, and like Republicanism in the 18th, is an

obsession, the hypnotic power of which is out of all proportion to the

amount of good it can possibly establish by its successful fulfilment.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 33: The ideas from which this essay has been developed were

first embodied in a short article called _Happiness and Social Reform_,

contributed by the present writer to the “Oxford Fortnightly,” in

November, 1913.]

[Footnote 34: It will not have escaped the careful reader’s notice that

the reason why social reform and new economic programmes generally

have enjoyed so much favour, particularly with the mass of superficial

mankind, is that in the midst of misery, they seem to offer immediate

“practical” remedies. That word “practical” is the passport, or rather

the password, of most of the stupidest beliefs and practices that

succeed in becoming popular. Because deeper remedies, and the deeper

causes of unhappiness, do not occur to the superficial minds of the

masses in all countries, social reform, which is palpably obvious, is

called “practical” and thereby canonised by the crowd.]

[p179] CHAPTER VIII

THE PHYSIOLOGY OF SOCIAL UNREST

“He caused the grass to grow for the cattle, and herb for the service

of man; that he may bring forth food out of the earth; and wine that

maketh glad the heart of man ..... and bread which strengtheneth

man’s heart.”

Psalms, 104, 14, 15.

One day, perhaps, an enlightened generation of historians will arise,

who will regard it as their mission to inform mankind concerning the

repeated instances in the past when cherished romantic illusions

alone--quite apart from economic conditions, the vagaries of monarchs,

or the viciousness of laws--have led to disastrous upheavals, both

national and universal, in the life of the race. History has not been

studied sufficiently from the standpoint of ideology. The tyranny of

the individual, whether monarch, statesman or rebel, still remains

the obsession of our writers of national annals. We have yet to see a

historical work in which the tyranny of an idea, of a principle, and

particularly of an illusion, is traced with meticulous care throughout

its manifold ramifications; and in which the national, or universal

hero, be he soldier, politician or insurrectionist, is depicted

realistically merely as the victim of that tyranny.

Such history would fail in its principal object if it were not

understood to teach, among other things, the useful lesson that words

and the ideas they embody, whether [p180] false or true, can become

tyrants far more dangerous and heartless than any human despot has ever

been, and if it did not sufficiently emphasise the fact that, a false

idea that has been made a universal possession, and the representative

term of which has become a household word, is frequently a scourge more

terrible than any plague that has ever yet decimated the species.

A child will travel some distance and wear itself out in overcoming any

number of obstacles, if it be started off in pursuit of some alluring

object by someone whose word its experience has not yet taught it to

doubt. The alluring object may be entirely mythical--no matter! Granted

that the object has been made to appear sufficiently desirable, the

child will pursue its quest, sometimes with heroic perseverance. But

is there anyone prepared to maintain that the full-grown adult would

behave any differently under the influence of similar inducements?

Allowing for the difference between the minds of children and of

adults, and postulating for the adult an object which, though quite as

chimerical as that chosen for the child, is yet of a kind calculated to

fire his imagination, does anyone really question whether the adult’s

pursuit of it would be fully as eager and tenacious as that of the

child?

Consider, for instance, the time-honoured method of obtaining votaries

and adherents for any anti-social scheme. Certain states of mind or

body are first posited by the agitators, or would-be reformers, as

highly desirable; they are then shown to be unrealisable in the social

scheme which it is [p181] proposed to destroy; and finally humanity

is told that by destroying the social scheme already existing, those

desirable states of mind or body will be procured and enjoyed. These

hypothetical states of mind or body which are unrealisable in the

social scheme selected for destruction may be entirely fantastic and

unrealisable anywhere or how, but this objection the agitators do

not trouble to discuss; all they say is: “Here we hold up before you

certain desirable states of mind or body” (call them, if you will,

“etherealness” and “imponderability,”--qualities that would enable

those possessing them to overcome gravitation and all its concomittant

inconveniences) “these desirable states of mind or body can be obtained

only by breaking up certain traditions. Break up these traditions, and

you will possess them.”

It will be seen at once that the examples chosen, “etherealness” and

“imponderability,” are sufficiently extravagant to strike even the

meanest intelligence as being absurd, and an anti-social agitator

depending upon such desiderata alone would stand but a poor chance of

gaining followers. Substitute the words representing these vaporous

qualities, however, by another word which, though representing a

quality equally illusory, nevertheless does not strike the average man

immediately as being unrealisable, and the insidious operation of false

desiderata straightway becomes evident.

Most honest political thinkers have realised by now, for instance,

how visionary and unreal is the accepted notion of the reign of

“Justice”--not the justice that is administered [p182] in our Courts

of Law, or which we strive to exercise in daily life, but the

_justice immanente_ of Gambetta, already discussed, in which natural

inequalities and their accompanying disabilities and inconveniences

will be for ever removed or neutralised. But the glaring impossibility

of this desideratum, and the consequent meaninglessness of the word

used to designate it, does not seem to hinder millions from declaring

themselves ready to fight and to lose their blood and their lives in

trying to effect its realisation. And the same may be said of the ideas

embodied in the words “Liberty,” “Equality,” “Fraternity,” etc.

Given sufficient ingenuity in the agitator, therefore, it may be taken

for granted that the grand method of fomenting social upheavals is:

(1) to postulate a state of mind or body that is impossible in the

society which it is intended to destroy--the fact that the particular

mental or bodily state would be impossible in any society is either

judiciously concealed, or else not known to the agitator; (2) to

make the name for that particular state of mind or body a household

word representing a universal desideratum; and (3) to exploit any

existing disaffection, from whatever cause, in order to add momentum

to the general desire to see this hypothetical state of mind or body

realised by fair means or foul. In this way it is possible to make

millions destroy opposing millions, and violence outrival violence,

without anyone becoming aware, until too late, of the futility of the

conflict and of the criminality of the hoax. Aye, in the exhaustion and

confusion that [p183] follow, people are necessarily so busy overcoming

the multifarious difficulties that the struggle has created, that

frequently they have not even the time, much less the composure, to

ask themselves whether they have really obtained that for which they

destroyed their fellows, their own homes, and their civilisation. It is

in this way that false ideas often escape condemnation and exposure.

The tyranny of words and the ideas they represent, whether sound or

unsound, is therefore obvious enough; and, in the history of peoples it

is the principal tyranny of all. Beside it the tyranny of individual

monarchs is mere child’s play, and the deeds of a national hero only

stage effect. Where the ideas have been false, however, where the

desiderata striven and struggled for have been wholly chimerical, this

tyranny stands for the most prodigious romanticism of human life,--a

romanticism which, like all romanticism, has to be paid for very

heavily, and the price of which is frequently the peace, happiness and

order of centuries.

Now the extreme danger of the existing ideology of Europe and America

is that it is full to bursting with romanticism precisely of this kind,

and that in its catalogue of chimerical hopes, objects, and desiderata,

there is also many a belief upon which it is impossible to base a sound

code of conduct.

The romanticism of the ideology of Western Civilisation can be seen

in no feature of modern life more plainly than in the manner in which

modern man approaches the problems of his Age. The simple, the obvious,

[p184] the elementary solution, the solution nearest to hand, is never

the first to be tried; frequently it is not even selected. Western

Society believes in machinery in every form, it therefore approaches

even its problems mechanically--that is to say, with instruments

which, far from being primitive or human, are frequently so thoroughly

unfitted to deal with the social wants and ailments of the time (all

essentially primitive and human in their nature) that they actually

aggravate and complicate these ailments and wants.

Much of this superficiality in statesmanship is due, of course, not so

much to the prodigious romanticism of the Age, as to the mediocrity

of those whom democratic representation and Parliamentary methods

bring to the fore. A majority must consist of mediocre people, and

mediocre people cannot exercise judgment except in a mediocre way.

