I
MINE is a strange and wonderful lot! The chances are that there is not a
single wretched beggar suffering under the luxury and oppression of the
rich who feels anything like as keenly as I do either the injustice,
the cruelty, and the horror of their oppression of and contempt for
the poor; or the grinding humiliation and misery which befall the great
majority of the workers, the real producers of all that makes life
possible. I have felt this for a long time, and as the years have
passed by the feeling has grown and grown, until recently it reached its
climax. Although I feel all this so vividly, I still live on amid the
depravity and sins of rich society; and I cannot leave it, because I
have neither the knowledge nor the strength to do so. I cannot. I do
not know how to change my life so that my physical needs--food, sleep,
clothing, my going to and fro--may be satisfied without a sense of shame
and wrongdoing in the position which I fill.
There was a time when I tried to change my position, which was not in
harmony with my conscience; but the conditions created by the past, by
my family and its claims upon me, were so complicated that they would
not let me out of their grasp, or rather, I did not know how to free
myself. I had not the strength. Now that I am over eighty and have
become feeble, I have given up trying to free myself; and, strange to
say, as my feebleness increases I realise more and more strongly the
wrongfulness of my position, and it grows more and more intolerable to
me.
It has occurred to me that I do not occupy this position for nothing:
that Providence intended that I should lay bare the truth of my
feelings, so that I might atone for all that causes my suffering, and
might perhaps open the eyes of those--or at least of some of those--who
are still blind to what I see so clearly, and thus might lighten
the burden of that vast majority who, under existing conditions, are
subjected to bodily and spiritual suffering by those who deceive them
and also deceive themselves. Indeed, it may be that the position which
I occupy gives me special facilities for revealing the artificial and
criminal relations which exist between men--for telling the whole truth
in regard to that position without confusing the issue by attempting to
vindicate myself, and without rousing the envy of the rich and feelings
of oppression in the hearts of the poor and downtrodden. I am so
placed that I not only have no desire to vindicate myself; but, on the
contrary, I find it necessary to make an effort lest I should exaggerate
the wickedness of the great among whom I live, of whose society I am
ashamed, whose attitude towards their fellow-men I detest with my whole
soul, though I find it impossible to separate my lot from theirs. But
I must also avoid the error of those democrats and others who, in
defending the oppressed and the enslaved, do not see their failings and
mistakes, and who do not make sufficient allowance for the difficulties
created, the mistakes inherited from the past, which in a degree lessens
the responsibility of the upper classes.
Free from desire for self-vindication, free from fear of an emancipated
people, free from that envy and hatred which the oppressed feel for
their oppressors, I am in the best possible position to see the truth
and to tell it. Perhaps that is why Providence placed me in such a
position. I will do my best to turn it to account.