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First And Last Things
By
H. G. Wells
Contents
BOOK THE FIRST. --
METAPHYSICS.
1.1. THE NECESSITY FOR
METAPHYSICS.
1.2. THE RESUMPTION OF
METAPHYSICAL ENQUIRY.
1.4. SCEPTICISM OF THE
INSTRUMENT.
1.5. THE CLASSIFICATO=
RY
ASSUMPTION.
1.8. LOGIC STATIC AND=
LIFE
KINETIC.
1.9. PLANES AND DIALE=
CTS OF
THOUGHT.
1.10. PRACTICAL CONCL=
USIONS
FROM THESE CONSIDERATIONS.
BOOK THE SECOND -- OF=
BELIEFS
2.1. MY PRIMARY ACT O=
F FAITH. =
2.2. ON USING THE NAM=
E OF
GOD.
2.3. FREE WILL AND
PREDESTINATION.
2.4. A PICTURE OF THE=
WORLD
OF MEN.
2.5. THE PROBLEM OF M=
OTIVES
THE REAL PROBLEM OF LIFE.
2.7. THE SYNTHETIC MO=
TIVE. =
2.8. THE BEING OF MAN=
KIND. =
2.9. INDIVIDUALITY AN
INTERLUDE.
2.12. OF PERSONAL
IMMORTALITY.
2.13. A CRITICISM OF
CHRISTIANITY.
BOOK THE THIRD -- OF =
GENERAL
CONDUCT
3.1. CONDUCT FOLLOWS =
FROM
BELIEF.
3.4. A CRITICISM OF C=
ERTAIN
FORMS OF SOCIALISM.
3.6. THE PRELIMINARY =
SOCIAL
DUTY.
3.7. WRONG WAYS OF LI=
VING. =
3.8. SOCIAL PARASITIS=
M AND
CONTEMPORARY INJUSTICES.
3.9. THE CASE OF THE =
WIFE AND
MOTHER.
3.11. OF AN ORGANIZED
BROTHERHOOD.
3.12. CONCERNING NEW =
STARTS
AND NEW RELIGIONS.
3.13. THE IDEA OF THE=
CHURCH. =
3.18. WAR AND COMPETI=
TION. =
3.20. OF ABSTINENCES =
AND
DISCIPLINES.
3.21. ON FORGETTING, =
AND THE
NEED OF PRAYER, READING, DISCUSSION AND WORSHIP.
3.22. DEMOCRACY AND
ARISTOCRACY.
3.24. THE IDEA OF JUS=
TICE. =
3.25. OF LOVE AND JUS=
TICE. =
3.26. THE WEAKNESS OF
IMMATURITY.
3.27. POSSIBILITY OF =
A NEW
ETIQUETTE.
3.29. THE INSTITUTION=
OF
MARRIAGE.
3.30. CONDUCT IN RELA=
TION TO
THE THING THAT IS.
3.31. CONDUCT TOWARDS
TRANSGRESSORS.
BOOK THE FOURTH -- SO=
ME
PERSONAL THINGS.
4.1. PERSONAL LOVE AN=
D LIFE. =
4.5. THE CONSOLATION =
OF
FAILURE.
Recently I set my=
self
to put down what I believe. I did this with no idea of making a book, but at
the suggestion of a friend and to interest a number of friends with whom I =
was
associated. We were all, we found, extremely uncertain in our outlook upon =
life,
about our religious feelings and in our ideas of right and wrong. And yet we
reckoned ourselves people of the educated class and some of us talk and lec=
ture
and write with considerable confidence. We thought it would be of very great
interest to ourselves and each other if we made some sort of frank mutual
confession. We arranged to hold a series of meetings in which first one and
then another explained the faith, so far as he understood it, that was in h=
im.
We astonished ourselves and our hearers by the irregular and fragmentary na=
ture
of the creeds we produced, clotted at one point, inconsecutive at another,
inconsistent and unconvincing to a quite unexpected degree. It would not be
difficult to caricature one of those meetings; the lecturer floundering abo=
ut
with an air of exquisite illumination, the audience attentive with an
expression of thwarted edification upon its various brows. For my own part I
grew so interested in planning my lecture and in joining up point and point,
that my notes soon outran the possibilities of the hour or so of meeting for
which I was preparing them. The meeting got only a few fragments of what I =
had to
say, and made what it could of them. And after that was over I let myself l=
oose
from limits of time and length altogether and have expanded these memoranda
into a book.
It is as it stands
now the frank confession of what one man of the early Twentieth Century has
found in life and himself, a confession just as frank as the limitations of=
his
character permit; it is his metaphysics, his religion, his moral standards,=
his
uncertainties and the expedients with which he has met them. On every one of
these departments and aspects I write--how shall I put it?--as an amateur. =
In
every section of my subject there are men not only of far greater intellect=
ual
power and energy than I, but who have devoted their whole lives to the
sustained analysis of this or that among the questions I discuss, and there=
is
a literature so enormous in the aggregate that only a specialist scholar co=
uld
hope to know it. I have not been unmindful of these professors and this
literature; I have taken such opportunities as I have found, to test my
propositions by them. But I feel that such apology as one makes for
amateurishness in this field has a lesser quality of self-condemnation than=
if
one were dealing with narrower, more defined and fact-laden matters. There =
is
more excuse for one here than for the amateur maker of chemical theories, or
the man who evolves a system of surgery in his leisure. These things,
chemistry, surgery and so forth, we may take on the reputation of an expert,
but our own fundamental beliefs, our rules of conduct, we must all make for
ourselves. We may listen and read, but the views of others we cannot take on
credit; we must rethink them and "make them our own." And we cann=
ot
do without fundamental beliefs, explicit or implicit. The bulk of men are
obliged to be amateur philosophers,--all men indeed who are not specialized=
students
of philosophical subjects,--even if their philosophical enterprise goes no
further than prompt recognition of and submission to Authority.
And it is not only
the claim of the specialist that I would repudiate. People are too apt to
suppose that in order to discuss morals a man must have exceptional moral
gifts. I would dispute that naive supposition. I am an ingenuous enquirer w=
ith,
I think, some capacity for religious feeling, but neither a prophet nor a
saint. On the whole I should be inclined to classify myself as a bad man ra=
ther
than a good; not indeed as any sort of picturesque scoundrel or non-moral
expert, but as a person frequently irritable, ungenerous and forgetful, and=
intermittently
and in small but definite ways bad. One thing I claim, I have got my beliefs
and theories out of my life and not fitted them to its circumstances. As of=
ten
as not I have learnt good by the method of difference; by the taste of the
alternative. I tell this faith I hold as I hold it and I sketch out the
principles by which I am generally trying to direct my life at the present
time, because it interests me to do so and I think it may interest a certain
number of similarly constituted people. I am not teaching. How far I succee=
d or
fail in that private and personal attempt to behave well, has nothing to do
with the matter of this book. That is another story, a reserved and private
affair. I offer simply intellectual experiences and ideas.
It will be necess=
ary
to take up the most abstract of these questions of belief first, the
metaphysical questions. It may be that to many readers the opening sections=
may
seem the driest and least attractive. But I would ask them to begin at the
beginning and read straight on, because much that follows this metaphysical
book cannot be appreciated at its proper value without a grasp of these
preliminaries.
BOOK THE FIRST. --
METAPHYSICS.
1.1. THE NECESSITY FOR
METAPHYSICS.
As a preliminary =
to
that experiment in mutual confession from which this book arose, I found it
necessary to consider and state certain truths about the nature of knowledg=
e,
about the meaning of truth and the value of words, that is to say I found I=
had
to begin by being metaphysical. In writing out these notes now I think it is
well that I should state just how important I think this metaphysical prelu=
de
is.
There is a popular
prejudice against metaphysics as something at once difficult and fruitless,=
as
an idle system of enquiries remote from any human interest. I suppose this =
odd
misconception arose from the vulgar pretensions of the learned, from their
appeal to ancient names and their quotations in unfamiliar tongues, and from
the easy fall into technicality of men struggling to be explicit where a hi=
gh
degree of explicitness is impossible. But it needs erudition and accumulate=
d and
alien literature to make metaphysics obscure, and some of the most fruitful=
and
able metaphysical discussion in the world was conducted by a number of
unhampered men in small Greek cities, who knew no language but their own and
had scarcely a technical term. The true metaphysician is after all only a
person who says, "Now let us take a thought for a moment before we fall
into a discussion of the broad questions of life, lest we rush hastily into
impossible and needless conflict. What is the exact value of these thoughts=
we
are thinking and these words we are using?" He wants to take thought a=
bout
thought. Those other ardent spirits on the contrary, want to plunge into ac=
tion
or controversy or belief without taking thought; they feel that there is not
time to examine thought. "While you think," they say, "the h=
ouse
is burning." They are the kin of those who rush and struggle and make
panics in theatre fires.
Now it seems to me
that most of the troubles of humanity are really misunderstandings. Men's
compositions and characters are, I think, more similar than their views, an=
d if
they had not needlessly different modes of expression upon many broad issue=
s,
they would be practically at one upon a hundred matters where now they wide=
ly
differ.
Most of the great
controversies of the world, most of the wide religious differences that keep
men apart, arise from this: from differences in their way of thinking. Men
imagine they stand on the same ground and mean the same thing by the same
words, whereas they stand on slightly different grounds, use different terms
for the same thing and express the same thing in different words. Logomachi=
es,
conflicts about words,--into such death-traps of effort those ardent spirits
run and perish.
This is now almos=
t a
commonplace; it has been said before by numberless people. It has been said
before by numberless people, but it seems to me it has been realised by very
few--and until it is realised to the fullest extent, we shall continue to l=
ive
at intellectual cross purposes and waste the forces of our species needless=
ly
and abundantly.
This persuasion i=
s a
very important thing in my mind.
I think that the =
time
has come when the human mind must take up metaphysical discussion again--wh=
en
it must resume those subtle but necessary and unavoidable problems that it =
dropped
unsolved at the close of the period of Greek freedom, when it must get to a
common and general understanding upon what its ideas of truth, good, and be=
auty
amount to, and upon the relation of the name to the thing, and of the relat=
ion
of one mind to another mind in the matter of resemblance and the matter of =
difference--upon
all those issues the young science student is as apt to dismiss as Rot, and=
the
young classical student as Gas, and the austere student of the science of
Economics as Theorising, unsuitable for his methods of research.
In our achievemen=
t of
understandings in the place of these evasions about fundamental things lies=
the
road, I believe, along which the human mind can escape, if ever it is to
escape, from the confusion of purposes that distracts it at the present tim=
e.
1.2. THE RESUMPTION OF
METAPHYSICAL ENQUIRY.
It seems to me th=
at
the Greek mind up to the disaster of the Macedonian Conquest was elaborately
and discursively discussing these questions of the forms and methods of tho=
ught
and that the discussion was abruptly closed and not naturally concluded, su=
mmed
up hastily as it were, in the career and lecturings of Aristotle.
Since then the wo=
rld
never effectually reopened these questions until the modern period. It went=
on
from Plato and Aristotle just as the art of the seventeenth and eighteenth
century went on from Raphael and Michael Angelo. Effectual criticism was
absolutely silent until the Renaissance, and then for a time was but a matt=
er
of scattered utterances having only the slightest collective effect. In the
past half century there has begun a more systematic critical movement in th=
e general
mind, a movement analogous to the Pre-Raphaelite movement in art--a
Pre-Aristotelian movement, a scepticism about things supposed to be settled=
for
all time, a resumed inquiry into the fundamental laws of thought, a harking
back to positions of the older philosophers and particularly to Heraclitus,=
so
far as the surviving fragments of his teaching enable one to understand him,
and a new forward movement from that recovered ground.
1.3. THE WORLD OF FACT.=
span>
Necessarily when =
one
begins an inquiry into the fundamental nature of oneself and one's mind and=
its
processes, one is forced into autobiography. I begin by asking how the cons=
cious
mind with which I am prone to identify myself, began.
It presents itsel=
f to
me as a history of a perception of the world of facts opening out from an
accidental centre at which I happened to begin.
I do not attempt =
to
define this word fact. Fact expresses for me something in its nature primary
and unanalyzable. I start from that. I take as a typical statement of fact =
that
I sit here at my desk writing with a fountain pen on a pad of ruled scribbl=
ing
paper, that the sunlight falls upon me and throws the shadow of my window
mullion across the page, that Peter, my cat, sleeps on the window-seat clos=
e at
hand and that this agate paper-weight with the silver top that once was Hen=
ley's
holds my loose memoranda together. Outside is a patch of lawn and then a fr=
inge
of winter-bitten iris leaves and then the sea, greatly wrinkled and astir u=
nder
the south-west wind. There is a boat going out which I think may be Jim Pai=
n's,
but of that I cannot be sure...
These are stateme=
nts
of a certain quality, a quality that extends through a huge universe in whi=
ch I
find myself placed.
I try to recall h=
ow
this world of fact arose in my mind. It began with a succession of limited
immediate scenes and of certain minutely perceived persons; I recall an
underground kitchen with a drawered table, a window looking up at a grating=
, a
back yard in which, growing out by a dustbin, was a grape-vine; a red-paper=
ed
room with a bookcase over my father's shop, the dusty aisles and fixtures, =
the
regiments of wine-glasses and tumblers, the rows of hanging mugs and jugs, =
the
towering edifices of jam-pots, the tea and dinner and toilet sets in that
emporium, its brighter side of cricket goods, of pads and balls and stumps.=
Out
of the window one peeped at the more exterior world, the High Street in fro=
nt, the
tailor's garden, the butcher's yard, the churchyard and Bromley church tower
behind; and one was taken upon expeditions to fields and open places. This
limited world was peopled with certain familiar presences, mother and fathe=
r,
two brothers, the evasive but interesting cat, and by intermittent people o=
f a
livelier but more transient interest, customers and callers.
Such was my openi=
ng
world of fact, and each day it enlarged and widened and had more things add=
ed
to it. I had soon won my way to speech and was hearing of facts beyond my
visible world of fact. Presently I was at a Dame's school and learning to r=
ead.
From the centre of
that little world as primary, as the initiatory material, my perception of =
the
world of fact widened and widened, by new sights and sounds, by reading and
hearing descriptions and histories, by guesses and inferences; my curiosity=
and
interest, my appetite for fact, grew by what it fed upon, I carried on my
expansion of the world of fact until it took me through the mineral and fos=
sil
galleries of the Natural History Museum, through the geological drawers of =
the
College of Science, through a year of dissection and some weeks at the
astronomical telescope. So I built up my conceptions of a real world out of
facts observed and out of inferences of a nature akin to fact, of a world i=
mmense
and enduring, receding interminably into space and time. In that I found my=
self
placed, a creature relatively infinitesimal, needing and struggling. It was
clear to me, by a hundred considerations, that I in my body upon this planet
Earth, was the outcome of countless generations of conflict and begetting, =
the
creature of natural selection, the heir of good and bad engendered in that
struggle.
So my world of fa=
ct
shaped itself. I find it altogether impossible to question or doubt that wo=
rld
of fact. Particular facts one may question as facts. For instance, I think I
see an unseasonable yellow wallflower from my windows, but you may dispute =
that
and show that it is only a broken end of iris leaf accidentally lit to yell=
ow.