The person selected by mediocrities to represent them must therefore

be a man capable of appealing to such people, that is to say, a

creature entirely devoid of genius either for ruling or for any other

function. As a matter of fact, all he need possess is a third-rate

actor’s gift for haranguing his electors about matters they can easily

grasp, in language calculated to stimulate their emotions, and he

must be guaranteed to hold or to express no original or exceptionally

intelligent views.

As an instance of this mediocrity both of insight and initiative,

observe the attitude of Western Governments to the phenomenon known

as Social Unrest. It is either one of complete mystification, or else

economic [p185] remedies alone are thought of and applied.[35] With

the example of Bolshevik Russia before them, Western Governments have

doubtless learnt this easy lesson, that a people who have enough to

eat are immune against revolutionary doctrine, and therefore that all

questions of grave domestic disorder are primarily physical. It might

be imagined, however, that this first step in wisdom would have led

them still further afield, and even directed their attention to some of

its less obvious consequences. For, if Bolshevik Russia teaches that

a well-fed proletariat does not rise in revolt, it also proves, by

implication, that the condition of the human body is an all-important

factor to be reckoned with in domestic troubles. _The unit in a

population manifesting signs of acute unrest may therefore be examined

to some purpose with a view to ascertaining his physical condition._

One of the most stubborn beliefs constituting the prodigious

romanticism of modern times, is, however, a fatal obstacle in the road

leading to this simple discovery; and this belief is that the physical

condition of a man can be independent of his attitude of mind, and

_vice versâ_. Apart from the one exception to this modern dogma, which

has recently been learnt from Russia, and which is to the effect that

starvation foments revolt, the modern mind is more or less convinced

that the physical condition of a population is not a very important

factor in determining their political opinions.

True enough, when we hear anyone make a false claim, or pronounce a

harebrained statement, we may ask in jest, “Is he well?”; but not one

of us latter-day Europeans, or any creature like us, is convinced that

the question is relevant. Since we do not approach with suspicion any

specimen of our literature, our poetry, our art, or our philosophy

which hails from dyspeptics, cripples, dypsomaniacs, or drug-maniacs,

how could we regard such a question as relevant? The absurd levity

with which we deal with the physical side of our national life is only

one proof of this. It required a great war to prove to our emotional

and opportunist Prime Minister, Mr. Lloyd George, that the physical

condition of the nation was indeed “appalling,” and it was only the

work of the tribunals that brought home to him the extent of our

national ill-health.[36] It may be presumed, therefore, that had not

the Great War made the medical examination of our younger men necessary

and imperative, our popular Premier would still be in ignorance

concerning this all-important question.

Apart from actual starvation, therefore, no physical condition is

regarded by modern man as an important factor in the etiology of a

people’s mental attitude.

And yet we have in the acute social unrest of England alone, a curious

phenomenon, sufficiently hard to explain merely on economic lines. For

it is not confined to people who are underfed or who do not know where

to-morrow’s loaf is coming from. It is not even rooted in them. We

find it manifesting itself principally among well-paid and perfectly

comfortable artisans and skilled workmen--nay, it actually originates

and draws its greatest strength from these elements in the population.

Here, then, is a problem which no amount of material improvement in

living conditions would appear to hold out any promise of solving. And

yet everyone believes--aye, even the restless proletarians themselves

are prepared to swear--that the trouble is chiefly economic; while some

of the capitalist class might suggest, in addition to economic causes,

Bolshevist, German or Socialistic propaganda or gold.

In a previous chapter the present writer has hinted at a number of

causes, not altogether obvious, which may lie at the bottom of modern

proletarian unrest; he now wishes to discuss that which he regards as

one of the principal and most fundamental causes; and that he suggests

straightway is _ill-health and debility_.

A jaundiced view of life, a pessimistic outlook, and a general mood of

dissatisfaction with all things, may possibly in one or two enlightened

and profound thinkers, have a purely intellectual basis. In such men it

may be the outcome of a dispassionate and laborious survey of modern

conditions and modern aims, and constitute a considered judgment based

upon the available data. When, however, it characterises a multitude,

particularly a multitude consisting largely of people who never in any

circumstances form anything but an emotional opinion on any matter, it

is simply wanton prejudice [p188] and romanticism not to suspect and

not to presuppose a partly physiological cause for the condition.

The fact that this cause is nowhere suspected, either by journalists,

statesmen, Members of Parliament, or the working men of England

themselves, does not make its operation any the less conspicuous; but

it does show with what stubborn tenacity a false belief--a romantic

belief particularly--clings to the minds of a people when once it has

been sedulously inculcated upon them. For the fact that physiological

causes are operating in the acute social unrest now prevailing in

England alone, can be ascertained in two minutes by any one who wishes

to examine this unrest at close quarters in the person of any workman

representing it.

Any such investigator will discover very speedily that although the

masses are probably adequately provided with food, as regards bulk,

they are suffering from various forms of slight but sufficiently

disturbing debility, owing to the two following causes:--

(_a_) The inferiority of a good deal of the food and drink they

consume;

(_b_) Their gross ignorance regarding the proper way of preparing it.

Independent evidence pointing to the conclusion that food is at the

bottom of the physiological causes of unrest, apart from an examination

of that food itself, may be gathered from the appalling statistics of

health recently published by the Ministry of National Service. The

temptation in reading this report is to conclude that [p189] unhealthy

urban and industrial conditions are the cause of the general debility,

of which only the acute cases are noticed in the report. But the

compilers of the document itself carefully warn the reader against

this facile explanation of the trouble, and call attention to the fact

that ill-health is also very great in rural districts. Now, short of

a plague, an epidemic, or a condition of universal degeneration, the

only factor that can possibly account for ill-health and debility being

general both in urban and rural centres, is either food or climate,

either of which is common to both kinds of population. Dismissing

climate as having been a more or less constant factor, we are therefore

left with food.

(_a_) Now it is the present writer’s conviction that much of the

present debility of the masses, or at least enough of it to account for

some discontent and disaffection, is to be ascribed to the inferiority

of the foodstuffs they consume from their earliest infancy to the very

end of their days.

In all cases where mothers cannot nurse their children, the trouble

begins at the very dawn of life, and starts by disordering a system

which is doomed to continuous disturbances until it can find ultimate

release only in death. The Baby Welfare Centres recently established

are all doing their utmost, it is true, to combat this evil, but they

have to fight not merely against the ignorance of parents and of

local doctors, but above all against the criminal unscrupulousness

of commercial food proprietors. Everywhere advertisements are to be

read concerning foods of which it is claimed [p190] that they are

an adequate substitute for mother’s milk, and there is no law, no

regulation, and no official system of instruction, to prevent ignorant

mothers from being taken in by these means of publicity.

The organisations, small and inadequate as they are, which are

attempting to fight this evil, are entirely the result of private

enterprise. The Government of the country does nothing to secure

infants against the double and pernicious operation of these two first

enemies of life, Ignorance and its Commercial Exploitation. As growing

children and adults, these infants continue under the debilitating

influences of their earliest days by being fed on every kind of

adulterated food, from impure bread to faked jam; and even when they

have had the good fortune to have been reared at the breast, their

regimen of inferior food in later life quickly undermines the solid

basis of their constitutions.

_It is impossible without some expert knowledge or advice to obtain for

love or money a pure loaf of bread in many parts of England to-day._

The fat that is eaten with that bread, and which together with the

bread forms a most important part of the food of working-class

children, _when it consists of vegetable margarine, is almost useless

to the body_.

The various tinned fruits and meats (except perhaps tomatoes) which

are also much favoured among working-class women, owing to the ease

with which they can be prepared for table, also constitute inferior

food, owing to the method by which they are canned. [p191]

The jams, far from containing pure fruit, frequently contain no fruit

at all.

