forms of theft, robbery, and the larger and subtler kind of dishonest
appropriation. This class is the natural result of our perverted
distribution of social products. It is one of the many weak spots of the
Want theory that an absence of the essentials of life, instead of
promoting industry, often produces more direct and injurious methods of
transfer. Quite the larger part of our legal machinery is devoted to the
maintenance of the local congestion of wealth on the one hand, and to
the prevention of the breaking-down of the social tissues under pressure
of that congestion on the other. Given a surplus of wealth in some
places and a deficit in others, and the fabric of human nature breaks
down in a given proportion.
Want makes men steal quite as naturally as it makes them work, indeed
more so, as being the earlier custom. Our political economics founded on
the Want theory should give half their pages to a study of the
proportionate relation between Want, Theft, and Wealth, after the
learned discussion of Want, Work, and Wealth. One is as legitimate a
fact in economics as the other.
That normal distribution of social products which would provide the
growing individual with all that he needed to bring out his best powers,
and which would teach him clearly where and how to use those powers in
return, would drop out of the world completely this class of sins. The
supply coming _first_, the child growing up to measure his conduct as a
return for what has been given him; taught from infancy to see in the
world, behind and around him, the endless Giver, and himself as the
product of it all and owing his output to those now alive, and more
especially those to come—that child, that man, will have no
comprehension of theft, major or minor. In a word: All illegitimate
acquisition of property rests on the illegitimate retention of property.
Remove the cause, and you remove the effect.
What remains? Sins against the person. Part of these are based on
property also,—all murder and violence done “with interested motives,”
or in revenge for previous injury to property, or denial of property. A
large majority of the sins against the person would go, too, when we
establish right distribution.
There remain the sins based on the sex relation. The right economic
position for women will remove the greater part of these. When women no
longer make their living out of their loving, the prostitute, and that
more successful specialist, the mercenary wife, will leave the world.
The reduction of sex-attraction from its present fever-height to a
normal level, and the perfect freedom for true marriage resultant upon
right distribution of property, will take away the cruder and more
violent forms of sexual sin, and gives us pure monogamy at last.
I do not say that _all_ sin would leave the world upon our assuming
right economic relations; nor even that this great mass would disappear
in a night; but the cause of the disease being removed, the healthy
social currents would flow calmly on and we should soon outgrow these
evils too long endured. Social disease will eliminate itself by right
living as does physical disease.
“Sins” are always phenomena of defective social relation—they are not
individual matters at all, an individual can no more do wrong than he
can do right. The beasts have no morals because they have no Society.
Human conduct is all interrelative; and right or wrong _as it affects
the others_. Given any wrong relation in Society, and a certain
proportion of sin works out among its members, now here, now there,
according to the nature of the diseased relation.
The despot breeds the sycophant, the liar, the assassin; the rich man
breeds the thief; the woman who makes her living by marriage, the
prostitute. And these sins cannot be checked in the point of expression,
the individual, any more than you can cure scarlet fever with salve.
_We_ are good, or _We_ are bad,—with remarkable disconnection of
personal circumstance. The thieving produced by the clot of wealth may
not break out in the immediately surrounding tissue if that is pretty
healthy, but creeps along the line of least resistance, and appears
through the brain least able to resist it.
No man liveth to himself, and no man dieth to himself, again.
If, then, this great field of evil, and a thousand as evil concomitants,
may be cleared off the world by the adoption of more healthy social
processes; if those healthy social processes consist in each person’s
being in his right place, and doing his right work in Society; if, too,
it clearly appears that to the individual consciousness this right place
and right work represent Happiness,—Happiness such as we have never been
able to conceive in our little ego-stunted brains; then human duty looms
up large and clear.
To find your right place, to do your right work, here is the basis of
all virtue, joy, and growth. Here is a steady improvement of every human
product, things better and more beautiful, things made more easily and
more plentifully; and every human being, better nourished physically and
socially, pouring forth the ever-rising tide in harmonious social growth
through work. It means a lifting from the heart of man, first, of Care.
All that life-long terror of the Wolf, the dragging weight that follows
from the young father’s anxiety over his first-born—can he provide for
it?—to the dying man’s anxiety over his growing children and wife left
behind—can he provide for them? This crippling terror—(which we have
solemnly affirmed was an incentive to labour!)—being removed for ever by
the mutual insurance of a civilised society; man can lift his head and
work with a light heart and a free hand.
It means lifting from the heart of man, second, Sin. Just to see that
Sin is _Ours_, not mine and thine, means instant relief and
illumination. Then to see where it comes from, to remove its causes, to
watch its shadow recede slowly from the glad, bright face of man, like
the passing of an eclipse; that will leave us free to work indeed.