That is merely a substitution of fact for fact. One may doubt whether one is
perceiving or remembering or telling facts clearly, but the persuasion that
there are facts, independent of one's interpretations and obdurate to one's=
will,
remains invincible.
1.4. SCEPTICISM OF THE
INSTRUMENT.
At first I took t=
he
world of fact as being exactly as I perceived it. I believed my eyes. Seeing
was believing, I thought. Still more did I believe my reasoning. It was only
slowly that I began to suspect that the world of fact could be anything
different from the clear picture it made upon my mind.
I realised the
inadequacy of the senses first. Into that I will not enter here. Any proper
text book of physiology or psychology will supply a number of instances of =
the
habitual deceptions of sight and touch and hearing. I came upon these thing=
s in
my reading, in the laboratory, with microscope or telescope, lived with the=
m as
constant difficulties. I will only instance one trifling case of visual
deception in order to lead to my next question. One draws two lines strictly
parallel; so
(two horizontal a=
nd
parallel lines.)
Oblique to them o=
ne
draws a series of lines; so
(a series of para=
llel
and closely-spaced lines drawn through each horizontal line, one series (to=
p)
sloping to the right, the other (bottom) to the left)
and instantly the
parallelism seems to be disturbed. If the second figure is presented to any=
one
without sufficient science to understand this delusion, the impression is
created that these lines converge to the right and diverge to the left. The
vision is deceived in its mental factor and judges wrongly of the thing see=
n.
In this case we a=
re
able to measure the distance of the lines, to find how the main lines looked
before the cross ones were drawn, to bring the deception up against fact of=
a
different sort and so correct the mistake. If the ignorant observer were un=
able
to do that, he might remain permanently under the impression that the main
lines were out of parallelism. And all the infirmities of eye and ear, touch
and taste, are discovered and checked by the fact that the erroneous
impressions presently strike against fact and discover an incompatibility w=
ith
it. If they did not we should never have discovered them. If on the other h=
and
they are so incompatible with fact as to endanger the lives of the beings
labouring under such infirmities, they would tend to be eliminated from amo=
ng
our defects.
The presumption to
which biological science brings one is that the senses and mind will work as
well as the survival of the species may require, but that they will not wor=
k so
very much better. There is no ground in matter-of-fact experience for assum=
ing
that there is any more inevitable certitude about purely intellectual
operations than there is about sensory perceptions. The mind of a man may be
primarily only a food-seeking, danger-avoiding, mate-finding instrument, ju=
st
as the mind of a dog is, just as the nose of a dog is, or the snout of a pi=
g.
You see the strong
preparatory reason there is in this view of life for entertaining the
suppositions that:--
The senses seem s=
urer
than they are.
The thinking mind
seems clearer than it is and is more positive than it ought to be.
The world of fact=
is
not what it appears to be.
1.5. THE CLASSIFICATORY
ASSUMPTION.
After I had studi=
ed
science and particularly biological science for some years, I became a teac=
her
in a school for boys. I found it necessary to supplement my untutored
conception of teaching method by a more systematic knowledge of its princip=
les
and methods, and I took the courses for the diplomas of Licentiate and Fell=
ow
of the London College of Preceptors which happened to be convenient for me.
These courses included some of the more elementary aspects of psychology and
logic and set me thinking and reading further. From the first, Logic as it =
was presented
to me impressed me as a system of ideas and methods remote and secluded from
the world of fact in which I lived and with which I had to deal. As it came=
to
me in the ordinary textbooks, it presented itself as the science of inferen=
ce
using the syllogism as its principal instrument. Now I was first struck by =
the
fact that while my teachers in Logic seemed to be assuring me I always thou=
ght
in this form:--
"M is P, S is M,
the method of my
reasoning was almost always in this form:--
"S1 is more or le=
ss P, S2 is very
similar to S1, S2 is very
probably but not certainly more or less P. Let us go o=
n that
assumption and see how it works."
That is to say, I=
was
constantly reasoning by analogy and applying verification. So far from using
the syllogistic form confidently, I habitually distrusted it as anything mo=
re
than a test of consistency in statement. But I found the textbooks of logic
disposed to ignore my customary method of reasoning altogether or to recogn=
ise
it only where S1 and S2 could be lumped together under a common name. Then =
they
put it something after this form as Induction:--
"S1, S2, S3, and =
S4 are
P S1 =
+ S2 +
S3 + S4 +... are all S All S is P.=
"
I looked into the
laws of thought and into the postulates upon which the syllogistic logic is
based, and it slowly became clear to me that from my point of view, the poi=
nt
of view of one who seeks truth and reality, logic assumed a belief in the
objective reality of classification of which my studies in biology and
mineralogy had largely disabused me. Logic, it seemed to me, had taken a co=
mmon
innate error of the mind and had emphasised it in order to develop a system=
of
reasoning that should be exact in its processes. I turned my attention to t=
he
examination of that. For in common with the general run of men I had suppos=
ed
that logic professed to supply a trustworthy science and method for the inv=
estigation
and expression of reality.
A mind nourished =
on
anatomical study is of course permeated with the suggestion of the vagueness
and instability of biological species. A biological species is quite obviou=
sly
a great number of unique individuals which is separable from other biologic=
al
species only by the fact that an enormous number of other linking individua=
ls
are inaccessible in time--are in other words dead and gone--and each new
individual in that species does, in the distinction of its own individualit=
y,
break away in however infinitesimal degree from the previous average proper=
ties
of the species. There is no property of any species, even the properties th=
at
constitute the specific definition, that is not a matter of more or less.
If, for example, =
as
species be distinguished by a single large red spot on the back, you will f=
ind
if you go over a great number of specimens that red spot shrinking here to
nothing, expanding there to a more general redness, weakening to pink,
deepening to russet and brown, shading into crimson, and so on and so on. A=
nd
this is true not only of biological species. It is true of the mineral
specimens constituting a mineral species, and I remember as a constant refr=
ain
in the lectures of Professor Judd upon rock classification, the words,
"they pass into one another by insensible gradations." It is true=
, I
hold, of all things.
You will think
perhaps of atoms of the elements as instances of identically similar things,
but these are things not of experience but of theory, and there is not a
phenomenon in chemistry that is not equally well explained on the suppositi=
on
that it is merely the immense quantities of atoms necessarily taken in any
experiment that masks by the operation of the law of averages the fact that
each atom also has its unique quality, its special individual difference.
This ideal of
uniqueness in all individuals is not only true of the classifications of
material science; it is true and still more evidently true of the species of
common thought; it is true of common terms. Take the word "Chair."
When one says chair, one thinks vaguely of an average chair. But collect
individual instances; think of armchairs and reading-chairs and dining-room
chairs, and kitchen chairs, chairs that pass into benches, chairs that cross
the boundary and become settees, dentist's chairs, thrones, opera stalls, s=
eats
of all sorts, those miraculous fungoid growths that cumber the floor of the
Arts and Crafts exhibition, and you will perceive what a lax bundle in fact=
is
this simple straightforward term. In co-operation with an intelligent joine=
r I
would undertake to defeat any definition of chair or chairishness that you =
gave
me. Chairs just as much as individual organisms, just as much as mineral and
rock specimens, are unique things--if you know them well enough you will fi=
nd
an individual difference even in a set of machine-made chairs--and it is on=
ly
because we do not possess minds of unlimited capacity, because our brain has
only a limited number of pigeon-holes for our correspondence with an unlimi=
ted
universe of objective uniques, that we have to delude ourselves into the be=
lief
that there is a chairishness in this species common to and distinctive of a=
ll chairs.
Classification and
number, which in truth ignore the fine differences of objective realities, =
have
in the past of human thought been imposed upon things...
Greek thought
impresses me as being over much obsessed by an objective treatment of certa=
in
necessary preliminary conditions of human thought--number and definition and
class and abstract form! But these things,--number, definition, class and
abstract form,--I hold, are merely unavoidable conditions of mental
activity--regrettable conditions rather than essential facts. THE FORCEPS OF
OUR MINDS ARE CLUMSY FORCEPS AND CRUSH THE TRUTH A LITTLE IN TAKING HOLD OF
IT...
Let me give you a
rough figure of what I am trying to convey in this first attack upon the
philosophical validity of general terms. You have seen the result of those
various methods of black and white reproduction that involve the use of a
rectangular net. You know the sort of process picture I mean--it used to be
employed very frequently in reproducing photographs. At a little distance y=
ou
really seem to have a faithful reproduction of the original picture, but wh=
en
you peer closely you find not the unique form and masses of the original, b=
ut a
multitude of little rectangles, uniform in shape and size. The more earnest=
ly
you go into the thing, the closelier you look, the more the picture is lost=
in
reticulations. I submit, the world of reasoned inquiry has a very similar
relation to the world of fact. For the rough purposes of every day the netw=
ork
picture will do, but the finer your purpose the less it will serve, and for=
an
ideally fine purpose, for absolute and general knowledge that will be as tr=
ue
for a man at a distance with a telescope as for a man with a microscope, it
will not serve at all.
It is true you can
make your net of logical interpretation finer and finer, you can fine your
classification more and more--up to a certain limit. But essentially you are
working in limits, and as you come closer, as you look at finer and subtler
things, as you leave the practical purpose for which the method exists, the
element of error increases. Every species is vague, every term goes cloudy =
at
its edges; and so in my way of thinking, relentless logic is only another n=
ame
for a stupidity--for a sort of intellectual pigheadedness. If you push a
philosophical or metaphysical inquiry through a series of valid syllogisms-=
-never
committing any generally recognised fallacy--you nevertheless leave behind =
you
at each step a certain rubbing and marginal loss of objective truth, and you
get deflections that are difficult to trace at each phase in the process. E=
very
species waggles about in its definition, every tool is a little loose in its
handle, every scale has its individual error. So long as you are reasoning =
for practical
purposes about finite things of experience you can every now and then check
your process and correct your adjustments. But not when you make what are
called philosophical and theological inquiries, when you turn your implement
towards the final absolute truth of things.
This real vaguene=
ss
of class terms is equally true whether we consider those terms used extensi=
vely
or intensively, that is to say whether in relation to all the members of the
species or in relation to an imaginary typical specimen. The logician begin=
s by
declaring that S is either P or not P. In the world of fact it is the rarest
thing to encounter this absolute alternative; S1 is pink, but S2 is pinker,=
S3
is scarcely pink at all, and one is in doubt whether S4 is not properly to =
be
called scarlet. The finest type specimen you can find simply has the charac=
teristic
quality a little more rather than a little less. The neat little circles the
logician uses to convey his idea of P or not P to the student are just pict=
ures
of boundaries in his mind, exaggerations of a natural mental tendency. They=
are
required for the purposes of his science, but they are departures from the
nature of fact.
Classes in logic =
are
not only represented by circles with a hard firm outline, whereas in fact t=
hey
have no such definite limits, but also there is a constant disposition to t=
hink
of all names as if they represented positive classes. With words just as wi=
th
numbers and abstract forms there have been definite phases of human
development. There was with regard to number, the phase when man could bare=
ly
count at all, or counted in perfect good faith and sanity upon his fingers.=
Then
there was the phase when he struggled with the development of number, when =
he
began to elaborate all sorts of ideas about numbers, until at last he devel=
oped
complex superstitions about perfect numbers and imperfect numbers, about th=
rees
and sevens and the like. The same was the case with abstract forms; and even
to-day we are scarcely more than heads out of the vast subtle muddle of
thinking about spheres and ideally perfect forms and so on, that was the pr=
ice
of this little necessary step to clear thinking. How large a part numerical=
and
geometrical magic, numerical and geometrical philosophy have played in the
history of the mind! And the whole apparatus of language and mental communi=
cation
is beset with like dangers. The language of the savage is I suppose purely
positive; the thing has a name, the name has a thing. This indeed is the
tradition of language, and even to-day, we, when we hear a name are
predisposed--and sometimes it is a very vicious disposition--to imagine
forthwith something answering to the name. WE ARE DISPOSED, AS AN INCURABLE
MENTAL VICE, TO ACCUMULATE INTENSION IN TERMS. If I say to you Wodget or Cr=
ump,
you find yourself passing over the fact that these are nothings, these are,=
so
to speak mere blankety blanks, and trying to think what sort of thing a Wod=
get
or a Crump may be. You find yourself led insensibly by subtle associations =
of
sound and ideas to giving these blank terms attributes.
Now this is true =
not
only of quite empty terms but of terms that carry a meaning. It is a mental
necessity that we should make classes and use general terms, and as soon as=
we
do that we fall into immediate danger of unjustifiably increasing the inten=
sion
of these terms. You will find a large proportion of human prejudice and
misunderstanding arises from this universal proclivity.
There is a partic=
ular
sort of empty terms that has been and is conspicuously dangerous to the
thinker, the class of negative terms. The negative term is in plain fact ju=
st
nothing; "Not-A" is the absence of any trace of the quality that
constitutes A, it is the rest of everything for ever. But there seems to be=
a
real bias in the mind towards regarding "Not-A" as a thing
mysteriously in the nature of A, as though "Not-A" and A were spe=
cies
of the same genus. When one speaks of Not-pink one is apt to think of green
things and yellow things and to ignore anger or abstract nouns or the sound=
of
thunder. And logicians, following the normal bias of the mind, do actually
present A and not-A in this sort of diagram:--
(the letter A ins=
ide
a circular boundary, together with the words Not A, all inside a bigger
circular boundary.)
ignoring altogeth=
er
the difficult case of the space in which these words are printed. Obviously=
the
diagram that comes nearer experienced fact is:--
(the word Not,
followed by the letter A inside a circular boundary, followed by the letter=
A)
with no outer
boundary. But the logician finds it necessary for his processes to present =
that
outer Not-A as bounded (Vide e.g. Kayne's "Formal Logic" re Euler=
's
diagrams and Immediate Inferences.), and to speak of the total area of A and
Not-A as the Universe of Discourse; and the metaphysician and the commonsen=
se
thinker alike fall far too readily into the belief that this convention of
method is an adequate representation of fact.
Let me try and
express how in my mind this matter of negative terms has shaped itself. I t=
hink
of something which I may perhaps best describe as being off the stage or ou=
t of
court, or as the Void without Implications, or as Nothingness, or as Outer
Darkness. This is a sort of hypothetical Beyond to the visible world of hum=
an
thought, and thither I think all negative terms reach at last, and merge and
become nothing. Whatever positive class you make, whatever boundary you dra=
w,
straight away from that boundary begins the corresponding negative class an=
d passes
into the illimitable horizon of nothingness. You talk of pink things, you
ignore, as the arbitrary postulates of Logic direct, the more elusive shade=
s of
pink, and draw your line. Beyond is the not-pink, known and knowable, and s=
till
in the not-pink region one comes to the Outer Darkness. Not blue, not happy,
not iron, all the NOT classes meet in that Outer Darkness. That same Outer
Darkness and nothingness is infinite space and infinite time and any being =
of
infinite qualities; and all that region I rule out of court in my philosophy
altogether. I will neither affirm nor deny if I can help it about any NOT t=
hings.