Add to this, that the liquor--tea--which is chiefly drunk with these

inferior foods, is in every way deleterious, being neither a food,

nor a tonic, nor even an innocuous means of quenching thirst; and

debility, far from being an exceptional occurrence, would seem almost

an inevitable static condition of our masses.

(_b_) But what commercial adulteration of food, and the commercial

production of inferior food, may sometimes fail to accomplish, the

ignorance of the working-class housewife usually manages to consummate

in the secret privacy of her kitchen.

There every imaginable error is perpetrated, even in dealing with

first-class foods, such as butcher’s meat and fresh vegetables; and the

resulting deteriorated compounds only confirm, in the individual child

or adult, a condition which by the adulteration of other foodstuffs we

are doing our utmost to establish.

The ignorance among the female population of England, both rich and

poor, regarding the _time_ during which meat or vegetables, or milk,

or fruit, or fats, can safely be allowed to boil, or to stew, or to

simmer, without losing every particle of goodness they ever possessed,

is frankly astonishing. One wonders how an occupation such as cooking

could possibly have remained by tradition in the hands of a particular

sex for generations, without more knowledge, more wisdom--even more

rule-of-thumb wisdom--having collected around it, than has collected

around the domestic [p192] culinary practices of the British

housewife.[37]

Not only is she ignorant of the right thing; she is deeply, firmly,

self-righteously and aggressively convinced of the wrong. It is

a compliment, an act of grace, to give your husband, your eldest

daughter, or your visitor “a nice, strong cup of tea.” Mutton is nicest

when it has been boiled to shreds in an effort to attain tenderness.

Curries are stimulating even with twice or thrice cooked meat as their

most substantial ingredient. Cabbages and, in fact, all greens, should

never be eaten _raw_ (even the foolish local practitioner adds his mite

of wisdom to the housewife’s in pronouncing this practice injurious to

the digestion), though this is really the only form in which they are

useful and palatable to the human organism; they must be boiled and

boiled in water softened with soda, until the obnoxious steam produced

by the process infects the whole house, and ultimately whole streets

and neighbourhoods.

Repletion being the principal object aimed at, the means of effecting

it are not considered too nicely, and adequate quantities are provided,

which, however, can only gravely disorganise and disturb the alimentary

canal of all those who cloy their appetites by means of them.

In adult life, in addition to strong tea, there also enters the

further disturbing influence of impure beer or spirits; so that it is

only with the most extreme good luck that any man, woman or youth in

the working-classes, can maintain sufficient health to remain at their

daily occupations, not to mention resist and throw off disease, enjoy

life and keep good spirits.

No amount of tinkering at working-class children’s teeth, or of careful

scientific medical treatment, can ultimately cope with the steady

deterioration, which year in and year out is being caused by the

incessant consumption of inferior or badly prepared food in poor homes;

and yet it is in the highest degree romantic to suppose that by leaving

this department of life alone, it will necessarily right itself.[38]

In fact, no belief in the whole ideology of “Democracy” is more

pernicious and more crassly stupid than the belief that errors and

false practices must in the end right themselves. The natural indolence

of mankind in the mass very soon makes a supposed principle of this

kind a popular and highly appreciated stand-by in the face of difficult

problems, but it does not make it true. With the history of previous

civilisations and races before us--civilisations and races which we

are now convinced pursued error and false practices with the heartiest

and most cheerful conviction to their ultimate doom--with the evidence

of biology to hand, which shows us myriads of creatures, all the

parasites in fact, having steadily descended from superior and more

highly organised creatures, merely through having followed the line of

least resistance, it is difficult to account for the prevalence of this

utterly stupid notion that evils and errors tend to right themselves.

For of this we can feel quite certain, that all those peoples and races

who do in fact believe, and act on the belief, that their errors will

right themselves, will suffer not only extinction in their culture and

civilisation, but also ultimate evanescence in themselves.

Thus, as we have seen, quite apart from the inferiority of the raw

material she has to deal with, the working-class woman no longer knows

the simplest rule of sound culinary science, and whatever wisdom might

still have survived by pure tradition in the kitchens of the poor,

has been satisfactorily suppressed by the innovations of commerce and

industry.

To deny that the existing food conditions have any bearing upon the

spirit and therefore the temper and the outlook of the nation, is to

support the doctrine that a man’s physical condition can be independent

of his attitude of mind.

Nobody would claim that the peculiar virulence of modern Social Unrest

is entirely to be accounted for by the debility of the masses, or that

this debility is entirely due to faulty nourishment; but, on the other

hand, it would be obviously absurd to attempt to put an end to Social

Unrest without giving very serious attention to the people’s debility,

or without examining one of its chief contributory causes, which is

bad food. And any legislative measure, or economic readjustment or

reform which [p195] is brought about without some drastic provisions

calculated to meet this important factor in the trouble, is bound to

end in failure.

The temperance movement is nothing more than a helpless and

non-statesmanlike solution on Puritan lines of the liquor side of the

food question. What is required is obviously not the abolition of

fermented liquor, for that would be tantamount to depriving the people

of a necessary foodstuff,[39] but such reforms in the liquor trade as

will secure pure drinks to the masses of the nation.

It is the present writer’s conviction that if the Governments of Europe

could secure absolutely pure bread and pure fermented drinks to their

various peoples, the gravity of social unrest would immediately be

relieved. Granted that pure bread and pure fermented liquor would only

constitute a beginning (for there are numbers of other foodstuffs that

are adulterated), nevertheless, it would be a good beginning; for bread

is the principal food of the working classes, and a sound, healthy

beverage added to it would go a long way towards rehabilitating their

constitutions.

The fermented liquor recommended by the present writer would be the

old English ale of pre-Puritan days, the ale which besides being free

from the pernicious properties of hops, was made from pure _unboiled_

malt. The vice of modern beer does not consist only in the fact that

it contains properties that are injurious to the human body, such as

hops or the many harmful substitutes that are used instead of hops,

and other ingredients[40]; but chiefly in the fact that it is prepared

from boiled wort, that is to say, wort from which heat has removed all

possible trace of the necessary _vitamines_ so valuable to health. The

brewers’ objection to a re-introduction of the old ale of pre-Puritan

England will of course be this, that it _will not keep_. But what does

that matter? There are hundreds of foodstuffs that won’t keep. Does

that justify our removing all their most vital properties in order to

make them keep? Milk will not keep. Does that prevent it from being

purveyed retail to every householder in England every day? The immense

value of the old ale of England as a food and health-giving beverage

ought alone to ensure its supersession over the utterly worthless

“beer” that is universal at the present day[41]; and the fact that in

combination with pure bread, it would restore to modern people the

staple articles of diet of our mighty peasants of the Poictiers and

Agincourt period, should be enough to recommend it.

Very soon after the legal restoration of these two precious foods

to the masses, the legislation could be extended to include other

foodstuffs, and also to provide in the elementary schools for some

kind of instruction concerning the value and sound preparation of the

principal foods. And then, it is the present writer’s firm belief,

Governments would find themselves so appreciably relieved of “social

reform” problems, and of the incessant demand for measures required

to redress some grievances among the labouring classes, that they

might find more time to attend to questions of development and

reconstruction, all of which remain adjourned and neglected from one

generation to the next.

But, for this “physiology” of Social Unrest to be understood, and for

its problems to be tackled, the physique of our race will require to be

regarded very much more seriously than it is at present, and prejudices

will have to be overcome which are as deep-rooted as they are old.