It means lifting from the body of man nearly all his load of disease;
his diseases being as clearly traceable to social disorder as his sins.
There is no difference, save that one is manifested in physical
relations, and the other in social. That the human animal should not be
as clean and healthy as other animals is due to his false social
relations. When they are right, he maintains all the animal’s physical
purity and vigour, and adds to it the yet unsounded depths of social
vigour.
With a prospect like this before us, what prevents a sweeping and
instant change? Nothing prevents a sweeping and instant change in the
minds of some of us; a recognition of the nature of human life and human
work which sees it all natural, all healthful, all good, in itself; and
the bad only an evanescent mistake, easily to be avoided in future; but
to spread that recognition in the minds of all of us means time and
effort, and cannot become general at once.
Meanwhile, it is open to us, without waiting for all to see alike these
patent truths, to go to work on such changes in economic condition as
shall soonest check the decay in social tissues so dangerously apparent
at both ends of our present “Society,” and to bring up, as soon as may
be, those whose growth has been arrested for ages.
The world is full of aborted people, aborted by the crushing pressure of
these old lies in economics; people crippled in mind, people crippled in
body, people swollen and distorted from being oversupplied and
underworked; people shrunken and distorted from being overworked and
undersupplied. These can be helped at once by those of us who see the
wisdom of improving the race without waiting for them to understand and
accept the principles on which the change in condition rests. We did not
wait for all the citizens of America to believe in the principles
involved, before giving them the public school and public library. Many
do not, when questioned, even now believe in those principles. But they
are not reluctant to avail themselves of the provision made; and the
advantageous results of that provision are apparent in our citizens,
whether they understand why or not.
There are some most comforting facts, meanwhile, in our social
relationship, which enable us to attack the concrete problems of our
time with courage and patience. Seeing that our gain is social, and not
individual, and that it is rapidly transmissible as far as the brain is
open to transmission, we have but to develop the brain of our laggard
members to bring them into possession of the whole great field of social
advance. The wealth of Society, steadily augmented as it is by the very
individuals who need so much more social return than they have ever had,
is quite equal to any drain which may be necessary to pay up our arrears
of debt to the worker. A conscientious and aroused society, seeing how
unjustly neglected have been its most valuable constituents, cannot do
too much to bring to them, and to their children, all the social
nourishment they can absorb; _i. e._, to provide the best possible
educational environment for the children who need it most.
Here arises a question, based on previous social studies and
conclusions. If Society provides generously for its most needy members,
will not that injure the world by multiplying the least desirable class?
Will it not put a premium on deficiency, instead of efficiency? This
idea rests not only on the Want theory and the Ego concept, but on the
Malthusian doctrine. It is believed that human beings tend to multiply
in a certain ratio; that the advantage to the race lies in the
development of better individuals, not in mere numbers; and that better
individuals are developed by personal competition, by the “struggle for
existence” and “the survival of the fittest.”
As soon as we see the organic unity of Society, this “struggle for
existence” idea must change its terms. What we are now concerned with is
the development of ever better social organs and functions, and that
development does not take place in a direct combat between individuals,
but in a superior process supplanting an inferior process, with no
essential injury to the constituents.
The introduction of machinery, for instance, was a legitimate social
progress. The injury to working men which we allowed to accompany it,
was not in any way essential to social progress, but militated against
it. Interdependent organs do not fight with one another. Their change in
form and value is gradual, and involves no immediate destruction to
constituent cells. Society improves by the development of its component
parts, not by a destructive conflict of parts. If you are seeking to
improve a family of children or a breed of fowls, you do not do it by
pitting them against one another and cheerfully retaining the
“survivors” as the “most fit.” The egg-laying capacity of the hen, the
milk-giving capacity of the cow, is not developed by combat between
hens, or between cows (or their respective cocks and bulls)! To this it
will be eagerly replied, “Ah, yes, but we do it by _selection_—by
carefully choosing the ones best suited, and breeding from them. They do
not survive from natural selection, but from artificial selection. Now
if we were free to practice _that_ on Society, if we could choose the
best types and breed from them only, then we could indeed improve the
race.”
That this is one process of improvement is not denied. But it is not the
only, nor by any means the most valuable process in the social organism.
The swiftest and broadest medium of social improvement lies in that
great common sensorium of ours, the brain. By social contact and
example, by social transmission, the more advanced members of Society
can lift the less advanced at a rate immeasurably faster than the slow
current of heredity. We have all seen this in families of very low-grade
people, obtaining sudden access to social advantages by present methods,
and changing in mind and body to a marked degree, even in one
generation. This gain is of course incorporated in the family through
heredity, but the effect of ten years’ access to the social stores of
knowledge, culture, and refinement changes an individual to a very great
degree. This immense power of education, using the word in its very
widest sense, can be turned on to every child of the race, if we so
choose, with a speedy result of race improvement which would laugh to
scorn the fumbling, wasteful processes of natural selection, and the
one-step-better methods of artificial selection. It is by transmission
that we raise the social level most rapidly; a free and general
transmission of the product of the special worker to the hands and minds
of all.