I will not deal with not things at all, except by accident and inadvertence=
. If
I use the word "infinite" I use it as one often uses
"countless," "the countless hosts of the enemy"--or &qu=
ot;immeasurable"--"immeasurable
cliffs"--that is to say as the limit of measurement, as a convenient
equivalent to as many times this cloth yard as you can, and as many again, =
and
so on and so on until you and your numerical system are beaten to a standst=
ill.
Now a great numbe=
r of
apparently positive terms are, or have become, practically negative terms a=
nd
are under the same ban with me. A considerable number of terms that have pl=
ayed
a great part in the world of thought, seem to me to be invalidated by this =
same
defect, to have no content or an undefined content or an unjustifiable cont=
ent.
For example, that word Omniscient, as implying infinite knowledge, impresse=
s me
as being a word with a delusive air of being solid and full, when it is rea=
lly
hollow with no content whatever. I am persuaded that knowing is the relatio=
n of
a conscious being to something not itself, that the thing known is defined =
as a
system of parts and aspects and relationships, that knowledge is comprehens=
ion,
and so that only finite things can know or be known. When you talk of a bei=
ng
of infinite extension and infinite duration, omniscient and omnipotent and
perfect, you seem to me to be talking in negatives of nothing whatever.
1.8. LOGIC STATIC AND LIFE
KINETIC.
There is another
infirmity of the mind to which my attention has been called by an able paper
read this spring to the Cambridge Moral Science Club by my friend Miss Amber
Reeves. In this she has developed a suggestion of Mr. F.C.S. Schiller's. The
current syllogistic logic rests on the assumption that either A is B or it =
is
not B. The practical reality, she contends, is that nothing is permanent; A=
is
always becoming more or less B or ceasing to be more or less B. But it woul=
d seem
the human mind cannot manage with that. It has to hold a thing still for a
moment before it can think it. It arrests the present moment for its strugg=
le
as Joshua stopped the sun. It cannot contemplate things continuously, and s=
o it
has to resort to a series of static snapshots. It has to kill motion in ord=
er
to study it, as a naturalist kills and pins out a butterfly in order to stu=
dy
life.
You see the mind =
is
really pigeon-holed and discontinuous in two respects, in respect to time a=
nd
in respect to classification; whereas one has a strong persuasion that the
world of fact is unbounded or continuous.
1.9. PLANES AND DIALECTS =
OF
THOUGHT.
Finally; the
Logician, intent upon perfecting the certitudes of his methods rather than =
upon
expressing the confusing subtleties of truth, has done little to help think=
ing
men in the perpetual difficulty that arises from the fact that the universe=
can
be seen in many different fashions and expressed by many different systems =
of
terms, each expression within its limits true and yet incommensurable with =
expression
upon a differing system. There is a sort of stratification in human ideas. I
have it very much in mind that various terms in our reasoning lie, as it we=
re,
at different levels and in different planes, and that we accomplish a large
amount of error and confusion by reasoning terms together that do not lie or
nearly lie in the same plane.
Let me endeavour =
to
make myself a little less obscure by a flagrant instance from physical thin=
gs.
Suppose some one began to talk seriously of a man seeing an atom through a
microscope, or better perhaps of cutting one in half with a knife. There ar=
e a
number of non-analytical people who would be quite prepared to believe that=
an
atom could be visible to the eye or cut in this manner. But any one at all
conversant with physical conceptions would almost as soon think of killing =
the square
root of 2 with a rook rifle as of cutting an atom in half with a knife. One=
's
conception of an atom is reached through a process of hypothesis and analys=
is,
and in the world of atoms there are no knives and no men to cut. If you have
thought with a strong consistent mental movement, then when you have though=
t of
your atom under the knife blade, your knife blade has itself become a cloud=
of
swinging grouped atoms, and your microscope lens a little universe of
oscillatory and vibratory molecules. If you think of the universe, thinking=
at
the level of atoms, there is neither knife to cut, scale to weigh, nor eye =
to
see. The universe at that plane to which the mind of the molecular physicis=
t descends
has none of the shapes or forms of our common life whatever. This hand with
which I write is, in the universe of molecular physics, a cloud of warring
atoms and molecules, combining and recombining, colliding, rotating, flying
hither and thither in the universal atmosphere of ether.
You see, I hope, =
what
I mean when I say that the universe of molecular physics is at a different
level from the universe of common experience;--what we call stable and soli=
d is
in that world a freely moving system of interlacing centres of force, what =
we
call colour and sound is there no more than this length of vibration of tha=
t.
We have reached to a conception of that universe of molecular physics by a
great enterprise of organised analysis, and our universe of daily experienc=
es stands
in relation to that elemental world as if it were a synthesis of those
elemental things.
I would suggest to
you that this is only a very extreme instance of the general state of affai=
rs,
that there may be finer and subtler differences of level between one term a=
nd
another, and that terms may very well be thought of as lying obliquely and =
as
being twisted through different levels.
It will perhaps g=
ive
a clearer idea of what I am seeking to convey if I suggest a concrete image=
for
the whole world of a man's thought and knowledge. Imagine a large clear jel=
ly,
in which at all angles and in all states of simplicity or contortion his id=
eas
are imbedded. They are all valid and possible ideas as they lie, none
incompatible with any. If you imagine the direction of up or down in this c=
lear
jelly being as it were the direction in which one moves by analysis or
synthesis, if you go down for example from matter to atoms and centres of f=
orce
and up to men and states and countries--if you will imagine the ideas lying=
in
that manner--you will get the beginnings of my intention. But our instrumen=
t,
our process of thinking, like a drawing before the discovery of perspective,
appears to have difficulties with the third dimension, appears capable only=
of
dealing with or reasoning about ideas by projecting them upon the same plan=
e.
It will be obvious that a great multitude of things may very well exist
together in a solid jelly, which would be overlapping and incompatible and
mutually destructive when projected together upon one plane. Through the bi=
as
in our instrument to do this, through reasoning between terms not in the sa=
me
plane, an enormous amount of confusion, perplexity, and mental deadlocking
occurs.
The old theologic=
al
deadlock between predestination and free will serves admirably as an exampl=
e of
the sort of deadlock I mean. Take life at the level of common sensation and
common experience and there is no more indisputable fact than man's freedom=
of
will, unless it is his complete moral responsibility. But make only the lea=
st
penetrating of scientific analyses and you perceive a world of inevitable
consequences, a rigid succession of cause and effect. Insist upon a flat
agreement between the two, and there you are! The instrument fails.
So far as this
particular opposition is concerned, I shall point out later the reasonablen=
ess
and convenience of regarding the common-sense belief in free will as truer =
for
one's personal life than determinism.
1.10. PRACTICAL CONCLUSIO=
NS
FROM THESE CONSIDERATIONS.
Now what is the
practical outcome of all these criticisms of the human mind? Does it follow
that thought is futile and discussion vain? By no means. Rather these
considerations lead us toward mutual understanding. They clear up the deadl=
ocks
that come from the hard and fast use of terms, they establish mutual charit=
y as
an intellectual necessity. The common way of speech and thought which the o=
ld
system of logic has simply systematized, is too glib and too presumptuous of
certainty. We must needs use language, but we must use it always with the
thought in our minds of its unreal exactness, its actual habitual deflection
from fact. All propositions are approximations to an elusive truth, and we =
employ
them as the mathematician studies the circle by supposing it to be a polygo=
n of
a very great number of sides.
We must make use =
of terms
and sometimes of provisional terms. But we must guard against such terms and
the mental danger of excessive intension they carry with them. The child ta=
kes
a stick and says it is a sword and does not forget, he takes a shadow under=
the
bed and says it is a bear and he half forgets. The man takes a set of emoti=
ons
and says it is a God, and he gets excited and propagandist and does forget;=
he
is involved in disputes and confusions with the old gods of wood and stone,=
and
presently he is making his God a Great White Throne and fitting him up with=
a
mystical family.
Essentially we ha=
ve
to train our minds to think anew, if we are to think beyond the purposes for
which the mind seems to have been evolved. We have to disabuse ourselves fr=
om
the superstition of the binding nature of definitions and the exactness of
logic. We have to cure ourselves of the natural tricks of common thought and
argument. You know the way of it, how effective and foolish it is; the
quotation of the exact statement of which every jot and tittle must be
maintained, the challenge to be consistent, the deadlock between your terms=
and
mine.
More and more as I
grow older and more settled in my views am I bored by common argument, bored
not because I am ceasing to be interested in the things argued about, but
because I see more and more clearly the futility of the methods pursued.
How then are we to
think and argue and what truth may we attain? Is not the method of the
scientific investigator a valid one, and is there not truth to the world of
fact in scientific laws? Decidedly there is. And the continual revision and
testing against fact that these laws get is constantly approximating them m=
ore
and more nearly to a trustworthy statement of fact. Nevertheless they are n=
ever
true in that dogmatic degree in which they seem true to the unphilosophical
student of science. Accepting as I do the validity of nearly all the genera=
l propositions
of modern science, I have constantly to bear in mind that about them too cl=
ings
the error of excessive claims to precision.
The man trained
solely in science falls easily into a superstitious attitude; he is overdone
with classification. He believes in the possibility of exact knowledge
everywhere. What is not exact he declares is not knowledge. He believes in
specialists and experts in all fields.
I dispute this
universal range of possible scientific precision. There is, I allege, a not=
too
clearly recognised order in the sciences which forms the gist of my case
against this scientific pretension. There is a gradation in the importance =
of
the individual instance as one passes from mechanics and physics and chemis=
try
through the biological sciences to economics and sociology, a gradation who=
se
correlations and implications have not yet received adequate recognition, a=
nd
which does profoundly affect the method of study and research in each scien=
ce.
Let me repeat in
slightly altered terms some of the points raised in the preceding sections.=
I
have doubted and denied that there are identically similar objective experi=
ences;
I consider all objective beings as individual and unique. It is now underst=
ood
that conceivably only in the subjective world, and in theory and the
imagination, do we deal with identically similar units, and with absolutely
commensurable quantities. In the real world it is reasonable to suppose we =
deal
at most with PRACTICALLY similar units and PRACTICALLY commensurable
quantities. But there is a strong bias, a sort of labour-saving bias, in the
normal human mind, to ignore this, and not only to speak but to think of a =
thousand
bricks or a thousand sheep or a thousand Chinamen as though they were all
absolutely true to sample. If it is brought before a thinker for a moment t=
hat
in any special case this is not so, he slips back to the old attitude as so=
on
as his attention is withdrawn. This type of error has, for instance, caught
many of the race of chemists, and ATOMS and IONS and so forth of the same
species are tacitly assumed to be similar to one another.
Be it noted that,=
so
far as the practical results of chemistry and physics go, it scarcely matte=
rs
which assumption we adopt, the number of units is so great, the individual
difference so drowned and lost. For purposes of enquiry and discussion the
incorrect one is infinitely more convenient.
But this ceases t=
o be
true directly we emerge from the region of chemistry and physics. In the
biological sciences of the eighteenth century, common-sense struggled hard =
to
ignore individuality in shells and plants and animals. There was an attempt=
to
eliminate the more conspicuous departures as abnormalities, as sports, natu=
re's
weak moments; and it was only with the establishment of Darwin's great gene=
ralizations
that the hard and fast classificatory system broke down and individuality c=
ame
to its own. Yet there had always been a clearly felt difference between the
conclusions of the biological sciences and those dealing with lifeless
substance, in the relative vagueness, the insubordinate looseness and
inaccuracy of the former. The naturalist accumulated facts and multiplied
names, but he did not go triumphantly from generalization to generalization
after the fashion of the chemist or physicist. It is easy to see, therefore,
how it came about that the inorganic sciences were regarded as the true
scientific bed-rock. It was scarcely suspected that the biological sciences
might perhaps after all be TRUER than the experimental, in spite of the
difference in practical value in favour of the latter. It was, and is by the
great majority of people to this day, supposed to be the latter that are
invincibly true; and the former are regarded as a more complex set of probl=
ems
merely, with obliquities and refractions that presently will be explained a=
way.
Comte and Herbert Spencer certainly seem to me to have taken that much for
granted. Herbert Spencer no doubt talked of the unknown and unknowable, but=
not
in this sense as an element of inexactness running through all things. He
thought, it seems to me, of the unknown as the indefinable Beyond of an
immediate world that might be quite clearly and definitely known.
There is a growing
body of people which is beginning to hold the converse view--that counting,
classification, measurement, the whole fabric of mathematics, is subjective=
and
untrue to the world of fact, and that the uniqueness of individuals is the
objective truth. As the number of units taken diminishes, the amount of var=
iety
and inexactness of generalization increases, because individuality tells for
more and more. Could you take men by the thousand billion, you could genera=
lize
about them as you do about atoms; could you take atoms singly, it may be th=
at
you would find them as individual as your aunts and cousins. That concisely=
is
the minority belief, and my belief.
Now what is called
the scientific method in the physical sciences rests upon the ignoring of
individualities; and like many mathematical conventions, its great practical
convenience is no proof whatever of its final truth. Let me admit the enorm=
ous
value, the wonder of its results in mechanics, in all the physical sciences=
, in
chemistry, even in physiology,--but what is its value beyond that? Is the
scientific method of value in biology? The great advances made by Darwin and
his school in biology were not made, it must be remembered, by the scientif=
ic
method, as it is generally conceived, at all. His was historical research. =
He
conducted research into pre-documentary history. He collected information a=
long
the lines indicated by certain interrogations; and the bulk of his work was=
the
digesting and critical analysis of that. For documents and monuments he had
fossils and anatomical structures and germinating eggs too innocent to lie.
But, on the other hand, he had to correspond with breeders and travellers of
various sorts; classes entirely analogous, from the point of view of eviden=
ce,
to the writers of history and memoirs. I question profoundly whether the wo=
rd
"science," in current usage anyhow, ever means such patient disen=
tanglement
as Darwin pursued. It means the attainment of something positive and emphat=
ic
in the way of a conclusion, based on amply repeated experiments capable of
infinite repetition, "proved," as they say, "up to the
hilt."
It would be of co=
urse
possible to dispute whether the word "science" should convey this
quality of certitude, but to most people it certainly does at the present t=
ime.
So far as the movements of comets and electric trams go, there is no doubt
practically cock-sure science; and Comte and Herbert Spencer seem to me to =
have
believed that cock-sure could be extended to every conceivable finite thing.
The fact that Herbert Spencer called a certain doctrine Individualism refle=
cts
nothing on the non-individualizing quality of his primary assumptions and of
his mental texture. He believed that individuality (heterogeneity) was and =
is
an evolutionary product from an original homogeneity, begotten by folding a=
nd
multiplying and dividing and twisting it, and still fundamentally IT. It se=
ems
to me that the general usage is entirely for the limitation of the word
"science" to knowledge and the search after knowledge of a high
degree of precision. And not simply the general usage; "Science is mea=
surement,"
Science is "organized commonsense," proud in fact of its essential
error, scornful of any metaphysical analysis of its terms.