There are very few of us to-day who do not cling fanatically to that

romantic ideology according to which the body of man, together with its

condition, seems out of all proportion less important than his mind and

his soul. There are few of us to-day who are sufficiently primitive,

sufficiently instinctive, to feel the same horror at the sight of

sickness in a human being as we feel at the sight of sickness in an

animal. Our bias, therefore, is all against tracing what appears to be

only a matter of discontent, like Social Unrest, partly to a bodily

cause. But it is precisely for a false belief of this kind that mankind

always has paid, and always will pay, most dearly; for even in the

uprooting of it, apart from the harm it does, much pain and frequently

much sorrow is incurred. It [p198] behoves us, therefore, to enquire

whether we do not now know too much, whether we are not now suffering

too much, any longer to refuse to explore any avenue of reform along

which it can be shown with some plausibility that we may find some

solution of our troubles; and even if, in order to take this step, we

have to question a very much cherished ideology, we may, after all,

find ourselves none the poorer for having made this daring venture, if

in the end we find that ideology to have been false.

At all events, the effort partially to solve the problem of

Social Unrest on the lines suggested in this chapter cannot in any

circumstances prove wholly fruitless; for while everybody may not

agree that food conditions in England are alarmingly bad, none it may

be presumed will question the expediency of improving them, even if

this be attempted simply with the object of perfecting and developing

the race. All those, however, who realise the deep and constant

relationship between bodily conditions and mental outlook, and who are

moreover aware of the immense disadvantages to which modern industrial

conditions, quite apart from the inherited debility of their past,

expose the masses of every Western people, must welcome any reform

which promises to remove even one among the multitude of adverse

circumstances conspiring to impoverish and to undermine the vitality

of modern nations, and hail with some satisfaction a solution, which,

while being practical, yet involves no drastic upheaval of our social

organisation.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 35: The possible spiritual causes of Social Unrest will be

found discussed in Chapter VII.]

[Footnote 36: See his speech at Manchester on Sept. 12th, 1918.]

[Footnote 37: In trying to account for this state of affairs, however,

it should not be forgotten that the entrance of women into industry,

among the proletariat, and feminism in the wealthier classes, have both

accomplished a good deal in the matter of breaking valuable domestic

traditions among women.]

[Footnote 38: For a demonstration of the damage done to food by

unskilful cooking, see the present writer’s “Man’s Descent from the

Gods” (Heinemann, 1921).]

[Footnote 39: For proofs in support of this statement, see the present

writer’s work already referred to on p. 193.]

[Footnote 40: By the Free Mash Tun Act of 1880 the regulations for

charging the duty were so framed as to leave the brewer practically

unrestricted as to the description of malt, or corn, or sugar, or

other description of saccharine substitutes which he might use in the

manufacturing and colouring of beer.]

[Footnote 41: For a confirmation of this statement, see p. 61 of the

Medical Research Committee’s Report on Accessory Food Factors. For a

more elaborate discussion upon the whole subject of old English Ale,

see the present writer’s _Defence of Aristocracy_, Chapter V.]

[p199] CHAPTER IX

THE GREAT ALTERNATIVE TO SOCIAL REFORM

“Ay, if dynamite and revolver leave you courage to be wise:

When was age so crammed with menace? Madness? Written, spoken lies?”

Tennyson--(_Locksley Hall, Sixty Years After._)

It has been man’s besetting sin, almost throughout history, to trace

whatever evils might befall him, rather to his institutions, his social

systems and his conditions, than to himself and his fellows. Many a

precious scheme of life, many a sound system, has been broken up and

abandoned, not because of its inherent badness, or of the incorrigible

vices of its design, but owing to the fact that those men who attempted

to carry it on in its last days, were neither as able nor as vigorously

endowed as those who inaugurated it and laid its foundations.

Institutions may thus outlive the quality of men, although the reverse

of this proposition, that men outlive the quality of institutions, is

always taken for granted.

If we saw a man of our acquaintance forsake house after house, however

perfectly designed and beautifully appointed; if we saw him wander

from town to town, from country to country, and even from continent to

continent, always leaving the best for something else and yet never

feeling at ease; furthermore, if we noticed that he dropped friend

after friend, relative after relative, all [p200] in bitter enmity

and anger, we might be excused if we felt tempted to suspect that his

repeated changes and upheavals were not the fault either of his houses,

his various adopted towns or countries, or his friends and relatives,

but were due to some obscure infirmity in the man himself, some hidden

though serious hepatic affection, which rendered him radically unfit to

be happy or contented anywhere.

And we should arrive at this conclusion, not necessarily out of any

feeling of bitterness or hostility towards him personally, but rather

because we should consider it irrational, in the face of such chronic

restlessness and irascibility, to ascribe all the blame consistently

and repeatedly to his conditions, and not occasionally to the man

himself.

Now it is a most remarkable thing that in the contemplation of similar

repeated changes in the life of a nation or a people, the average

observer is not nearly so prone to be guided by the highest standards

of rational thinking. On the contrary, as often as changes take place,

he is prepared to ascribe the necessity for the change, not to the

inferiority of the men who ushered it in, but always to the inferiority

of the institutions or systems that were superseded. The unsupported

prejudice involved in the idea of “Progress” compels him, as it were,

to assume that, since all changes must be for the better, any change

that has occurred in our social system or our institutions in the

past must of necessity imply a just condemnation of the systems or

institutions that formerly existed.

Never does the average observer dream of suspecting that the proposed

change of a system or of an institution may be the surest [p201]

possible proof of the inferiority of the men who are trying to carry it

on. Inferiority to what?--Inferiority to the men who originally founded

the system or institution.

Now the prevalence of this curious bias ought to make everyone

profoundly suspicious of all those who clamour for radical alterations

in our established systems and institutions. In any case it ought to

make every thinking man demur before he acquiesces too readily in the

conclusion that it is our institutions and systems that are wrong, and

not man himself.

For, suppose that the men who declare things are wrong, merely confess

their own inferiority by this declaration, how can their recommendation

regarding a new order of society be accepted with confidence? How can

anyone hope that their schemes can possibly be better than those they

have shown themselves incapable of continuing?

At all moments, then, when there is much loud talking about the

transformation of society and the modification or overthrow of her

institutions, the wise reformer, the cautious innovator, will turn his

scrutiny upon man himself, and endeavour to find out first what reforms

and improvements must take place in him, before any scheme of society

whatsoever, no matter how perfect, can hope to be a success.

And it is in this direction that the present writer hopes that

research and inquiry will be prosecuted in the immediate future. The

examination of institutions and systems is not nearly as important at

the present juncture as the examination of modern man himself, and

if this examination be conducted [p202] on the principle _that it is

possible for institutions to outlive the quality of man_, certain

valuable and extremely fruitful discoveries cannot fail to be made.

For instance, in a previous chapter it was pointed out that a mood of

stubborn dejection had fallen upon civilised man, and it was suggested

that this was due to the complete collapse of the ideals, beliefs, and

principles, by which he had allowed himself to be inspired and led

for many generations. Now if this analysis be correct, it might be

profitable to inquire into the origin and nature of ideals, beliefs and

principles; and if, as the present writer does not doubt, it were found

that man’s ideals, beliefs, and guiding principles are always created

for him by the great examples of his species, it might be asked why the

human species has ceased from producing great examples. What has come

over man that he should have suffered a collapse of his leading ideals,

beliefs and principles, and yet have no one to give him others in their

place? Has the species suffered a general decline? Has it sent forth

its highest shoots, and is it now exhausted?

And, if these questions seemed to be sufficiently solemn and important

to be pursued with energy and resolution, the causes of racial

exhaustion might possibly become the subject of special investigation.

A provisional question mark might be set against every modern ideal

and value, in order to determine whether perhaps it might not be

responsible for the social exhaustion of civilised man.

So far from assuming that all our institutional changes have

necessarily been progressive, [p203] the value to the race of every

more or less recent innovation might be tested and proved.

For instance, the nature of “democracy” might be treated critically.