For Society to bestow the same care and provision on all its children
that the wisest parent now seeks to bestow on his would develop the race
faster than anything conceivable. That this method would at once improve
the individual, the race, and the productivity of both, is clear. That
it would “pauperise” has been shown to be an erroneous deduction from
the Want theory; under which we are indeed all potential, and some
actual, paupers. The further claim that it would tend to a too rapid
increase of population, especially among the least fit, should be
carefully examined.
The Malthusian error is in assuming that a given rate of reproduction is
fixed and final. If Malthus had studied the subject more deeply, he
would have found that the rate of reproduction varies widely, not only
in the “animal kingdom” but the man. This variation is relative to other
conditions; and has been thus formulated by Spencer, “Reproduction is in
inverse proportion to individuation.” The lower the efficiency of the
individual, the more young ones it has.
Progressive specialisation, bringing a higher degree of individual
efficiency, carries with it a decrease in the rate of reproduction. The
myriad eggs of the fish or insect are followed as species develop by the
lesser litters of high-grade quadrupeds, till we reach one at a birth. A
fish that only laid one egg at a time would not have a very tall family
tree. In man we have the general rule of one at a time; but we have it
more times in some cases than in others. The human birth rate varies
widely, too; and the action of the same law, a higher development of the
individual, higher specialisation, leads to a lower birth rate.
There are also artificial variants, as so painfully shown in the
dwindling of France’s population; but quite apart from any morbid
processes of stirpiculture lies this broad and beautiful law,—the higher
specialisation of the individual tends to reduce the birth rate. This is
shown with clearness through all the turbid cross-currents of our
mistaken behaviour; the most developed kind of people have the least
children, and the least developed kind of people have the most children.
Even in folk lore we see it indicated—“there was once a King and a Queen
who were perfectly happy, except that they had no children,” and on the
other hand, “The poor man hath his quiver full.”
The capacity of the world to support humanity in health and comfort has
a limit; it is not near enough to frighten us, but it is there. If human
beings are left to struggle on alone in unnatural individualism, their
arrested development fills up the world, too, with numerous, but
inefficient people. But as a conscious and intelligent society hastens
to spread its gains among all its parts; to make the progress of the
race the rich possession of all its members; so fully to educate and
develop every child as to promote the higher specialisation of the
individual, at a rate unconscious natural processes never dreamed of,
then we see a steady diminution of this threatening birth rate. By this
means we work steadily toward a far higher average of social efficiency,
with a permanent balance of birth and death, involving no arbitrary
personal tampering with natural processes, but a recognition of the
working of natural law.
It would seem needless to say that the individuation of woman is the
most prominent necessity here, as her rate of fecundity is the
determining factor in the case, not the man’s; yet there are still some
who ignore even so patent a fact as this.
See, then, how swiftly and surely an awakened society can right its
wrongs, cure and outgrow its diseases, understand, pity, and leave far
behind its sins. The highest human duty for the individual is to enter
upon his or her special work in the world—that is vital, that is first,
that underlies all. There is no right life for any human creature who is
not taking part in the organic processes of Society. And if, in our
present blurred and jumbled condition, we have not the sure guide of a
“calling,” a special inborn preference and power; why, that only leaves
us freer to take hold anywhere of the thousand things that need doing;
paid, or unpaid—that is immaterial. The point is _to do the work_ and to
do it for the service of Society. No matter for the past account, for
arrears of social pampering or social neglect; we are all responsible
for both. No malicious crowd of despots, masters, owners, and employers
has conspired to injuriously deprive the angelic workingman of his
rights. We have _all_ believed in these economic falsehoods, the
inevitable action of which was to produce the conditions we now suffer
from. We must all lay them aside; wasting no time or energy on remorse,
and simply set to work to make things right.
From that class of people who “do not have to work”—that is, who have
been paid and overpaid in advance—there is an overwhelming debt of
honour due the world. In that great field of action where there is no
pay, nor even thanks as yet; in the efforts necessary to teach the right
things, and to provide the right things for the world’s little children,
there is ample room for the most helplessly rich. Also in the work of
spreading the social supplies where they belong—among the whole
people—there is work there, much work, not only unpaid and unthanked,
but heartily resisted.
There was never a time in history when more splendid opportunities were
open to those who would serve society. Thousands of us are at it
already, organised and unorganised; a rising flood of love and service,
toiling manfully, and womanfully, at the mighty task. But the economic
darkness makes it blind work at best.