Now my contention=
is
that we can arrange the fields of human thought and interest about the worl=
d of
fact in a sort of scale. At one end the number of units is infinite and the
methods exact, at the other we have the human subjects in which there is no
exactitude. The science of society stands at the extreme end of the scale f=
rom
the molecular sciences. In these latter there is an infinitude of units; in
sociology, as Comte perceived, there is only one unit. It is true that Herb=
ert Spencer,
in order to get classification somehow, did, as Professor Durkheim has poin=
ted
out, separate human society into societies, and made believe they competed =
one
with another and died and reproduced just like animals, and that economists
following List have for the purposes of fiscal controversy discovered econo=
mic
types; but this is a transparent device, and one is surprised to find
thoughtful and reputable writers off their guard against such bad analogy. =
But
indeed it is impossible to isolate complete communities of men, or to trace=
any
but rude general resemblances between group and group. These alleged units =
have
as much individuality as pieces of cloud; they come, they go, they fuse and
separate. And we are forced to conclude that not only is the method of obse=
rvation,
experiment, and verification left far away down the scale, but that the met=
hod
of classification under types, which has served so useful a purpose in the
middle group of subjects, the subjects involving numerous but a finite numb=
er
of units, has also to be abandoned in social science. We cannot put Humanity
into a museum or dry it for examination; our one single still living specim=
en
is all history, all anthropology, and the fluctuating world of men. There i=
s no
satisfactory means of dividing it, and nothing else in the real world with
which to compare it. We have only the remotest ideas of its "life-cycl=
e"
and a few relics of its origin and dreams of its destiny.
This denial of
scientific precision is true of all questions of general human relations and
attitude. And in regard to all these matters affecting our personal motives,
our self-control and our devotions, it is much truer.
From this it is an
easy step to the statement that so far as the clear-cut confident sort of
knowledge goes, the sort of knowledge one gets from a time-table or a text-=
book
of chemistry, or seeks from a witness in a police court, I am, in relation =
to
religious and moral questions an agnostic. I do not think any general
propositions partaking largely of the nature of fact can be known about the=
se
things. There is nothing possessing the general validity of fact to be stat=
ed
or known.
Yet it is of urge=
nt
practical necessity that we should have such propositions and beliefs. All
those we conjure out of our mental apparatus and the world of fact dissolve=
and
disappear again under scrutiny. It is clear we must resort to some other me=
thod
for these necessities.
Now I make my bel=
iefs
as I want them. I do not attempt to distil them out of fact as physicists d=
istil
their laws. I make them thus and not thus exactly as an artist makes a pict=
ure
so and not so. I believe that is how we all make our beliefs, but that many
people do not see this clearly and confuse their beliefs with perceived and
proven fact.
I draw my beliefs
exactly as an artist draws lines to make a picture, to express my impressio=
n of
the world and my purpose.
The artist cannot
defend his expression as a scientific man defends his, and demonstrate that
they are true upon any assumptions whatsoever. Any loud fool may stand in f=
ront
of a picture and call it inaccurate, untrustworthy, unbeautiful. That last,=
the
most vital issue of all, is the one least assured. Loud fools always do do =
that
sort of thing. Take quite ignorant people before almost any beautiful work =
of
art and they will laugh at it as absurd. If one sits on a popular evening in
that long room at South Kensington which contains Raphael's cartoons, one r=
emarks
that perhaps a third of those who stray through and look at all those fine
efforts, titter. If one searches in the magazines of a little while ago, one
finds in the angry and resentful reception of the Pre-Raphaelites another
instance of the absolutely indefensible nature of many of the most beautiful
propositions. And as a still more striking and remarkable case, take the
onslaught made by Ruskin upon the works of Whistler. You will remember that=
a
libel action ensued and that these pictures were gravely reasoned about by
barristers and surveyed by jurymen to assess their merits...
In the end it is =
the
indefensible truth that lasts; it lasts because it works and serves. People
come to it and remain and attract other understanding and enquiring people.=
Now when I say I =
make
my beliefs and that I cannot prove them to you and convince you of them, th=
at
does not mean that I make them wantonly and regardless of fact, that I throw
them off as a child scribbles on a slate. Mr. Ruskin, if I remember rightly,
accused Whistler of throwing a pot of paint in the face of the public,--that
was the essence of his libel. The artistic method in this field of beliefs,=
as
in the field of visual renderings, is one of great freedom and initiative a=
nd
great poverty of test, but of no wantonness; the conditions of rightness ar=
e none
the less imperative because they are mysterious and indefinable. I adopt
certain beliefs because I feel the need for them, because I feel an often q=
uite
unanalyzable rightness in them; because the alternative of a chaotic life
distresses me. My belief in them rests upon the fact that they WORK for me =
and
satisfy my desire for harmony and beauty. They are arbitrary assumptions, if
you will, that I see fit to impose upon my universe.
But though they a=
re
arbitrary, they are not necessarily individual. Just so far as we all have a
common likeness, just so far can we be brought under the same imperatives to
think and believe.
And though they a=
re
arbitrary, each day they stand wear and tear, and each new person they sati=
sfy,
is another day and another voice towards showing they do correspond to
something that is so far fact and real.
This is Pragmatis=
m as
I conceive it; the abandonment of infinite assumptions, the extension of the
experimental spirit to all human interests.
In concluding this
first Book let me give a summary of the principal points of what has gone
before.
I figure the mind=
of
man as an imperfect being obtaining knowledge by imperfect eyesight, imperf=
ect
hearing and so forth; who must needs walk manfully and patiently, exercising
will and making choices and determining things between the mysteries of
external and internal fact.
Essentially man's
mind moves within limits depending upon his individual character and
experience. These limits constitute what Herbart called his "circle of
thought," and they differ for everyone.
That briefly is w=
hat
I consider to be the case with my own mind, and I believe it is the case wi=
th
everyone's.
Most minds, it se=
ems
to me, are similar, but none are absolutely alike in character or in conten=
ts.
We are all biasse=
d to
ignore our mental imperfections and to talk and act as though our minds were
exact instruments,--something wherewith to scale the heavens with
assurance,--and also we are biassed to believe that, except for perversity,=
all
our minds work exactly alike.
Man, thinking man,
suffers from intellectual over-confidence and a vain belief in the universal
validity of reasoning.
We all need train=
ing,
training in the balanced attitude.
Of everything we =
need
to say: this is true but it is not quite true.
Of everything we =
need
to say: this is true in relation to things in or near its plane, but not tr=
ue
of other things.
Of everything we =
have
to remember: this may be truer for us than for other people.
In disputation
particularly we have to remember this (and most with our antagonist): that =
the
spirit of an utterance may be better than the phrase.
We have to discou=
rage
the cheap tricks of controversy, the retort, the search for inconsistency. =
We
have to realize that these things are as foolish and ill-bred and anti-soci=
al
as shouting in conversation or making puns; and we have to work out habits =
of
thought purged from the sin of assurance. We have to do this for our own go=
od
quite as much as for the sake of intercourse.
All the great and
important beliefs by which life is guided and determined are less of the na=
ture
of fact than of artistic expression.
BOOK THE SECOND -- OF BEL=
IEFS
2.1. MY PRIMARY ACT OF FA=
ITH.
And now having st=
ated
my conception of the true relationship between our thoughts and words to fa=
cts,
having distinguished between the more accurate and frequently verified
propositions of science and the more arbitrary and infrequently verified
propositions of belief, and made clear the spontaneous and artistic quality
that inheres in all our moral and religious generalizations, I may hope to =
go
on to my confession of faith with less misunderstanding.
Now my most
comprehensive belief about the external and the internal and myself is that
they make one universe in which I and every part are ultimately important. =
That
is quite an arbitrary act of my mind. It is quite possible to maintain that
everything is a chaotic assembly, that any part might be destroyed without
affecting any other part. I do not choose to argue against that. If you cho=
ose
to say that, I am no more disposed to argue with you than if you choose to =
wear
a mitre in Fleet Street or drink a bottle of ink, or declare the figure of =
Ally
Sloper more dignified and beautiful than the head of Jove. There is no Q.E.=
D. that
you cannot do so. You can. You will not like to go on with it, I think, and=
it
will not answer, but that is a different matter.
I dismiss the idea
that life is chaotic because it leaves my life ineffectual, and I cannot
contemplate an ineffectual life patiently. I am by my nature impelled to re=
fuse
that. I assert that it is not so. I assert therefore that I am important in=
a
scheme, that we are all important in that scheme, that the wheel-smashed fr=
og
in the road and the fly drowning in the milk are important and correlated w=
ith
me. What the scheme as a whole is I do not know; with my limited mind I can=
not know.
There I become a Mystic. I use the word scheme because it is the best word
available, but I strain it in using it. I do not wish to imply a schemer, b=
ut
only order and co-ordination as distinguished from haphazard. "All thi=
s is
important, all this is profoundly significant." I say it of the univer=
se
as a child that has not learnt to read might say it of a parchment agreemen=
t. I
cannot read the universe, but I can believe that this is so.
And this unfounded
and arbitrary declaration of the ultimate rightness and significance of thi=
ngs
I call the Act of Faith. It is my fundamental religious confession. It is a
voluntary and deliberate determination to believe, a choice made.
2.2. ON USING THE NAME OF
GOD.
You may say if you
will that this scheme I talk about, this something that gives importance and
correlation and significance, is what is meant by God. You may embark upon a
logical wrangle here with me if you have failed to master what I have hithe=
rto
said about the meaning of words. If a Scheme, you will say, then there must=
be
a Schemer.
But, I repeat, I =
am
using scheme and importance and significance here only in a spirit of analo=
gy
because I can find no better words, and I will not allow myself to be entan=
gled
by an insistence upon their implications.
Yet let me confess
that I am greatly attracted by such fine phrases as the Will of God, the Ha=
nd
of God, the Great Commander. These do most wonderfully express aspects of t=
his
belief I choose to hold. I think if there had been no gods before, I would =
call
this God. But I feel that there is a great danger in doing this sort of thi=
ng
unguardedly. Many people would be glad for rather trivial and unworthy reas=
ons
that I should confess a faith in God, and few would take offence. But the r=
un of
people even nowadays mean something more and something different when they =
say
"God." They intend a personality exterior to them and limited, and
they will instantly conclude I mean the same thing. To permit that
misconception is, I feel, the first step on the slippery slope of meretrici=
ous
complaisance, is to become in some small measure a successor of those who
cried, "Great is Diana of the Ephesians." Occasionally we may best
serve the God of Truth by denying him.
Yet at times I ad=
mit
the sense of personality in the universe is very strong. If I am confessing=
, I
do not see why I should not confess up to the hilt. At times in the silence=
of
the night and in rare lonely moments, I come upon a sort of communion of my=
self
and something great that is not myself. It is perhaps poverty of mind and
language obliges me to say that then this universal scheme takes on the eff=
ect
of a sympathetic person--and my communion a quality of fearless worship. Th=
ese
moments happen, and they are the supreme fact in my religious life to me, t=
hey
are the crown of my religious experiences.
None the less, I =
do
not usually speak of God even in regard to these moments, and where I do use
that word it must be understood that I use it as a personification of somet=
hing
entirely different in nature from the personality of a human being.
2.3. FREE WILL AND
PREDESTINATION.
And now let me re=
turn
to a point raised in the first Book in Chapter 1.9. Is the whole of this sc=
heme
of things settled and done? The whole trend of Science is to that belief. On
the scientific plane one is a fatalist, the universe a system of inevitable
consequences. But as I show in that section referred to, it is quite possib=
le
to accept as true in their several planes both predestination and free will=
. (I
use free will in the sense of self-determinisn and not as it is defined by
Professor William James, and predestination as equivalent to the conception=
of
a universe rigid in time and space.) If you ask me, I think I should say I
incline to believe in predestination and do quite completely believe in free
will. The important belief is free will.
But does the whole
universe of fact, the external world about me, the mysterious internal world
from which my motives rise, form one rigid and fated system as determinists
teach? Do I believe that, had one a mind ideally clear and powerful, the wh=
ole
universe would seem orderly and absolutely predestined? I incline to that
belief. I do not harshly believe it, but I admit its large plausibility--th=
at
is all. I see no value whatever in jumping to a decision. One or two
Pragmatists, so far as I can understand them, do not hold this view of
predestination at all; but as a provisional assumption it underlies most sc=
ientific
work.
I glance at this
question rather to express a detachment than a view.
For me as a person
this theory of predestination has no practical value. At the utmost it is an
interesting theory like the theory that there is a fourth dimension. There =
may
be a fourth dimension of space, but one gets along quite well by assuming t=
here
are just three. It may be knowable the next time I come to cross roads whic=
h I
shall take. Possibly that knowledge actually exists somewhere. There are th=
ose
who will tell you that they can get intimations in the matter from packs of=
cards
or the palms of my hands, or see by peering into crystals. Of such beliefs =
I am
entirely free. The fact is I believe that neither I know nor anybody else w=
ho
is practically concerned knows which I shall take. I hesitate, I choose jus=
t as
though the thing was unknowable. For me and my conduct there is that much w=
ide
practical margin of freedom.
I am free and fre=
ely
and responsibly making the future--so far as I am concerned. You others are=
equally
free. On that theory I find my life will work, and on a theory of mechanical
predestination nothing works.
I take the former
theory therefore for my everyday purposes, and as a matter of fact so does
everybody else. I regard myself as a free responsible person among free
responsible persons.
2.4. A PICTURE OF THE WOR=
LD
OF MEN.
Now I have already
given a first picture of the world of fact as it shaped itself upon my mind.
Let me now give a second picture of this world in which I find myself, a pi=
cture
in a rather different key and at a different level, in which I turn to a new
set of aspects and bring into the foreground the other minds which are with=
me
in the midst of this great spectacle.
What am I?
Here is a questio=
n to
which in all ages men have sought to give a clear unambiguous answer, and to
which a clear unambiguous answer is manifestly unfitted. Am I my body? Yes =
or
no? It seems to me that I can externalize and think of as "not
myself" nearly everything that pertains to my body, hands and feet, and
even the most secret and central of those living and hidden parts, the puls=
ing
arteries, the throbbing nerves, the ganglionic centres, that no eye, save f=
or
the surgeon's knife has ever seen or ever will see until they coagulate in
decay. So far I am not my body; and then as clearly, since I suffer through=
it,
see the whole world through it and am always to be called upon where it is,=
I
am it. Am I a mind mysteriously linked to this thing of matter and endeavou=
r?
So I can present
myself. I seem to be a consciousness, vague and insecure, placed between two
worlds. One of these worlds seems clearly "not me," the other is =
more
closely identified with me and yet is still imperfectly me. The first I call
the exterior world, and it presents itself to me as existing in Time and Sp=
ace.
In a certain way I seem able to interfere with it and control it. The secon=
d is
the interior world, having no forms in space and only a vague evasive refer=
ence
to time, from which motives arise and storms of emotion, which acts and rea=
cts constantly
and in untraceable way with my conscious mind. And that consciousness itself
hangs and drifts about the region where the inner world and the outer world
meet, much as a patch of limelight drifts about the stage, illuminating, af=
fecting,
following no manifest law except that usually it centres upon the hero, my =
Ego.
It seems to me th=
at
to put the thing much more precisely than this is to depart from the realit=
y of
the matter.