It might be questioned whether there is not in all democratic order

a tendency to reduce and truncate the ultimate gamut of human

capabilities. While population has multiplied as never before, under

the democratic régime, it might be questioned, perhaps with some

profit, whether any section of this increasing mass of humanity, or

any individual of that section, has attained to that old magnitude, in

volition, intellect and health, which human nature once regarded as

easily within the compass of its powers. And if the investigation of

this question seemed ultimately to point to a negative reply, it might

then become necessary to weigh the alleged advantages of democratic

principles against the consequences to man of this ascertained loss of

greatness and lofty capabilities.

Again, the whole of our accepted notions of charity, humaneness and

compassion, might be subjected to a searching inquiry. Since it is a

certain unknown but suspected infirmity of man that may be the cause

of his complete dissatisfaction with his institutions and systems,

nothing, however sacred, should be left unscrutinised, untested. It

might be asked whether we have not been wrong all the time to allow our

second-rate, third-rate, fourth-rate, and x-rate fellow-creatures to

multiply and to live in our midst unbranded. In view of the alarming

reports on the nation’s health recently published by the Government; in

view of the fact that a [p204] British Prime Minister, and no society

crank or faddist, has found it necessary to warn us that an “A1 nation

cannot be built up out of C3 men”; in view, moreover, of the immense

burden that the nation shoulders annually for the maintenance of

lunatics, incurables, cripples, and other congenital degenerates, it

might be asked, almost with trepidation, whether the healthy sections

of the nation are even now plentiful enough and vigorous enough to be

saved and secured from further infection.

Since we have been brought to this pass by the most sacred ideals and

principles of the past, these ideals and principles would require to be

reverently taken up and examined.

Again with regard to the idea of non-selective human

multiplication,--apart from any suspicion it may have incurred of

increasing disease or degeneration,--it might reasonably be questioned

whether any species of animal could for long allow itself the liberties

that we have allowed ourselves, in fostering undesirable examples of

our kind and in scientifically persuading even the half-reluctant to

live, without ultimately having to pay for it very severely indeed.

What breed of sheep, what breed of horses, what breed of common

barn-fowl, could have been abandoned to the promiscuous mating alone

(not to mention other errors) to which modern man has long been

abandoned, without suffering ultimate degeneration?

A very fruitful method of inquiry would consist in investigating to

what extent modern society may have failed as an organism through

pursuing too ardently survival values alone, uncontrolled by æsthetic

survival [p205] values. In plain English, has modern man pursued

survival at all costs, even at the cost of caring _how_ he survived,

or what manner of man he was when he did survive? The check of the

æsthetic survival values might have prevented many a step, which though

it insured the survival of abundant numbers, yet removed some grace,

some desirable quality, from the form or mind of man.[42]

Biologists tell us that organisms frequently survive in the animal

kingdom at the cost of qualities, which, from the human standpoint

may seem eminently desirable. Thus the tape-worm is said to be the

descendant of a race that once led a nobler and more independent

existence. Survival is thus frequently purchased at too heavy a cost.

Is it possible that by the observance of survival values alone,

unchecked by æsthetic values, man has lost, or is rapidly losing,

valuable qualities that once made a higher and more lasting kind of

civilisation possible?

The daily lives, the food and the drink of the whole population,

particularly its rural elements, might be advantageously criticised

from the standpoint of their body-building and health-giving qualities;

also from the standpoint of their ultimate influence in moulding the

mind and tempering the heart of the people. After many centuries of

overemphasis of the soul’s importance, attention might be bestowed with

pre-Puritan fervour upon the body and its needs.

In these various ways might the scrutiny of earnest and profound

reformers be profitably concentrated upon the most probable cause

of the apparent decay and disease of modern institutions and

systems,--that is to say, upon man himself, and upon the noble and

stirring task of making him once more whole, if it is indeed his

infirmity from which civilisation is suffering. In this direction alone

is there any hope; in this direction alone is there any practical

chance of achieving lasting success.

The immense difficulties that the problem of man himself immediately

presents, need not deter even the most faint-hearted from embarking

upon the enterprise; for it is surely possibly even for the most

craven to be induced to choose between two alternatives. And what is

the alternative to the measures here proposed?--To continue tinkering

at mankind’s institutions and systems, as we have been doing for

the last three hundred years? To continue tampering with society’s

laws and customs instead of with her units? These methods may sound

more simple and more commensurate with the powers of blundering and

childish fingers, but is the simpler, the easier method, always to be

the more _practical_, merely because it is simple and easy, and quite

irrespective of its ultimate effectiveness? Is “practical” synonymous

with elementary or infantile? Is a procedure “practical” because it

appeals immediately and vividly to a room full of babies?

Precisely because the true causes of modern anarchy, disaffection and

disunion, probably lie much deeper beneath the surface than established

social and economic conditions, there is a danger that the latter

will [p207] be seized upon and shattered, in the endeavour to achieve

reform. The blindest can apprehend their existence, and to the blind,

holding is seeing.

But, if the infirmity is man’s, how can it be “practical” to reform

his institutions and systems? You might as well begin rebuilding your

palaces because your monarchs have failed you.

Nor can it be argued with any cogency, at this time of day, either

that the materials are not to hand for pursuing the inquiries outlined

above, or that the prescriptions for a recovery of man’s lost quality

have not been foreshadowed if not definitely specified. Of modern and

ancient thinkers there have been enough to show, at least in broad

outline, the methods that should be adopted for almost any contingency.

Nobody would deny that the undertaking bristles with immense

difficulties, but even if the science that will help us to accomplish

it had to be created _pari passu_ with our attempts at overcoming these

difficulties it would still be worth while, since it is quite possible

that it is the only great alternative.

So much for _man_ as the suspected primary cause of the malady of

modern civilisation.

If now we turn to other details (other than material and economic

conditions of course) in the fabric of modern life, which would strike

even the most myopic as requiring instant correction, they spring in

such profusion before our eyes, that it would be impossible in the

compass of this small and elementary treatise, to refer to any except

the most salient.

One of the most salient is the absurd [p208] attempt that society

has made during the last, or commercial and industrial era, in modern

Europe, to build a harmonious and united community upon the principle

of _cleavage_. Doomed to failure from the start, as it was, this vice

of cleavage, that is at the root of the failure of modern society,

has not yet,--no, not even at this late hour,--been recognised and

condemned by all.

Let it be thoroughly understood what is here meant by the principle of

cleavage. Cleavage is not to be confused with classification. You may

subject your children or your parents to classification, while they are

all hanging affectionately on each other’s necks; but if you group them

by cleavage, the idea “asunder,” is bound to follow. The classification

of a population, therefore, does not necessarily leave any clefts or

chasms between the classes. If, however, you proceed by dividing up

your population on the principle of cleavage, definite clefts or chasms

between the groups are inevitable; and this is the principle upon which

the commercial and industrial Age has worked.

As the result either of the ridiculous pomposity of those who have

acquired riches by commerce or industry, or else of the questionable

title to superiority that wealth alone confers, a curious phenomenon

began to be noticeable in England during the course of the latter half

of the 17th century,--and that was a certain artificial and asinine

haughtiness among the well-to-do, which made them unable to unbend in

the presence of those whose purses were less portentously swollen. It

is suggested that this became noticeable in the latter half of the

17th [p209] century; but, truth to tell, all the causes of it were in

existence in the middle of the previous century as the result of Henry

VIII.’s vulgar and disastrous reign. Most authorities would, however,

admit that the phenomenon, as a marked innovation, became noticeable

only in the 17th century.

Theretofore, wealth and good breeding, wealth and good family, wealth

and sound instinct, wealth and good manners, had, with but few and

notorious exceptions, been the only kinds of wealth known.