Most of our conscious “social service” to-day is directed, naturally
enough, to ministering to the social diseases. Now, if a man is sick,
there are two ways to re-establish his health—both necessary. One is to
restore normal conditions to his body, trusting that a normal body will
urge to normal action, and so keep him well. The other is to induce
normal action, trusting to that to restore right conditions in the body.
Each is a good thing, each tends to produce the desired result; but both
are incomparably better than either. Our sick Society needs this double
treatment. The first condition of normal action we have here reviewed at
length; consciously to assume true place in the organic industries of
human life. If all of us do that, the currents of right action will
assuredly build us a healthy social body. But we can greatly hasten that
good end by rearranging the social body too. Here the law of interaction
between spirit and form comes to our aid, and makes possible an
incredible rate of progress.
Take, for instance, an advanced case in social pathology—a city slum.
Now there are two ways for a conscious society to focus its forces on
the diseased part and regenerate it. One is by dealing with the spirit
of the slum, the people themselves; by so educating the children, so
stimulating the adult, so providing proper opportunity for right social
service for all, that the people will change in character, and,
reacting, soon make the slum a fair, clean, healthful part of the city.
The other is to deal with the body of the slum, the houses, streets, and
shops; and so to reconstruct them that they shall steadily react on the
people and change their character. Both can be done, both are being
done, but so feebly and partially, in such tiny spots of change, under
such heavy opposition and heavier indifference, that the gain is
heart-breakingly slow. While one playground is being made, while one new
method of education is being introduced, a thousand babies die, a
thousand children become criminals, a thousand wretched men and women
sink to the hopeless grade, are lost to society, become diseased tissue,
and are miserably sloughed off through asylum, prison, and hospital.
The cause of the delay is this: We are treating social disease by local
application. We find, as it were, a tubercle or boil upon the body
politic, we apply all manner of treatment-the poultice, the
counter-irritant, the excising knife of capital punishment; but we
forget, or do not know, that this local trouble, however poignantly
conspicuous, is on a living body, and is caused and maintained by
diseased conditions in that body, far beyond the material boundaries of
that location.
We must, of course, use prompt and strong measures in these most painful
spots; but the treatment necessary to prevent the formation of these
conspicuously evil places must be applied to all of us. It is as
necessary for the right education and stimulus to be applied to the rich
and well-to-do as to the poor, to the isolated farmer in the field as
well as the crowded sweater in the shop; and not only those methods
touching the people’s character, but the other, the prompter ones,
touching their physical conditions.
There are certain physical conditions in the social body, brick and
mortar conditions, which are affecting us all for evil, and which can be
readily changed. There are, also, certain economic relations in that
body, affecting us all for evil, that can equally be changed. We need to
see these in their true importance; as affecting not only the immediate
individuals concerned, but as so affecting the whole structure of
Society as to inexorably produce the conspicuous evils with which we are
so painfully familiar. Once recognised, our duty is clear—a glad, swift,
forward movement bringing joy and gain to all.
What are these general conditions?
One is the economic position of woman, which involves false sex
relations, including all forms of prostitution; maintains primitive
individual instincts and checks social ones, and is largely responsible
for the morbid action of social economics. Another is the maintenance of
domestic industry; which, as I have shown in another book, prevents the
development of the home, the progress of woman, the right education of
the child, and the normal progress of man.
Combined, these two conditions find material form in that hotbed of
primitive egoism, the cumbrous, expensive, inadequate dwelling house of
our time, or rather, of past time, of the most remote and barbarous
time, most injuriously preserved in this. It is true that each human
being needs a wholly private and personal room to rest in; that
solitude, pure individual solitude, is a social necessity. It is also
true that the great primal group, the family, needs its group of rooms,
its private home. But the point of divergence is in the Work involved.
Work is social, it does not belong to the person nor, in any advanced
degree, to the family. That so much human work is at present performed
in and for the separate family is an enormous condition of social evil.
It maintains, beyond all the efforts of religion and science to combat,
the selfishness of the primeval Pig.
Social consciousness and its great currents of love and enthusiasm, of
power and pride, cannot find room in brains continually cramped by
application to the most ignominiously personal concerns.
It is not only that the family could have a far simpler, purer, and more
private life if they would but take advantage of our immense social
facilities, but so could the individual men and women; born and reared
in families, to be sure, but born and reared as members of Society,
active and responsible factors in social progress.
These men and women, if the families they grew up in were in true social
relation, instead of each one keeping up a little down-drawing whirlpool
of antediluvian individualism, would be a thousand times more valuable
citizens. While the minds of our women are exercised only, or mainly, in
impression and expression of a purely personal nature, they and their
stunted children and heavily handicapped men cannot properly receive and
discharge the vivifying currents of social consciousness.