But so departing a
little, let me borrow a phrase from Herbart and identify myself more
particularly with my mental self. It seems to me that I may speak of myself=
as
a circle of thought and experience hung between these two imperfectly
understood worlds of the internal and the external and passing imperceptibly
into the former. The external world impresses me as being, as a practical f=
act,
common to me and many other creatures similar to myself; the internal, I fi=
nd
similar but not identical with theirs. It is MINE. It seems to me at times =
no
more than something cut off from that external world and put into a sort of=
pit
or cave, much as all the inner mystery of my body, those living, writhing, =
warm
and thrilling organs are isolated, hidden from all eyes and interference so
long as I remain alive. And I myself, the essential me, am the light and
watcher in the mouth of the cave.
So I think of mys=
elf,
and so I think of all other human beings, as circles of thought and experie=
nce,
each a little different from the others. Each human being I see as essentia=
lly
a circle of thought between an internal and an external world.
I figure these
circles of thought as more or less imperfectly focussed pictures, all a lit=
tle
askew and vague as to margins and distances. In the internal world arise
motives, and they pass outward through the circle of thought and are modifi=
ed
and directed by it into external acts. And through speech, example, and a
hundred various acts, one such circle, one human mind, lights and enlarges =
and
plays upon another. That is the image under which the interrelation of minds
presents itself to me.
2.5. THE PROBLEM OF MOTIV=
ES
THE REAL PROBLEM OF LIFE.
Now each self amo=
ng
us, for all its fluctuations and vagueness of boundary, is, as I have alrea=
dy
pointed out, invincibly persuaded of Free Will. That is to say, it has a
persuasion of responsible control over the impulses that teem from the inte=
rnal
world and tend to express themselves in act. The problem of that control and
its solution is the reality of life. "What am I to do?" is the
perpetual question of our existence. Our metaphysics, our beliefs are all
sought as subsidiary to that and have no significance without it.
I confess I find
myself a confusion of motives beside which my confusion of perceptions pales
into insignificance.
There are many
various motives and motives very variously estimated--some are called gross,
some sublime, some--such as pride--wicked. I do not readily accept these
classifications.
Many people seem =
to
make a selection among their motives without much enquiry, taking those
classifications as just; they seek to lead what they call pure lives or use=
ful
lives and to set aside whole sets of motives which do not accord with this
determination. Some exclude the seeking of pleasure as a permissible motive,
some the love of beauty; some insist upon one's "being oneself" a=
nd
prohibit or limit responses to exterior opinions. Most of such selections
strike me as wanton and hasty. I decline to dismiss any of my motives at al=
l in
that wholesale way. Just as I believe I am important in the scheme of thing=
s,
so I believe are all my motives. Turning one's back on any set of them seem=
s to
me to savour of the headlong actions of stupidity. To suppress a passion or=
a
curiosity for the sake of suppressing a passion is to my mind just the buri=
al
of a talent that has been entrusted to one's care. One has, I feel, to take=
all
these things as weapons and instruments, material in the service of the sch=
eme;
one has to take them in the end gravely and do right among them unbiassed in
favour of any set. To take some poor appetite and fling it out is to my min=
d a
cheap and unsatisfactory way of simplifying one's moral problems. One has t=
o accept
these things in oneself, I feel--even if one knows them to be dangerous thi=
ngs,
even if one is sure they have an evil side.
Let me, however, =
in
order to express my attitude better, make a rough grouping of the motives I
find in myself and the people about me.
I cannot divide t=
hem
into clearly defined classes, but I may perhaps begin with those that bring=
one
into the widest sympathy with living things and go on to those one shares o=
nly
with highly intelligent and complex human beings.
There come first =
the
desires one shares with those more limited souls the beasts, just as much a=
s one
does with one's fellow man. These are the bodily appetites and the crude
emotions of fear and resentment. These first clamour for attention and must=
be
assuaged or controlled before the other sets come into play.
Now in this matte=
r of
physical appetites I do not know whether to describe myself as a sensualist=
or
an ascetic. If an ascetic is one who suppresses to a minimum all deference =
to
these impulses, then certainly I am not an ascetic; if a sensualist is one =
who
gives himself to heedless gratification, then certainly I am not a sensuali=
st.
But I find myself balanced in an intermediate position by something that I =
will
speak of as the sense of Beauty. This sense of Beauty is something in me wh=
ich
demands not simply gratification but the best and keenest of a sense or
continuance of sense impressions, and which refuses coarse quantitative
assuagements. It ranges all over the senses, and just as I refuse to wholly=
cut
off any of my motives, so do I refuse to limit its use to the plane of the =
eye
or the ear.
It seems to me
entirely just to speak of beauty in matters of scent and taste, to talk not
only of beautiful skies and beautiful sounds but of beautiful beer and
beautiful cheese! The balance as between asceticism and sensuality comes in=
, it
seems to me, if we remember that to drink well one must not have drunken for
some time, that to see well one's eye must be clear, that to make love well=
one
must be fit and gracious and sweet and disciplined from top to toe, that the
finest sense of all--the joyous sense of bodily well-being--comes only with
exercises and restraints and fine living. There I think lies the way of my =
disposition.
I do not want to live in the sensual sty, but I also do not want to scratch=
in
the tub of Diogenes.
But I diverge a l=
ittle
in these comments from my present business of classifying motives.
Next I perceive
hypertrophied in myself and many sympathetic human beings a passion that ma=
ny
animals certainly possess, the beautiful and fearless cousin of fear,
Curiosity, that seeks keenly for knowing and feeling. Apart from appetites =
and
bodily desires and blind impulses, I want most urgently to know and feel, f=
or
the sake of knowing and feeling. I want to go round corners and see what is
there, to cross mountain ranges, to open boxes and parcels. Young animals at
least have that disposition too. For me it is something that mingles with a=
ll
my desires. Much more to me than the desire to live is the desire to taste =
life.
I am not happy until I have done and felt things. I want to get as near as I
can to the thrill of a dog going into a fight or the delight of a bird in t=
he
air. And not simply in the heroic field of war and the air do I want to
understand. I want to know something of the jolly wholesome satisfaction th=
at a
hungry pig must find in its wash. I want to get the quintessence of that.
I do not think th=
at
in this I confess to any unusual temperament. I think that the more closely
mentally animated people scrutinize their motives the less is the importance
they will attach to mere physical and brute urgencies and the more to
curiosity.
Next after curios=
ity
come those desires and motives that one shares perhaps with some social bea=
sts,
but far more so as a conscious thing with men alone. These desires and moti=
ves
all centre on a clearly apprehended "self" in relation to
"others"; they are the essentially egotistical group. They are
self-assertion in all its forms. I have dealt with motives toward gratifica=
tion
and motives towards experience; this set of motives is for the sake of ones=
elf.
Since they are the most acutely conscious motives in unthinking men, there =
is a
tendency on the part of unthinking philosophers to speak of them as though
vanity, self-seeking, self-interest were the only motives. But one has but =
to reflect
on what has gone before to realize that this is not so. One finds these
"self" motives vary with the mental power and training of the
individual; here they are fragmentary and discursive, there drawn tight
together into a coherent scheme. Where they are weak they mingle with the
animal motives and curiosity like travellers in a busy market-place, but wh=
ere
the sense of self is strong they become rulers and regulators, self-seeking
becomes deliberate and sustained in the case of the human being, vanity pas=
ses
into pride.
Here again that
something in the mind so difficult to define, so easy for all who understan=
d to
understand, that something which insists upon a best and keenest, the desire
for beauty, comes into the play of motives. Pride demands a beautiful self =
and
would discipline all other passions to its service. It also demands recogni=
tion
for that beautiful self. Now pride, I know, is denounced by many as the
essential quality of sin. We are taught that "self-abnegation" is=
the
substance of virtue and self-forgetfulness the inseparable quality of right
conduct. But indeed I cannot so dismiss egotism and that pride which was the
first form in which the desire to rule oneself as a whole came to me. Throu=
gh pride
one shapes oneself towards a best, though at first it may be an ill-conceiv=
ed
best. Pride is not always arrogance and aggression. There is that pride that
does not ape but learn humility.
And with the human
imagination all these elementary instincts, of the flesh, of curiosity, of
self-assertion, become only the basal substance of a huge elaborate edifice=
of
secondary motive and intention. We live in a great flood of example and
suggestion, our curiosity and our social quality impel us to a thousand
imitations, to dramatic attitudes and subtly obscure ends. Our pride turns =
this
way and that as we respond to new notes in the world about us. We are arenas
for a conflict between suggestions flung in from all sources, from the most
diverse and essentially incompatible sources. We live long hours and days i=
n a kind
of dream, negligent of self-interest, our elementary passions in abeyance,
among these derivative things.
Such it seems to =
me
are the chief masses of the complex of motives in us, the group of sense, t=
he
group of pride, curiosity and the imitative and suggested motives, making up
the system of impulses which is our will. Such has been the common outfit of
motives in every age, and in every age its melee has been found insufficien=
t in
itself. It is a heterogeneous system, it does not form in any sense a compl=
eted
or balanced system, its constituents are variable and compete amongst thems=
elves.
They are not so much arranged about one another as superposed and
higgledy-piggledy. The senses and curiosity war with pride and one another,=
the
motives suggested to us fall into conflict with this element or that of our
intimate and habitual selves. We find all our instincts are snares to exces=
s.
Excesses of indulgence lead to excesses of abstinence, and even the sense of
beauty may be clouded and betray. So to us all, even for the most balanced =
of
us, come disappointments, regrets, gaps; and for most of us who are
ill-balanced, miseries and despairs. Nearly all of us want something to hol=
d us
together--something to dominate this swarming confusion and save us from the
black misery of wounded and exploded pride, of thwarted desire, of futile
conclusions. We want more oneness, some steadying thing that will afford an
escape from fluctuations.
Different people,=
of
differing temperament and tradition, have sought oneness, this steadying and
universalizing thing, in various manners. Some have attained it in this man=
ner,
and some in that. Scarcely a religious system has existed that has not work=
ed
effectively and proved true for someone. To me it seems that the need is
synthetic, that some synthetic idea and belief is needed to harmonize one's
life, to give a law by which motive may be tried against motive and an
effectual peace of mind achieved. I want an active peace and not a quiescen=
ce,
and I do not want to suppress and expel any motive at all. But to many peop=
le
the effort takes the form of attempts to cut off some part of oneself as it
were, to repudiate altogether some straining or distressing or disappointing
factor in the scheme of motives, and find a tranquillizing refuge in the
residuum. So we have men and women abandoning their share in economic
development, crushing the impulses and evading the complications that arise=
out
of sex and flying to devotions and simple duties in nunneries and monasteri=
es;
we have people cutting their lives down to a vegetarian dietary and scienti=
fic
research, resorting to excesses of self-discipline, giving themselves up wh=
olly
to some "art" and making everything else subordinate to that, or,
going in another direction, abandoning pride and love in favour of an acqui=
red
appetite for drugs or drink.
Now it seems to me
that this desire to get the confused complex of life simplified is essentia=
lly
what has been called the religious motive, and that the manner in which a m=
an
achieves that simplification, if he does achieve it, and imposes an order u=
pon
his life, is his religion. I find in the scheme of conversion and salvation=
as
it is presented by many Christian sects, a very exact statement of the ment=
al processes
I am trying to express. In these systems this discontent with the complexit=
y of
life upon which religion is based, is called the conviction of sin, and it =
is
the first phase in the process of conversion--of finding salvation. It leads
through distress and confusion to illumination, to the act of faith and pea=
ce.
And after peace c=
omes
the beginning of right conduct. If you believe and you are saved, you will =
want
to behave well, you will do your utmost to behave well and to understand wh=
at
is behaving well, and you will feel neither shame nor disappointment when a=
fter
all you fail. You will say then: "so it is failure I had to achieve.&q=
uot;
And you will not feel bitterly because you seem unsuccessful beside others =
or
because you are misunderstood or unjustly treated, you will not bear malice=
nor
cherish anger nor seek revenge, you will never turn towards suicide as a re=
lief
from intolerable things; indeed there will be no intolerable things. You wi=
ll
have peace within you.
But if you do not
truly believe and are not saved, you will know it because you will still su=
ffer
the conflict of motives; and in regrets, confusions, remorses and disconten=
ts,
you will suffer the penalties of the unbeliever and the lost. You will know
certainly your own salvation.
I will boldly ado=
pt
the technicalities of the sects. I will speak as a person with experience a=
nd
declare that I have been through the distresses of despair and the convicti=
on
of sin and that I have found salvation.
I BELIEVE.
I believe in the
scheme, in the Project of all things, in the significance of myself and all
life, and that my defects and uglinesses and failures, just as much as my
powers and successes, are things that are necessary and important and
contributory in that scheme, that scheme which passes my understanding--and
that no thwarting of my conception, not even the cruelty of nature, now def=
eats
or can defeat my faith, however much it perplexes my mind.
And though I say =
that
scheme passes my understanding, nevertheless I hope you will see no
inconsistency when I say that necessarily it has an aspect towards me that I
find imperative.
It has an aspect =
that
I can perceive, however dimly and fluctuatingly.
I take it that to
perceive this aspect to the utmost of my mental power and to shape my acts
according to that perception is my function in the scheme; that if I hold
steadfastly to that conception, I am SAVED. I find in that idea of perceivi=
ng
the scheme as a whole towards me and in this attempt to perceive, that
something to which all my other emotions and passions may contribute by
gathering and contributing experience, and through which the synthesis of my
life becomes possible.
Let me try to con=
vey
to you what it is I perceive, what aspect this scheme seems to bear on the
whole towards me.
The essential fac=
t in
man's history to my sense is the slow unfolding of a sense of community with
his kind, of the possibilities of co-operations leading to scarce dreamt-of
collective powers, of a synthesis of the species, of the development of a
common general idea, a common general purpose out of a present confusion. In
that awakening of the species, one's OWN PERSONAL BEING LIVES AND MOVES--A =
PART
OF IT AND CONTRIBUTING TO IT. ONE'S INDIVIDUAL EXISTENCE IS NOT SO ENTIRELY=
CUT
OFF AS IT SEEMS AT FIRST; ONE'S ENTIRELY SEPARATE INDIVIDUALITY IS ANOTHER,=
A
PROFOUNDER, AMONG THE SUBTLE INHERENT DELUSIONS OF THE HUMAN MIND. Between =
you
and me as we set our minds together, and between us and the rest of mankind,
there is SOMETHING, something real, something that rises through us and is
neither you nor me, that comprehends us, that is thinking here and using me=
and
you to play against each other in that thinking just as my finger and thumb
play against each other as I hold this pen with which I write.
Let me point out =
that
this is no sentimental or mystical statement. It is hard fact as any hard f=
act
we know. We, you and I, are not only parts in a thought process, but parts =
of
one flow of blood and life. Let me put that in a way that may be new to some
readers. Let me remind you of what is sometimes told as a jest, the fact th=
at
the number of one's ancestors increases as we look back in time. Disregardi=
ng
the chances of intermarriage, each one of us had two parents, four grandpar=
ents,
eight great-grandparents, and so on backward, until very soon, in less than=
fifty
generations, we should find that, but for the qualification introduced, we
should have all the earth's inhabitants of that time as our progenitors. Fo=
r a
hundred generations it must hold absolutely true, that everyone of that time
who has issue living now is ancestral to all of us. That brings the thing q=
uite
within the historical period. There is not a western European palaeolithic =
or
neolithic relic that is not a family relic for every soul alive. The blood =
in
our veins has handled it.