Suddenly, however, with the capitalistic exploitation of the land, the

nation’s mineral resources, and her people, a new kind of wealth came

into existence, wealth utterly unconnected with anything except the

most solemn and most self-complacent vulgarity in those who possessed

it.

These people, unable to rely upon those natural distinctions that

everybody recognises at once, which compel the inferior or the fool

instinctively to refrain from importunacies, and restrain the too

familiar hand, were forced to adopt a new method of holding their

brethren, so like themselves in all but brass, satisfactorily aloof.

How did they accomplish this? Since they had no natural dignity no

innate distinction, which might have allowed them to befriend the poor

with impunity, without any fear that is to say, of “losing caste”;

since they could not be classified apart from their poorer fellows

except by means of the ticket “wealth”; they invented barriers and

gulfs which were designed to be as wide and insuperable as their fear

of being taken for their poorer fellows was great. Being unable to rely

[p210] upon classification, they proceeded by means of cleavage.

This foolish and foolhardy expedient on the part of the vulgar rich,

which has survived to this day, has led to the absurd anomaly of a

society,--a community if you please,--in which a whole complicated

series of stratified groups, never meet, never in any circumstances

communicate with one another, except with the most ludicrous grimaces,

compressed lips, whispers, frowns, embarrassment, fear, contempt, and

hatred.

The wonder is, not that society constituted on these lines is now

falling to pieces; the miracle is that it should have lasted so long.

Think of it! Think of the advantage of friendly and free communication!

Think of how much is gained, even among equals, by constant and

unrestrained intercourse! Reckon the inestimable profit that a man

of minor attainments can derive from free and easy association with

his superior, and _vice versâ_. And then ponder the thousands of

unbreakable links that such relationships would have forged between the

classes in every village, town, city, country and province throughout

the Empire!

When is it that a man ceases to believe in natural distinctions

between men? When is it he begins to suspect that there is nothing

above him?--Only when, for a very long time, he has been deprived of

any intimate knowledge of superiority, or of any association with

superiority in his own form.

Can we wonder at the absurd decoy cries of modern Europe,--at

the cry for Equality above all? Can we marvel any longer at class

hatred? How does a man best learn [p211] the fundamental law of

natural inequality?--Only by moving out of his circle and finding a

sufficiently friendly welcome when he does so, to be able to learn from

what he sees.

The principle of cleavage instead of classification,--this is one of

the vices for which we have to thank the vulgar rich of the past, and

their kith and kin of the present day. But it is one of the first

brutal stupidities that must be abolished if anything approaching an

orderly and harmonious society is to be established.

Another salient error of modern society, at least in England, has been

the consistent indifference shown by successive Governments towards the

steady encroachment of the huge cities of the nation upon their rural

environs. Like monster cankers these vast urban complexes of England

are allowed to spread north, south, east and west, year in, year out,

as if for all the world, it were an advantage, a boon, in fact the most

unspeakable blessing, that every inch of green pasture land, of golden

cornfield, should be converted as quickly as possible into muddy,

smoky, stuffy and hideous thoroughfares.

If town life were so eminently desirable, if the kind of man and woman

who live and breed amid city and suburban shoddy, were without question

the proudest examples of the nation’s blood; if town occupations, town

temptations, and town pastimes were the healthiest, the most ennobling,

the most productive of useful virtues, we might suspect the various

Governments, that have tolerated the spread of this urban miasma, to

have winked their eye knowingly at what was, [p212] after all, only a

sentimental grievance, a sort of poet’s plaint, an artist’s loss of

picturesque compositions.

But seeing that nowadays one is reduced almost to wandering about hat

in hand begging for _one_,--just one,--redeeming point in favour not

only of town life, town conditions and town charms, but also of one’s

own fellow townsmen themselves; it must strike people as a little odd

that the accredited authorities for generations should have been so

completely lacking in any definite policy concerning this all-important

question.

Is England to become one long ugly street, full of ugly, toothless

people, pretending that their clammy urban passions are something more

exalted than the rut of rats?

You would have thought that a consideration of the food situation

alone, apart from any other aspect of the matter, would have induced

the rulers of the nation, long ago, to adopt some means to encourage

rural, and to discourage urban life; and yet, as if with malice

prepense, all the efforts of past Governments have secretly been made

in the very opposite direction.

One is almost inclined to cavil less at the growth of urban centres and

their unwieldy proportions, than at the absurd lack of policy towards

this question which continues to be shown by the legislature.

If it be a desirable movement, then by all means promote it openly; if,

on the other hand, it can only fill every patriot’s breast with alarm,

then, be sure to frame a definite policy about it, and do so quickly.

The present writer can only see disaster [p213] ahead, if these

large urban centres are allowed to spread any further, and he would

feel inclined to inaugurate immediately, a movement for strictly

circumscribing their area. Concurrently with this drastic move, he

would encourage by all means in his power, the adoption of rural

occupations and homes by the proletariat.

“But what about the increasing population?” cry a hundred voices,--as

if an increasing population were a sort of elemental phenomenon like

the rising tide, or the waxing and waning of the moon, that no man can

help.

The reply to this question brings the author to the last of the

matters of detail with which he proposes to deal, and therefore to his

concluding remarks.

The question of population, like that of the relative desirability

of urban or rural life, is one to which it is madness to maintain an

attitude of indifference or unconcern. The rulers of this country can

as little afford to ignore the consideration of the multiplication of

its inhabitants, as they can afford to ignore the consideration of

the nation’s finances. And the more the State arrogates to itself the

rôle of a beneficent and divine Providence,--that is to say, the more

it interferes with the natural consequences of improvidence in the

matter of bringing forth children, either by helping indigent parents,

or by mitigating the hardships of the unmarried mother, the more it

is entitled to impose and to inflict penalties upon irresponsible and

wanton procreators of children.

If this is true of the healthy and the sound, however, how much

more true ought it to be [p214] of the unhealthy and the degenerate!

Again, in regard to them, if the State takes upon itself to shoulder

the burden of indigent degenerates of all kinds, it is entitled to

impose limits upon their multiplication. He who pays may lay down his

conditions.

And this would remain true, whether the present system were to be

maintained, or whether it were superseded within the next quarter of a

century by Bolshevism or Communism.

Since it is the iron law of population that multiplication follows

any easing of the conditions of the indigent, either by making

earlier marriages a possibility, or by making the consequences of

early marriages tolerable, it follows that all Governments, whether

Capitalistic, Bolshevist, or Communistic, if they undertake to succour

the indigent, whose families exceed their resources, must in the end

impose certain limits upon multiplication. And where they take over the

whole burden as they do in this country, of indigent lunatics and other

degenerates, they have the right to exercise all the means at their

command for preventing degenerates from being born.

Communists and Bolshevists may scout this question, just as dishonest

vote-catching past Governments have done; but let a Labour Government

come permanently into power, let a Bolshevist minority attempt to rule

this country, and it would soon discover, what all creditable thinkers

know already, that the question of population is one about which even

the most benign government _must_ frame some definite policy. Indeed

it would soon discover the fact, which will [p215] perhaps only become

apparent to all in many years to come: that a truly benign policy in

this matter is one which at present would strike all sentimentalists,

and other Utopians as hopelessly ruthless and inhuman.

It is in the procreation of children that a man and woman’s sense of

responsibility first encounters its crucial test. For generations in

this country, men and women’s sense of responsibility in this matter

has been systematically undermined; and, as regards the procreation of

degenerates, of the unhealthy, and of the insane, it might be said that

there is literally no conscience left in modern man concerning this

crime.

It will behove all serious and patriotic governments in the future,

therefore, whether they are capitalistic or Bolshevist, to face

this pressing problem of modern times, and the vandalistic work of

centuries,--the destruction of the English working man and woman’s

sense of responsibility in regard to procreation,--will by hook or by

crook have to be repaired, and a new conscience regarding this matter

created in the breasts of all.