And there is
something more. We are all going to mingle our blood again. We cannot keep
ourselves apart; the worst enemies will some day come to the Peace of Veron=
a.
All the Montagues and Capulets are doomed to intermarry. A time will come in
less than fifty generations when all the population of the world will have =
my
blood, and I and my worst enemy will not be able to say which child is his =
or
mine.
But you may retort--perhaps you may die childless. Then all the sooner the whole species will get the little legacy of my personal achievement, whatever it may be.<= o:p>
You see that from
this point of view--which is for me the vividly true and dominating point of
view--our individualities, our nations and states and races are but bubbles=
and
clusters of foam upon the great stream of the blood of the species, inciden=
tal
experiments in the growing knowledge and consciousness of the race.
I think this real
solidarity of humanity is a fact that is only slowly being apprehended, tha=
t it
is an idea that we who have come to realize it have to assist in thinking i=
nto
the collective mind. I believe the species is still as a whole unawakened,
still sunken in the delusion of the permanent separateness of the individual
and of races and nations, that so it turns upon itself and frets against it=
self
and fails to see the stupendous possibilities of deliberate self-development
that lie open to it now.
I see myself in l=
ife
as part of a great physical being that strains and I believe grows towards
beauty, and of a great mental being that strains and I believe grows towards
knowledge and power. In this persuasion that I am a gatherer of experience,=
a
mere tentacle that arranges thought beside thought for this being of the
species, this being that grows beautiful and powerful, in this persuasion I
find the ruling idea of which I stand in need, the ruling idea that reconci=
les
and adjudicates among my warring motives. In it I find both concentration of
myself and escape from myself; in a word, I find Salvation.
2.9. INDIVIDUALITY AN
INTERLUDE.
I would like in a
parenthetical section to expand and render rather more concrete this idea of
the species as one divaricating flow of blood, by an appeal to its arithmet=
ical
aspect. I do not know if it has ever occurred to the reader to compute the
number of his living ancestors at some definite date, at, let us say, the y=
ear
one of the Christian era. Everyone has two parents and four grandparents, m=
ost
people have eight great-grandparents, and if we ignore the possibility of
intermarriage we shall go on to a fresh power of two with every generation,
thus:--
Column 1: Number =
of
generations.
Column 2: Number =
of
ancestors.
3: =
8 4: =
16 5: =
32
7:
I do not know whe=
ther
the average age of the parent at the birth of a child under modern conditio=
ns
can be determined from existing figures. There is, I should think, a strong
presumption that it has been a rising age. There may have been a time in the
past when most women were mothers in their early teens and bore most or all=
of
their children before thirty, and when men had done the greater part of the=
ir
procreation before thirty-five; this is still the case in many tropical
climates, and I do not think I favour my case unduly by assuming that the
average parent must be about, or even less than, five and twenty. This gives
four generations to a century. At that rate and DISREGARDING INTERMARRIAGE =
OF
RELATIONS the ancestors living a thousand years ago needed to account for a
living person would be double the estimated population of the world. But it=
is
obvious that if a person sprang from a marriage of first cousins, the eight
ancestors of the third generation are cut down to six; if of cousins at the
next stage, to fourteen in the fourth. And every time that a common pair of
ancestors appears in any generation, the number of ancestors in that genera=
tion
must be reduced by two from our original figures, or if it is only one comm=
on
ancestor, by one, and as we go back that reduction will have to be doubled,=
quadrupled
and so on. I daresay that by the time anyone gets to the 8916 names of his
Elizabethan ancestors he will find quite a large number repeated over and o=
ver
again in the list and that he is cut down to perhaps two or three thousand
separate persons. But this does not effectually invalidate my assumption th=
at
if we go back only to the closing years of the Roman Republic, we go back t=
o an
age in which nearly every person living within the confines of what was then
the Roman Empire who left living offspring must have been ancestral to ever=
y person
living within that area to-day. No doubt they were so in very variable meas=
ure.
There must be for everyone some few individuals in that period who have so =
to
speak intermarried with themselves again and again and again down the
genealogical series, and others who are represented by just one touch of th=
eir
blood. The blood of the Jews, for example, has turned in upon itself again =
and
again; but for all we know one Italian proselyte in the first year of the
Christian era may have made by this time every Jew alive a descendant of so=
me
unrecorded bastard of Julius Caesar. The exclusive breeding of the Jews is =
in
fact the most effectual guarantee that whatever does get into the charmed c=
ircle
through either proselytism, the violence of enemies, or feminine unchastity,
must ultimately pervade it universally.
It may be argued =
that
as a matter of fact humanity has until recently been segregated in pools; t=
hat
in the great civilization of China, for example, humanity has pursued its o=
wn
interlacing system of inheritances without admixture from other streams of
blood. But such considerations only defer the conclusion; they do not stave=
it
off indefinitely. It needs only that one philoprogenitive Chinaman should h=
ave
wandered into those regions that are now Russia, about the time of Pericles=
, to
link east and west in that matter; one Tartar chieftain in the Steppes may =
have
given a daughter to a Roman soldier and sent his grandsons east and west to
interlace the branches of every family tree in the world. If any race stands
apart it is such an isolated group as that of the now extinct Tasmanian
primitives or the Australian black. But even here, in the remote dawn of
navigation, may have come some shipwrecked Malays, or some half-breed woman
kidnapped by wandering Phoenicians have carried this link of blood back to =
the
western world. The more one lets one's imagination play upon the incalculab=
le
drift and soak of population, the more one realizes the true value of that
spreading relation with the past.
But now let us tu=
rn
in the other direction, the direction of the future, because there it is th=
at
this series of considerations becomes most edifying. It is the commonest tr=
ick
to think of a man's descendants as though they were his own. We are told th=
at
one of the dearest human motives is the desire to found a family, but think=
how
much of a family one founds at the best. One's son is after all only half o=
ne's
blood, one grandson only a quarter, and so one goes on until it may be that=
in ten
brief generations one's heir and namesake has but 1/1024th of one's inherit=
ed
self. Those other thousand odd unpredictable people thrust in and mingle wi=
th
one's pride. The trend of all things nowadays--the ever-increasing ease of
communication, the great and increasing drift of population, the establishm=
ent
of a common standard of civilization--is to render such admixture far more
probable and facile in the future than in the past.
It is a pleasant
fancy to imagine some ambitious hoarder of wealth, some egotistical founder=
of
name and family, returning to find his descendants--HIS descendants--after =
the
lapse of a few brief generations. His heir and namesake may have not a
thousandth part of his heredity, while under some other name, lost to all t=
he
tradition and glory of him, enfeebled and degenerate through much intermarr=
iage,
may be a multitude of people who have as much as a fiftieth or even more of=
his
quality. They may even be in servitude and dependence to the really alien
person who is head of the family. Our founder will go through the spreading
record of offspring and find it mixed with that of people he most hated and
despised. The antagonists he wronged and overcame will have crept into his =
line
and recaptured all they lost; have played the cuckoo in his blood and
acquisitions, and turned out his diluted strain to perish.
And while I am be=
ing
thus biological let me point out another queer aspect in which our egotism =
is
overridden by physical facts. Men and women are apt to think of their child=
ren
as being their very own, blood of their blood and bone of their bone. But
indeed one of the most striking facts in this matter is the frequent want of
resemblance between parents and children. It is one of the commonest things=
in
the world for a child to resemble an aunt or an uncle, or to revive a trait=
of
some grandparent that has seemed entirely lost in the intervening generatio=
n.
The Mendelians have given much attention to facts of this nature; and though
their general method of exposition seems to me quite unjustifiably exact and
precise, it cannot be denied that it is often vividly illuminating. It is s=
o in
this connexion. They distinguish between "dominant" and
"recessive" qualities, and they establish cases in which parents =
with
all the dominant characteristics produce offspring of recessive type. Reces=
sive
qualities are constantly being masked by dominant ones and emerging again in
the next generation. It is not the individual that reproduces himself, it is
the species that reproduces through the individual and often in spite of his
characteristics.
The race flows th=
rough
us, the race is the drama and we are the incidents. This is not any sort of
poetical statement; it is a statement of fact. In so far as we are individu=
als,
in so far as we seek to follow merely individual ends, we are accidental,
disconnected, without significance, the sport of chance. In so far as we
realize ourselves as experiments of the species for the species, just in so=
far
do we escape from the accidental and the chaotic. We are episodes in an
experience greater than ourselves.
Now none of this,=
if
you read me aright, makes for the suppression of one's individual differenc=
e,
but it does make for its correlation. We have to get everything we can out =
of
ourselves for this very reason that we do not stand alone; we signify as pa=
rts
of a universal and immortal development. Our separate selves are our charge=
s,
the talents of which much has to be made. It is because we are episodical in
the great synthesis of life that we have to make the utmost of our individu=
al lives
and traits and possibilities.
What stupendous
constructive mental and physical possibilities are there to which I feel I =
am
contributing, you may ask, when I feel that I contribute to this greater Be=
ing;
and at once I confess I become vague and mystical. I do not wish to pass gl=
ibly
over this point. I call your attention to the fact that here I am mystical =
and
arbitrary. I am what I am, an individual in this present phase. I can see
nothing of these possibilities except that they will be in the nature of th=
ose indefinable
and overpowering gleams of promise in our world that we call Beauty. Elsewh=
ere
(in my "Food of the Gods") I have tried to render my sense of our
human possibility by monstrous images; I have written of those who will
"stand on this earth as on a footstool and reach out their hands among=
the
stars." But that is mere rhetoric at best, a straining image of
unimaginable things. Things move to Power and Beauty; I say that much and I
have said all that I can say.
But what is Beaut=
y,
you ask, and what will Power do? And here I reach my utmost point in the
direction of what you are free to call the rhapsodical and the
incomprehensible. I will not even attempt to define Beauty. I will not beca=
use
I cannot. To me it is a final, quite indefinable thing. Either you understa=
nd
it or you do not. Every true artist and many who are not artists know--they
know there is something that shows suddenly--it may be in music, it may be =
in
painting, it may be in the sunlight on a glacier or a shadow cast by a furn=
ace
or the scent of a flower, it may be in the person or act of some fellow cre=
ature,
but it is right, it is commanding, it is, to use theological language, the
revelation of God.
To the mystery of
Power and Beauty, out of the earth that mothered us, we move.
I do not attempt =
to
define Beauty nor even to distinguish it from Power. I do not think indeed =
that
one can effectually distinguish these aspects of life. I do not know how far
Beauty may not be simply fulness and clearness of sensation, a momentary
unveiling of things hitherto seen but dully and darkly. As I have already s=
aid,
there may be beauty in the feeling of beer in the throat, in the taste of
cheese in the mouth; there may be beauty in the scent of the earth, in the
warmth of a body, in the sensation of waking from sleep. I use the word Bea=
uty
therefore in its widest possible sense, ranging far beyond the special beau=
ties
that art discovers and develops. Perhaps as we pass from death to life all
things become beautiful. The utmost I can do in conveying what I mean by Be=
auty
is to tell of things that I have perceived to be beautiful as beautifully a=
s I
can tell of them. It may be, as I suggest elsewhere, that Beauty is a thing
synthetic and not simple; it is a common effect produced by a great medley =
of causes,
a larger aspect of harmony.
But the question =
of
what Beauty is does not very greatly concern me since I have known it when I
met it and since almost every day in life I seem to apprehend it more and to
find it more sufficient and satisfying. Objectively it may be altogether
complex and various and synthetic, subjectively it is altogether simple. All
analysis, all definition, must in the end rest upon and arrive at unanalyza=
ble
and indefinable things. Beauty is light--I fall back upon that image--it is=
all
things that light can be, beacon, elucidation, pleasure, comfort and
consolation, promise, warning, the vision of reality.
It seems to me th= at the whole living creation may be regarded as walking in its sleep, as walki= ng in the sleep of instinct and individualized illusion, and that now out of it all rises man, beginning to perceive his larger self, his universal brother= hood and a collective synthetic purpose to increase Power and realize Beauty...<= o:p>
I write this down=
. It
is the form of my belief, and that unanalyzable something called Beauty is =
the
light that falls upon that form.
It is only by such
images, it is only by the use of what are practically parables, that I can =
in
any way express these things in my mind. These two things, I say, are the t=
wo
aspects of my belief; one is the form and the other the light. The former
places me as it were in a scheme, the latter illuminates and inspires me. I=
am
a member in that great being, and my function is, I take it, to develop my
capacity for beauty and convey the perception of it to my fellows, to gather
and store experience and increase the racial consciousness. I hazard no why=
s nor
wherefores. That is how I see things; that is how the universe, in response=
to
my demand for a synthesizing aspect, presents itself to me.
2.12. OF PERSONAL
IMMORTALITY.
These are my beli=
efs.
They begin with arbitrary assumptions; they end in a mystery.
So do all beliefs
that are not grossly utilitarian and material, promising houris and deathle=
ss
appetite or endless hunting or a cosmic mortgage. The Peace of God passeth
understanding, the Kingdom of Heaven within us and without can be presented
only by parables. But the unapproachable distance and vagueness of these th=
ings
makes them none the less necessary, just as a cloud upon a mountain or sunl=
ight
remotely seen upon the sea are as real as, and to many people far more
necessary than, pork chops. The driven swine may root and take no heed, but=
man
the dreamer drives. And because these things are vague and impalpable and
wilfully attained, it is none the less important that they should be render=
ed
with all the truth of one's being. To be atmospherically vague is one thing=
; to
be haphazard, wanton and untruthful, quite another.
But here I may gi=
ve a
specific answer to a question that many find profoundly important, though
indeed it is already implicitly answered in what has gone before.
I do not believe I
have any personal immortality. I am part of an immortality perhaps; but tha=
t is
different. I am not the continuing thing. I personally am experimental,
incidental. I feel I have to do something, a number of things no one else c=
ould
do, and then I am finished and finished altogether. Then my substance retur=
ns
to the common lot. I am a temporary enclosure for a temporary purpose; that=
served,
and my skull and teeth, my idiosyncracy and desire, will disperse, I believ=
e,
like the timbers of a booth after a fair.
Let me shift my
ground a little and ask you to consider what is involved in the opposite be=
lief.
My idea of the
unknown scheme is of something so wide and deep that I cannot conceive it
encumbered by my egotism perpetually. I shall serve my purpose and pass und=
er
the wheel and end. That distresses me not at all. Immortality would distress
and perplex me. If I may put this in a mixture of theological and social
language, I cannot respect, I cannot believe in a God who is always going a=
bout
with me.
But this is after=
all
what I feel is true and what I choose to believe. It is not a matter of fac=
t.
So far as that goes there is no evidence that I am immortal and none that I=
am
not.
I may be altogeth=
er
wrong in my beliefs; I may be misled by the appearances of things. I believ=
e in
the great and growing Being of the Species from which I rise, to which I
return, and which, it may be, will ultimately even transcend the limitation=
of
the Species and grow into the Conscious Being, the eternally conscious Bein=
g of
all things. Believing that, I cannot also believe that my peculiar little
thread will not undergo synthesis and vanish as a separate thing.
And what after al=
l is
my distinctive something, a few capacities, a few incapacities, an uncertain
memory, a hesitating presence? It matters no doubt in its place and time, as
all things matter in their place and time, but where in it all is the etern=
ally
indispensable? The great things of my life, love, faith, the intimation of
beauty, the things most savouring of immortality, are the things most gener=
al,
the things most shared and least distinctively me.
2.13. A CRITICISM OF
CHRISTIANITY.
And here perhaps,
before I go on to the question of Conduct, is the place to define a
relationship to that system of faith and religious observance out of which I
and most of my readers have come. How do these beliefs on which I base my r=
ule
of conduct stand to Christianity?
They do not stand=
in
any attitude of antagonism. A religious system so many-faced and so endurin=
g as
Christianity must necessarily be saturated with truth even if it be not who=
lly
true. To assume, as the Atheist and Deist seem to do, that Christianity is a
sort of disease that came upon civilization, an unprofitable and wasting
disease, is to deny that conception of a progressive scheme and rightness w=
hich
we have taken as our basis of belief. As I have already confessed, the Sche=
me
of Salvation, the idea of a process of sorrow and atonement, presents itsel=
f to
me as adequately true. So far I do not think my new faith breaks with my ol=
d.
But it follows as a natural consequence of my metaphysical preliminaries th=
at I
should find the Christian theology Aristotelian, over defined and excessive=
ly
personified. The painted figure of that bearded ancient upon the Sistine
Chapel, or William Blake's wild-haired, wild-eyed Trinity, convey no nearer
sense of God to me than some mother-of-pearl-eyed painted and carven monster
from the worship of the South Sea Islanders. And the Miltonic fable of the =
offended
creator and the sacrificial son! it cannot span the circle of my ideas; it =
is a
little thing, and none the less little because it is intimate, flesh of my
flesh and spirit of my spirit, like the drawings of my youngest boy. I put =
it
aside as I would put aside the gay figure of a costumed officiating priest.=
The
passage of time has made his canonicals too strange, too unlike my world of
common thought and costume. These things helped, but now they hinder and
disturb. I cannot bring myself back to them...
But the psycholog=
ical
experience and the theology of Christianity are only a ground-work for its
essential feature, which is the conception of a relationship of the individ=
ual
believer to a mystical being at once human and divine, the Risen Christ. Th=
is
being presents itself to the modern consciousness as a familiar and beautif=
ul
figure, associated with a series of sayings and incidents that coalesce wit=
h a
very distinct and rounded-off and complete effect of personality. After we =
have
cleared off all the definitions of theology, He remains, mystically sufferi=
ng for
humanity, mystically asserting that love in pain and sacrifice in service a=
re
the necessary substance of Salvation. Whether he actually existed as a fini=
te
individual person in the opening of the Christian era seems to me a question
entirely beside the mark. The evidence at this distance is of imperceptible
force for or against. The Christ we know is quite evidently something diffe=
rent
from any finite person, a figure, a conception, a synthesis of emotions,
experiences and inspirations, sustained by and sustaining millions of human
souls.
Now it seems to be
the common teaching of almost all Christians, that Salvation, that is to say
the consolidation and amplification of one's motives through the conception=
of
a general scheme or purpose, is to be attained through the personality of
Christ. Christ is made cardinal to the act of Faith. The act of Faith, they
assert, is not simply, as I hold it to be, BELIEF, but BELIEF IN HIM.
We are dealing he=
re,
be it remembered, with beliefs deliberately undertaken and not with questio=
ns
of fact. The only matters of fact material here are facts of experience. If=
in
your experience Salvation is attainable through Christ, then certainly
Christianity is true for you. And if a Christian asserts that my belief is a
false light and that presently I shall "come to Christ," I cannot
disprove his assertion. I can but disbelieve it. I hesitate even to make the
obvious retort.
I hope I shall of=
fend
no susceptibilities when I assert that this great and very definite persona=
lity
in the hearts and imaginations of mankind does not and never has attracted =
me.
It is a fact I record about myself without aggression or regret. I do not f=
ind
myself able to associate Him in any way with the emotion of Salvation.
I admit the splen=
did
imaginative appeal in the idea of a divine-human friend and mediator. If it
were possible to have access by prayer, by meditation, by urgent outcries of
the soul, to such a being whose feet were in the darknesses, who stooped do=
wn
from the light, who was at once great and little, limitless in power and vi=
rtue
and one's very brother; if it were possible by sheer will in believing to m=
ake
and make one's way to such a helper, who would refuse such help? But I do n=
ot
find such a being in Christ. I do not find, I cannot imagine, such a being.=
I
wish I could. To me the Christian Christ seems not so much a humanized God =
as an
incomprehensibly sinless being neither God nor man. His sinlessness wears h=
is
incarnation like a fancy dress, all his white self unchanged. He had no pet=
ty
weaknesses.
Now the essential
trouble of my life is its petty weaknesses. If I am to have that love, that
sense of understanding fellowship, which is, I conceive, the peculiar magic=
and
merit of this idea of a personal Saviour, then I need someone quite other t=
han
this image of virtue, this terrible and incomprehensible Galilean with his
crown of thorns, his blood-stained hands and feet. I cannot love him any mo=
re
than I can love a man upon the rack. Even in the face of torments I do not
think I should feel a need for him. I had rather then a hundred times have =
Botticelli's
armed angel in his Tobit at Florence. (I hope I do not seem to want to shoc=
k in
writing these things, but indeed my only aim is to lay my feelings bare.) I
know what love for an idealized person can be. It happens that in my younge=
r days
I found a character in the history of literature who had a singular and
extraordinary charm for me, of whom the thought was tender and comforting, =
who
indeed helped me through shames and humiliations as though he held my hand.
This person was Oliver Goldsmith. His blunders and troubles, his vices and
vanities, seized and still hold my imagination. The slights of Boswell, the=
contempt
of Gibbon and all his company save Johnson, the exquisite fineness of spiri=
t in
his "Vicar of Wakefield," and that green suit of his and the doct=
or's
cane and the love despised, these things together made him a congenial saint
and hero for me, so that I thought of him as others pray. When I think of t=
hat
youthful feeling for Goldsmith, I know what I need in a personal Saviour, a=
s a
troglodyte who has seen a candle can imagine the sun. But the Christian Chr=
ist
in none of his three characteristic phases, neither as the magic babe (from
whom I am cut off by the wanton and indecent purity of the Immaculate
Conception), nor as the white-robed, spotless miracle worker, nor as the fi=
erce
unreal torment of the cross, comes close to my soul. I do not understand th=
e Agony
in the Garden; to me it is like a scene from a play in an unknown tongue. T=
he
la t cry of despair is the one human touch, discordant with all the rest of=
the
story. One cry of despair does not suffice. The Christian's Christ is too f=
ine
for me, not incarnate enough, not flesh enough, not earth enough. He was ne=
ver
foolish and hot-eared and inarticulate, never vain, he never forgot things,=
nor
tangled his miracles. I could love him I think more easily if the dead had =
not
risen and if he had lain in peace in his sepulchre instead of coming back m=
ore enhaloed
and whiter than ever, as a postscript to his own tragedy.
When I think of t=
he
Resurrection I am always reminded of the "happy endings" that edi=
tors
and actor managers are accustomed to impose upon essentially tragic novels =
and
plays...
You see how I sta=
nd
in this matter, puzzled and confused by the Christian presentation of Chris=
t. I
know there are many will answer--as I suppose my friend the Rev. R.J. Campb=
ell
would answer--that what confuses me is the overlaying of the personality of
Jesus by stories and superstitions and conflicting symbols; he will in effe=
ct
ask me to disentangle the Christ I need from the accumulated material, choo=
sing
and rejecting. Perhaps one may do that. He does, I know, so present Him as a
man inspired, and strenuously, inadequately and erringly presenting a dream=
of
human brotherhood and the immediate Kingdom of Heaven on earth and so
blundering to his failure and death. But that will be a recovered and resto=
red
person he would give me, and not the Christ the Christians worship and decl=
are
they love, in whom they find their Salvation.
When I write "declare they love" I throw doubt intentionally upon the universal love of Christians for their Saviour. I have watched men and nations in this matter. I am struck by the fact that so many Christians fall back upon more humanized figures, upon the tender figure of Mary, upon patron saints and s= uch more erring creatures, for the effect of mediation and sympathy they need.<= o:p>
You see it comes =
to
this: that I think Christianity has been true and is for countless people
practically true, but that it is not true now for me, and that for most peo=
ple
it is true only with modifications. Every believing Christian is, I am sure=
, my
spiritual brother, but if systematically I called myself a Christian I feel
that to most men I should imply too much and so tell a lie.
In the same manne=
r,
in varying degree, I hold all religions to be in a measure true. Least
comprehensible to me are the Indian formulae, because they seem to stand no=
t on
common experience but on those intellectual assumptions my metaphysical
analysis destroys. Transmigration of souls without a continuing memory is t=
o my
mind utter foolishness, the imagining of a race of children. The aggression=
, discipline
and submission of Mahommedanism makes, I think, an intellectually limited b=
ut
fine and honourable religion--for men. Its spirit if not its formulae is
abundantly present in our modern world. Mr. Rudyard Kipling, for example,
manifestly preaches a Mahommedan God, a modernised God with a taste for
engineering. I have no doubt that in devotion to a virile, almost national
Deity and to the service of His Empire of stern Law and Order, efficiently
upheld, men have found and will find Salvation.
All these religio=
ns
are true for me as Canterbury Cathedral is a true thing and as a Swiss chal=
et
is a true thing. There they are, and they have served a purpose, they have
worked. Men and women have lived in and by them. Men and women still do. On=
ly
they are not true for me to live in them. I have, I believe, to live in a n=
ew
edifice of my own discovery. They do not work for me.
These schemes are
true, and also these schemes are false! in the sense that new things, new
phrasings, have to replace them.
Such are the
essential beliefs by which I express myself. But now comes the practical
outcome of these things, and that is to discuss and show how upon this
metaphysical basis and these beliefs, and in obedience to the ruling motive
that arises with them, I frame principles of conduct.
BOOK THE THIRD -- OF GENE=
RAL
CONDUCT
3.1. CONDUCT FOLLOWS FROM
BELIEF.
I hold that the b= road direction of conduct follows necessarily from belief. The believer does not require rewards and punishments to direct him to the right. Motive and idea= are not so separable. To believe truly is to want to do right. To get salvation= is to be unified by a comprehending idea of a purpose and by a ruling motive.<= o:p>
The believer want=
s to
do right, he naturally and necessarily seeks to do right. If he fails to do
right, if he finds he has done wrong instead of right, he is not greatly
distressed or terrified, he naturally and cheerfully does his best to corre=
ct
his error. He can be damned only by the fading and loss of his belief. And
naturally he recurs to and refreshes his belief.
I write in phrases
that the evangelical Christianity of my childhood made familiar to me, beca=
use
they are the most expressive phrases I have ever met for the psychological
facts with which I am dealing.
But faith, though=
it
banishes fear and despair and brings with it a real prevailing desire to kn=
ow
and do the Good, does not in itself determine what is the Good or supply any
simple guide to the choice between alternatives. If it did, there would be
nothing more to be said, this book upon conduct would be unnecessary.
It seems to me on=
e of
the heedless errors of those who deal in philosophy, to suppose all things =
that
have simple names or unified effects are in their nature simple and may be
discovered and isolated as a sort of essence by analysis. It is natural to =
suppose--and
I think it is also quite wrong to suppose--that such things as Good and Bea=
uty
can be abstracted from good and beautiful things and considered alone. But =
pure
Good and pure Beauty are to me empty terms. It seems to me that these are in
their nature synthetic things, that they arise out of the coming together of
contributory things and conditions, and vanish at their dispersal; they are
synthetic just as more obviously Harmony is synthetic. It is consequently n=
ot
possible to give a definition of Good, just as it is not possible to give a
definition of that other something which is so closely akin to it, Beauty. =
Nor
is it to be maintained that what is good for one is good for another. But w=
hat
is good of one's general relations and what is right in action must be
determined by the nature of one's beliefs about the purpose in things. I ha=
ve
set down my broad impression of that purpose in respect to me, as the awake=
ning
and development of the consciousness and will of our species, and I have co=
nfessed
my belief that in subordinating myself and all my motives to that idea lies=
my
Salvation. It follows from that, that the good life is the life that most
richly gathers and winnows and prepares experience and renders it available=
for
the race, that contributes most effectively to the collective growth.
This is in general
terms my idea of Good. So soon as one passes from general terms to the ques=
tion
of individual good, one encounters individuality; for everyone in the diffe=
ring
quality and measure of their personality and powers and possibilities, good=
and
right must be different. We are all engaged, each contributing from his or =
her
own standpoint, in the collective synthesis; whatever one can best do, one =
must
do that; in whatever manner one can best help the synthesis, one must exert
oneself; the setting apart of oneself, secrecy, the service of secret and
personal ends, is the waste of life and the essential quality of Sin.
That is the gener=
al
expression for right living as I conceive it.
In the study of w=
hat
is Good, it is very convenient to make a rough division of our subject into
general and particular. There are first the interests and problems that aff=
ect
us all collectively, in which we have a common concern and from which no one
may legitimately seek exemption; of these interests and problems we may fai=
rly
say every man should do so and so, or so and so, or the law should be so and
so, or so and so; and secondly there are those other problems in which
individual difference and the interplay of one or two individualities is
predominant. This is of course no hard and fast classification, but it give=
s a
method of approach. We can begin with the generalized person in ourselves a=
nd
end with individuality.
In the world of i=
deas
about me, I have found going on a great social and political movement that
correlates itself with my conception of a great synthesis of human purpose =
as
the aspect towards us of the universal scheme. This movement is Socialism.
Socialism is to me no clear-cut system of theories and dogmas; it is one of
those solid and extensive and synthetic ideas that are better indicated by a
number of different formulae than by one, just as one only realizes a statu=
e by
walking round it and seeing it from a number of points of view. I do not th=
ink it
is to be completely expressed by any one system of formulae or by any one m=
an.
Its common quality from nearly every point of view is the subordination of =
the
will of the self-seeking individual to the idea of a racial well-being embo=
died
in an organized state, organized for every end that can be obtained
collectively. Upon that I seize; that is the value of Socialism for me.
Socialism for me =
is a
common step we are all taking in the great synthesis of human purpose. It is
the organization, in regard to a great mass of common and fundamental inter=
ests
that have hitherto been dispersedly served, of a collective purpose.