Thus the tasks hinted at in this short chapter are seen to be

stupendous enough, and yet which of them can possibly be accomplished

simply by the wand of the Communist, Bolshevist, or economic social

reformer?

Let no one imagine, however, that because they are beset with the

most serious difficulties, that they are therefore to be discarded as

“unpractical.” We know the extremes of stupidity to which so-called

“practical politics” has led us. Nothing is practical, that in practice

does not achieve [p216] the end desired. And since the mere change of

our institutions and systems cannot even graze the surface of these

deeper causes of unhappiness, it is simply conjuring and buffoonery

to call “practical” only those measures of reform or reconstruction,

which every gallery of schoolboys, every crowd of holiday-makers, can

recognise at a glance as at least “something done.”

The End.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 42: For an exhaustive discussion of survival values as

compared with æsthetic survival values see _Man’s Descent from the

Gods_ (Heinemann) Chapter IX.]

[p217] INDEX

Abstract terms, importance of, 12;

have no uniform meaning to-day, 13, 14, 19;

to teach meaning of, leads to instruction in true ideas, 149.

Advertisement, unscrupulous, of commercial foods, 188, 189.

Æsthetic values disregarded to-day, 205.

Agitators, their unscrupulous use of words, 181, 182.

Ale, old English, the value of, 195, 196;

the brewers’ objection to, 196.

Amputation, resorted to in desperation by the weary, 30.

Aristotle, on the desirability of a liberal education, 127 _n_.

Beer, impure, 193;

harmful properties of, 195;

utterly worthless, 196.

Beliefs, _see_ Ideals.

Bishop of London, his misuse of words, 16.

Bolshevism, a conspiracy against life, 35;

insists on compulsory labour, 93;

offers only material ideals, 162.

Bolshevist, the, an invalid, 31;

a determined opponent of life, 36.

Brahmin, the, highly respected though poor, 40.

Bread, pure loaf of, unobtainable in many parts of England, 190.

Cabbage, should be eaten raw, 192.

Catachresis, the rule in journalism, 16;

much false doctrine is, 134.

Charles I., an ideal monarch, 122.

Charwomen, charitable, do not go out on missions of comfort to the

rich, 168.

Church, the, its failure to teach sound views about life and

humanity, 129;

of the Middle Ages protected the poor and ignorant, 135;

had a sense of responsibility, 135.

Cities, large, breed misanthropy, 174, 175;

mistake of allowing, to spread indefinitely, 211-213.

Citizen, the desirable, must be well conducted, 126.

Cleavage, the industrial Age has worked upon the principle of, 208;

the expedient of the vulgar rich, 210, 211;

must be abolished if harmony is to be restored, 211.

Communism, a conspiracy against Life, 35;

its unscrupulous appeal to malcontents, 112;

offers only material ideals, 162.

Condorcet, not a thinker but a mathematician, 67.

Cro-Magnons, doubtful whether modern man is better or better off than

the, 158.

Culture, a common, produces a common tongue, 11;

might be saved by a re-definition of words, 26.

David, his moral insistence on justice, 47, 48.

Decline, means retrograde development, 34.

Definition, of words desirable, 21;

and might avert revolution, 25, 26.

Degenerates, hate Life as she is, 59.

Democratic institutions, put a damper on superiority, 174, 203.

De Quincey, on poetry, 83. [p218]

Despondency, prevalent to-day, 153;

national, leads to social unrest, 156;

not due to a material cause alone, 157;

but to a lack of satisfying ideals, 158, 159, 161;

the only cure for, new values and a new faith, 161;

economic changes cannot cure, 163;

due to false values, 173;

cannot be cured by social reform, 177.

Development, the law of higher life, 33, 34.

Disease, European attitude of toleration towards, totally wrong, 173.

Disraeli, his speech on the Compensation for Disturbance Bill, 95.

Education, failure of modern, 123;

the object of State, the rearing of worthy citizens, 126;

should be a training in manners rather than in the acquisition of

facts, 127, 128;

elementary, does not teach sound views about Life and Humanity,

129-131;

does not even succeed in teaching means of intercourse, 131;

importance of knowledge of native tongue in, 132;

elementary, an expensive farce, 143.

Education Act of 1870, introduced cheap literature, 15.

Emigration, the violence of, 107.

English, importance of teaching, 145;

better teachers wanted for, 146.

Equality, quite meaningless to-day, 24;

the cry of, can provoke real emotion, 61;

originally borrowed from mathematics, 62;

and has no meaning except in mathematics, 65, 76;

of opportunity, the fallacy of, 67-71;

not desired by the beautiful, able or desirable, 72;

a powerful weapon in the hands of the discontented, 73;

due to indolence and a belief in Justice, 74;

had a definite meaning at the end of the 18th century, 75;

a decoy cry when superiority is extinct, 210.

Errors, do not right themselves, 194.

Eugenists, their moral interpretation of phenomena, 47, 48.

Fatalism, the, of modern Europe, 95.

Feminism, has broken valuable domestic traditions, 192 _n_.

Food, inferior, purveyed to the masses, 123;

ill-prepared, at bottom of physiological causes of ill-health and

social unrest, 188, 189, 190, 194, 197;

unscrupulous advertisements of commercial, 188, 189;

suggested reforms in, 195;

question of, should lead to discouragement of urban development,

212.

Freedom, Rousseau’s misunderstanding of, 17;

now meaningless, 21, 23;

but provokes wild enthusiasm, 22;

Rousseau’s idea of, 22;

a wildly fantastic idea, 77;

babies have no, to choose their destiny, 78;

a will o’ the wisp in manhood, 80;

nonexistent even in childhood, 81;

strength has no, 83-85;

the cry of the weak, 84, 85;

the only circumstances when it can have any meaning, 86-89, 92, 94;

the frequency of these circumstances, 88;

real, greater under the Tudors than new, 90;

political, a deception, 90-92.

Gambetta, his “_justice immanente_,” 44, 45, 182;

a sentimentalist, 57.

Gissing, George, on the comparative happiness of the poor, 169.

Happiness, is relative, 169;

has little to do with material conditions, 170, 172.

Humanitarianism, an inverted form of cruelty, 174. [p219]

Ideals, lack of satisfying, leads to social unrest, 158, 159, 161;

loss of, makes words connected with them meaningless, 160;

tyranny of, the most powerful, 179, 180, 183.

Ill-health, Lloyd George on national, 186, 204;

a fundamental cause of social unrest, 187, 188, 194;

great in rural districts owing to bad food, 189;

an inevitable static condition of the masses, 191.

Indolence, may avert disaster in England but not on the Continent, 24;

demands equality, 74.

Industrialism, creates besotting occupations, 89.

Institutions, often outlive the quality of men, 199-202.

Japan, suicide in, 175.

Jefferson, imbibed much nonsense from France, 61 _n_;

a disciple of Condorcet, 67.

Journalism, a cause of present day muddle, 15;

makes catachresis the rule, 16.

Justice, quite meaningless to-day, 24;

necessary for belief in equality, 44, 74;

the abstraction of a moralist, 45;

Gambetta’s _justice immanente_, 44, 45, 182;

modern idea of, 46;

and its moral basis, 46-50;

meaningless when applied to the universe, 52;

unknown outside human society, 53, 54;

a myth, 57, 58;

reign of, a visionary ideal, 181.

Labour, dissatisfaction of, 155.

Language, confusion of, leads to revolution, 14, 15, 17;

and to impossibility to lead or be led, 15;

disease of, everywhere rampant, 25;

importance of understanding one’s own, 133, 134;

a knowledge of, the only means of curbing the press, 136;

the English, should be chief subject in State schools, 137, 140.

Liberty, quite meaningless to-day, 24.

Life, has a descending tendency, 33;

development the law of higher, 33;

hopelessly unjust and unmoral, 51-53;

as she is, hated by degenerates, 59;

the enjoyment of, largely æsthetic, 117;

inequality necessary to the charm of, 118;

itself attacked by the Socialist, 119.

Lloyd George, on national ill-health, 186.

Locke, John, put learning last in education, 127 _n_.

Love, cannot be produced by word of command, 175, 176.

Luther, a slave to his own strength, 83.

Man, Rousseau’s misunderstanding of, 17, 18, 23;

modern, tired in body and spirit, 27-29;

his sickness and degeneracy responsible for decline of our

institutions, 31;

made responsible by moralists for the injustices of Life, 50;

his moral interpretation of the world, 51;

modern, essentially democratic, 96;

and suffering from exhaustion, 156;

man, not his institutions wrong to-day, 201-202;

all reform should begin with, himself, 206, 207.

Manners, education in, most essential, 127;

no attention given to, in elementary education, 128, 129, 131;

lack of, falls with greater severity on poor than on rich, 129.

Margarine, vegetable, almost useless to the body, 190.

Mathematician, the, a hopeless psychologist, 62;

dangerous as soon as he deals with humanity, 67. [p220]

Mediocrities, alone “free” to choose a calling, 80.

Mediocrity, can only rule in a mediocre way, 184.

Middle Ages, had a common culture, 12;

protected the poor and ignorant, 134.

Mill, John Stuart, proved that Parliament is not representative, 91,

92 _n_.

Misanthropy, bred by overcrowding of large cities, 174-175.

Monks, the mendicant, lost power when they became rich, 41.

Napoleon, on the cause of the Revolution, 72;

and the lawyers, 82;

a slave to his own strength, 83;

what freedom meant to, 86.

Nature, misunderstood by Rousseau and the Victorian poets, 17, 18;

utterly immoral, 51-53;

innately unjust, 55, 59;

violence supreme in, 99.

Negro slaves, committed suicide on British ships, 175.

Parliament, quite unrepresentative, 91, 92.

Pessimism, takes form of economic struggle among the masses and

madness and religious fervour among the rich, 162.

_See also_ Despondency.

Pessimist, the, can alone logically assail Private Property, 36.

Physical conditions, disregarded by modernity, 186.

Poor, the, know certain truths owing to their contact with reality,

130;

social reform directed towards, alone, 165;

not more unhappy than the rich, 166-169.

Population, problem of growth of, 213;

definite policy necessary regarding, 214;

a ruthless policy regarding, probably necessary, 215.

Poverty, to-day entails besotting and heartrending work, foul

surroundings and ignorance, 39.

Power, the proper equipment of, 42.

“Practical,” the password of the stupidest beliefs, 178 _n_;

the foolishness of, reforms, 216.

Press, the, its enormous power to-day, 134;

does not protect the poor and ignorant, 135;

has no sense of responsibility, 136;

a knowledge of language the only means of curbing the, 136;

modern education leads to omnipotence of, 137.

Private property, assailed by present Muddle Age, 31;

a principle of Life, 32, 35;

the principle of, still believed in by the masses, 32, 35;

can be logically assailed only by the pessimist, 36;

among animals, 36;

abuse of, to-day, 37;

the oldest of human principles, 38;

evil results of, to-day, 38-39;

but these not inherent in the principle of, 40.

Procreation, injustice rooted in the very act of, 56, 57;

means violence, 102-113, 125;

society cannot regulate, 109;

inadvisable to meddle with, 112;

limitation of, or deliberate sacrifice can alone eliminate

suffering, 114;

“Down with,” should be the cry of the Socialist, 120;

modern lack of responsibility concerning, 215.

Profiteering, an act of violence, 122.

Progress, stupidity a form of, 14;

the last 19th century ideal to perish, 158;

belief in, natural to those who believe in a beneficent deity, 159.

Psycho-analysis, revelations of, in cases where procreative instinct

has been checked, 109 _n_. [p221]

Reading, should involve discernment, 139;

real, not taught in State schools, 139;

teaching of English necessary for, 145.

Religion, comforts people for the sufferings of others, 50.

Renaissance, a period of social unrest, 155.

Revolution, due to confusion of language, 14, 15, 17, 19.

Rich, the, their truth-proof environment, 130;

show their misery in neurasthenia, hedonism, etc., 165;

as unhappy as the poor, 166-169.

Right, quite meaningless to-day, 24.

Romanticism, destroys happiness and order, 183;

romantic not to suspect physiological causes for unrest, 188.

Rousseau, his misunderstanding of words led to French Revolution, 17;

falsifies evidence, 23;

a sentimentalist, 52;

his meaningless phrase about freedom, 77, 82.

Rulers, their duty to assuage violence, 122.

Russia, revolution in, fomented by starvation, 185.

Schools, elementary, curriculum in, 141-144;

suggested reform of curriculum, 145-151;

probable good results of this, 151, 152.

Socialism, a conspiracy against Life, 35;

must if honest insist on compulsory labour, 93;

offers only material ideals, 162.

Socialist, the, an invalid, 31;

a determined opponent of Life, 36;

compassionate for the sufferings of mankind, 97;

his desire to eliminate violence, 98;

does not reckon with the basic natural element of procreation, 110;

cannot accept the means by which alone violence can be eliminated

from society, 115;

wars against Life itself, 119;

exploits stigma attaching to modern success, 124.

Social Reform, the only question on which modernity is unanimous, 164;

but directed only towards the poor, 164;

aims only at elevation of standard of living of the poor, 165;

directed towards one class only, 172;

cannot cure despondency, 177;

falsely thought to be “practical,” 178 _n_.

Social unrest, due to despondency, 155, 156;

caused by ill-health, 187, 188, 194, 197.

Starvation, foments revolt, 185.

Strength, has no choice, 82;

or freedom, 83-85;

except in certain cases, 85.

Stupidity, increasing, 14.

Suffering, necessary so long as society is based on violence, 113,

114;

can only be eliminated by restricting procreation, 114;

in modern society not borne by the unworthiest, 124.

Success, is not to-day connected with superiority, 43 _n_;

stigma attaching to modern, 124.

Sweating, an act of violence, 122.

Tea, in every way deleterious, 191.

Temperance movement, a helpless and Puritanical solution of the

liquor question, 195.

Tyranny, of ideas, the most powerful, 179, 180, 183.

Ugliness, increasing, of modern Europe kills love, 177.

Values, transvaluation of, still possible, 42, 43;

the vulgar, of modern society, 124, 125;

survival, alone too ardently followed to-day, 204, 205. [p222]

Vanity, responsible for revolution, 73.

Victorian Poets, their misunderstanding of Nature, 171.

Violence, the, of modern wealth, 42;

the desire of Socialists to do away with, 98, 100;

supreme in Nature and essential to life, 99;

cannot be eliminated even from Socialist State, 102, 104;

inherent in procreation, 102-108, 125;

the, of emigration, 107;

necessarily entails suffering, 113;

necessary for the charm of life, 116;

man-made deeds of, 122, 123.

Voluntary actions, generally associated with weak and useless people,

82.

Vote, the, does not secure freedom, 91.

Wealth, to-day tends to get into the hands of the unworthy, 38;

and those who use it unscrupulously, 39;

was not always respected _per se_, 40, 41;

to-day a curse owing to false values, 42;

connected generally with vulgarity since the 17th century, 209.

Women, the supposed injustice of their lot, 46;

less social than men, 48;

the ignorance of English, about cooking, 191.

Words, may be used as missiles, 13;

may inspire uniform action, 20.

Working-classes, their inarticulateness, 132, 133;

their women’s ignorance of cooking, 191.