I see humanity
scattered over the world, dispersed, conflicting, unawakened... I see human
life as avoidable waste and curable confusion. I see peasants living in
wretched huts knee-deep in manure, mere parasites on their own pigs and cow=
s; I
see shy hunters wandering in primaeval forests; I see the grimy millions who
slave for industrial production; I see some who are extravagant and yet
contemptible creatures of luxury, and some leading lives of shame and
indignity; tens of thousands of wealthy people wasting lives in vulgar and
unsatisfying trivialities, hundreds of thousands meanly chaffering themselv=
es,
rich or poor, in the wasteful byways of trade; I see gamblers, fools, brute=
s, toilers,
martyrs. Their disorder of effort, the spectacle of futility, fills me with=
a
passionate desire to end waste, to create order, to develop understanding...
All these people reflect and are part of the waste and discontent of my lif=
e,
and this co-ordination of the species to a common general end, and the quest
for my personal salvation, are the social and the individual aspect of
essentially the same desire...
And yet dispersed=
as
all these people are, they are far more closely drawn together to common en=
ds
and common effort than the filthy savages who ate food rotten and uncooked =
in
the age of unpolished stone. They live in the mere opening phase of a synth=
esis
of effort the end of which surpasses our imagination. Such intercourse and
community as they have is only a dawn. We look towards the day, the day of =
the
organized civilized world state. The first clear intimation of that conscio=
us synthesis
of human thought to which I look, the first edge of the dayspring, has
arisen--as Socialism, as I conceive of Socialism. Socialism is to me no more
and no less than the awakening of a collective consciousness in humanity, a
collective will and a collective mind out of which finer individualities may
arise forever in a perpetual series of fresh endeavours and fresh achieveme=
nts
for the race.
3.4. A CRITICISM OF CERTA=
IN
FORMS OF SOCIALISM.
It is necessary to
point out that a Socialism arising in this way out of the conception of a
synthesis of the will and thought of the species will necessarily differ fr=
om
conceptions of Socialism arrived at in other and different ways. It is base=
d on
a self-discontent and self-abnegation and not on self-satisfaction, and it =
will
be a scheme of persistent thought and construction, essentially, and it will
support this or that method of law-making, or this or that method of econom=
ic exploitation,
or this or that matter of social grouping, only incidentally and in relatio=
n to
that.
Such a conception=
of
Socialism is very remote in spirit, however it may agree in method, from th=
at
philanthropic administrative socialism one finds among the British ruling a=
nd
administrative class. That seems to me to be based on a pity which is large=
ly
unjustifiable and a pride that is altogether unintelligent. The pity is for=
the
obvious wants and distresses of poverty, the pride appears in the arrogant =
and
aggressive conception of raising one's fellows. I have no strong feeling fo=
r the
horrors and discomforts of poverty as such, sensibilities can be hardened to
endure the life led by the "Romans" in Dartmoor jail a hundred ye=
ars
ago (See "The Story of Dartmoor Prison" by Basil Thomson (Heinema=
nn--1907).),
or softened to detect the crumpled rose-leaf; what disgusts me is the stupi=
dity
and warring purposes of which poverty is the outcome. When it comes to the =
idea
of raising human beings, I must confess the only person I feel concerned ab=
out
raising is H.G. Wells, and that even in his case my energies might be better
employed. After all, presently he must die and the world will have done with
him. His output for the species is more important than his individual
elevation.
Moreover, all this
talk of raising implies a classification I doubt. I find it hard to fix any
standards that will determine who is above me and who below. Most people are
different from me I perceive, but which among them is better, which worse? I
have a certain power of communicating with other minds, but what experience=
s I
communicate seem often far thinner and poorer stuff than those which others
less expressive than I half fail to communicate and half display to me. My
"inferiors," judged by the common social standards, seem indeed i=
ntellectually
more limited than I and with a narrower outlook; they are often dirtier and
more driven, more under the stress of hunger and animal appetites; but on t=
he
other hand have they not more vigorous sensations than I, and through sheer
coarsening and hardening of fibre, the power to do more toilsome things and
sustain intenser sensations than I could endure? When I sit upon the bench,=
a
respectable magistrate, and commit some battered reprobate for trial for th=
is lurid
offence or that, or send him or her to prison for drunkenness or such-like
indecorum, the doubt drifts into my mind which of us after all is indeed
getting nearest to the keen edge of life. Are I and my respectable colleagu=
es
much more than successful evasions of THAT? Perhaps these people in the dock
know more of the essential strains and stresses of nature, are more intimate
with pain. At any rate I do not think I am justified in saying certainly th=
at
they do not know...
No, I do not want=
to
raise people using my own position as a standard, I do not want to be one o=
f a
gang of consciously superior people, I do not want arrogantly to change the
quality of other lives. I do not want to interfere with other lives, except
incidentally--incidentally, in this way that I do want to get to an
understanding with them, I do want to share and feel with them in our comme=
rce
with the collective mind. I suppose I do not stretch language very much whe=
n I
say I want to get rid of stresses and obstacles between our minds and
personalities and to establish a relation that is understanding and sympath=
y.
I want to make mo=
re
generally possible a relationship of communication and interchange, that for
want of a less battered and ambiguous word I must needs call love.
And if I disavow =
the
Socialism of condescension, so also do I disavow the Socialism of revolt. T=
here
is a form of Socialism based upon the economic generalizations of Marx, an
economic fatalistic Socialism that I hold to be rather wrong in its vision =
of
facts, rather more distinctly wrong in its theory, and altogether wrong and
hopeless in its spirit. It preaches, as inevitable, a concentration of prop=
erty
in the hands of a limited number of property owners and the expropriation of
the great proletarian mass of mankind, a concentration which is after all no
more than a tendency conditional on changing and changeable conventions abo=
ut property,
and it finds its hope of a better future in the outcome of a class conflict
between the expropriated Many and the expropriating Few. Both sides are to =
be
equally swayed by self-interest, but the toilers are to be gregarious and
mutually loyal in their self-interest--Heaven knows why, except that otherw=
ise
the Marxist dream will not work. The experience of contemporary events seem=
s to
show at least an equal power of combination for material ends among owners =
and
employers as among workers.
Now this class-war
idea is one diametrically opposed to that religious-spirited Socialism which
supplies the form of my general activities. This class-war idea would
exacerbate the antagonism of the interests of the many individuals against =
the
few individuals, and I would oppose the conceiving of the Whole to the
self-seeking of the Individual. The spirit and constructive intention of the
many to-day are no better than those of the few, poor and rich alike are ov=
er-individualized,
self-seeking and non-creative; to organize the confused jostling competitio=
ns,
over-reachings, envies and hatreds of to-day into two great class-hatreds a=
nd
antagonisms will advance the reign of love at most only a very little, only=
so
far as it will simplify and make plain certain issues. It may very possibly=
not
advance the reign of love at all, but rather shatter the order we have. Soc=
ialism,
as I conceive it, and as I have presented it in my book, "New Worlds f=
or
Old," seeks to change economic arrangements only by the way, as an asp=
ect
and outcome of a great change, a change in the spirit and method of human
intercourse.
I know that here =
I go
beyond the limits many Socialists in the past, and some who are still
contemporary, have set themselves. Much Socialism to-day seems to think of
itself as fighting a battle against poverty and its concomitants alone. Now
poverty is only a symptom of a profounder evil and is never to be cured by
itself. It is one aspect of divided and dispersed purposes. If Socialism is
only a conflict with poverty, Socialism is nothing. But I hold that Sociali=
sm
is and must be a battle against human stupidity and egotism and disorder, a
battle fought all through the forests and jungles of the soul of man. As we=
get
intellectual and moral light and the realization of brotherhood, so social =
and
economic organization will develop. But the Socialist may attack poverty for
ever, disregarding the intellectual and moral factors that necessitate it, =
and
he will remain until the end a purely economic doctrinaire crying in the
wilderness in vain.
And if I antagoni=
ze
myself in this way to the philanthropic Socialism of kindly prosperous peop=
le
on the one hand and to the fierce class-hatred Socialism on the other, still
more am I opposed to that furtive Socialism of the specialist which one mee=
ts
most typically in the Fabian Society. It arises very naturally out of what I
may perhaps call specialist fatigue and impatience. It is very easy for wri=
ters
like myself to deal in the broad generalities of Socialism and urge their a=
doption
as general principles; it is altogether another affair with a man who sets
himself to work out the riddle of the complications of actuality in order to
modify them in the direction of Socialism. He finds himself in a jungle of
difficulties that strain his intellectual power to the utmost. He emerges at
last with conclusions, and they are rarely the obvious conclusions, as to w=
hat
needs to be done. Even the people of his own side he finds do not see as he
sees; they are, he perceives, crude and ignorant.
Now I hold that h=
is
duty is to explain his discoveries and intentions until they see as he sees.
But the specialist temperament is often not a generalizing and expository
temperament. Specialists are apt to measure minds by their speciality and u=
nderrate
the average intelligence. The specialist is appalled by the real task before
him, and he sets himself by tricks and misrepresentations, by benevolent
scoundrelism in fact, to effect changes he desires. Too often he fails even=
in
that. Where he might have found fellowship he arouses suspicion. And even i=
f a
thing is done in this way, its essential merit is lost. For it is better, I
hold, for a man to die of his disease than to be cured unwittingly. That is=
to
cheat him of life and to cheat life of the contribution his consciousness m=
ight
have given it.
The Socialism of =
my
beliefs rests on a profounder faith and broader proposition. It looks over =
and
beyond the warring purposes of to-day as a general may look over and beyond=
a
crowd of sullen, excited and confused recruits, to the day when they will be
disciplined, exercised, trained, willing and convergent on a common end. It
holds persistently to the idea of men increasingly working in agreement, do=
ing
things that are sane to do, on a basis of mutual helpfulness, temperance an=
d toleration.
It sees the great masses of humanity rising out of base and immediate
anxieties, out of dwarfing pressures and cramped surroundings, to understan=
ding
and participation and fine effort. It sees the resources of the earth husba=
nded
and harvested, economized and used with scientific skill for the maximum of
result. It sees towns and cities finely built, a race of beings finely bred=
and
taught and trained, open ways and peace and freedom from end to end of the
earth. It sees beauty increasing in humanity, about humanity and through
humanity. Through this great body of mankind goes evermore an increasing
understanding, an intensifying brotherhood. As Christians have dreamt of the
New Jerusalem so does Socialism, growing ever more temperate, patient,
forgiving and resolute, set its face to the World City of Mankind.
Before I go on to
point out the broad principles of action that flow from this wide conceptio=
n of
Socialism, I may perhaps give a section to elucidating that opposition of h=
ate
and love I made when I dealt with the class war. I have already used the wo=
rd
love several times; it is an ambiguous word and it may be well to spend a f=
ew
words in making clear the sense in which it is used here. I use it in a very
broad sense to convey all that complex of motives, impulses, sentiments, th=
at
incline us to find our happiness and satisfactions in the happiness and
sympathy of others. Essentially it is a synthetic force in human affairs, t=
he merger
tendency, a linking force, an expression in personal will and feeling of the
common element and interest. It insists upon resemblances and shares and
sympathies. And hate, I take it, is the emotional aspect of antagonism, it =
is
the expression in personal will and feeling of the individual's separation =
from
others. It is the competing and destructive tendency. So long as we are
individuals and members of a species, we must needs both hate and love. But
because I believe, as I have already confessed, that the oneness of the spe=
cies
is a greater fact than individuality, and that we individuals are temporary
separations from a collective purpose, and since hate eliminates itself by
eliminating its objects, whilst love multiplies itself by multiplying its
objects, so love must be a thing more comprehensive and enduring than hate.=
Moreover, hate mu=
st
be in its nature a good thing. We individuals exist as such, I believe, for=
the
purpose in things, and our separations and antagonisms serve that purpose. =
We
play against each other like hammer and anvil. But the synthesis of a
collective will in humanity, which is I believe our human and terrestrial s=
hare
in that purpose, is an idea that carries with it a conception of a secular
alteration in the scope and method of both love and hate. Both widen and ch=
ange
with man's widening and developing apprehension of the purpose he serves. T=
he savage
man loves in gusts a fellow creature or so about him, and fears and hates a=
ll
other people. Every expansion of his scope and ideas widens either circle. =
The
common man of our civilized world loves not only many of his friends and
associates systematically and enduringly, but dimly he loves also his city =
and
his country, his creed and his race; he loves it may be less intensely but =
over
a far wider field and much more steadily. But he hates also more widely if =
less
passionately and vehemently than a savage, and since love makes rather harm=
ony
and peace and hate rather conflict and events, one may easily be led to sup=
pose
that hate is the ruling motive in human affairs. Men band themselves togeth=
er
in leagues and loyalties, in cults and organizations and nationalities, and=
it
is often hard to say whether the bond is one of love for the association or
hatred of those to whom the association is antagonized. The two things pass
insensibly into one another. London people have recently seen an edifying
instance of the transition, in the Brown Dog statue riots. A number of peop=
le
drawn together by their common pity for animal suffering, by love indeed of=
the
most disinterested sort, had so forgotten their initial spirit as to erect =
a monument
with an inscription at once recklessly untruthful, spiteful in spirit and
particularly vexatious to one great medical school of London. They have
provoked riots and placarded London with taunts and irritating misrepresent=
ation
of the spirit of medical research, and they have infected a whole fresh
generation of London students with a bitter partizan contempt for the
humanitarian effort that has so lamentably misconducted itself. Both sides =
vow
they will never give in, and the anti-vivisectionists are busy manufacturing
small china copies of the Brown Dog figure, inscription and all, for purpos=
es
of domestic irritation. Here hate, the evil ugly brother of effort, has
manifestly slain love the initiator and taken the affair in hand. That is a
little model of human conflicts. So soon as we become militant and play aga=
inst
one another, comes this danger of strain and this possible reversal of moti=
ve.
The fight begins. Into a pit of heat and hate fall right and wrong together=
.
Now it seems to me
that a religious faith such as I have set forth in the second Book, and a c=
lear
sense of our community of blood with all mankind, must necessarily affect b=
oth
our loving and our hatred. It will certainly not abolish hate, but it will
subordinate it altogether to love. We are individuals, so the Purpose prese=
nts
itself to me, in order that we may hate the things that have to go, uglines=
s,
baseness, insufficiency, unreality, that we may love and experiment and str=
ive for
the things that collectively we seek--power and beauty. Before our conversi=
on
we did this darkly and with our hate spreading to persons and parties from =
the
things for which they stood. But the believer will hate lovingly and without
fear. We are of one blood and substance with our antagonists, even with tho=
se
that we desire keenly may die and leave no issue in flesh or persuasion. Th=
ey
all touch us and are part of one necessary experience. They are all necessa=
ry
to the synthesis, even if they are necessary only as the potato-peel in the
dust-bin is necessary to my dinner.
So it is I disavow
and deplore the whole spirit of class-war Socialism with its doctrine of ha=
te,
its envious assault upon the leisure and freedom of the wealthy. Without
leisure and freedom and the experience of life they gave, the ideas of
Socialism could never have been born. The true mission of Socialism is agai=
nst
darkness, vanity and cowardice, that darkness which hides from the property
owner the intense beauty, the potentialities of interest, the splendid
possibilities of life, that vanity and cowardice that make him clutch his
precious holdings and fear and hate the shadow of change. It has to teach t=
he
collective organization of society; and to that the class-consciousness and
intense class-prejudices of the worker need to bow quite as much as those of
the property owner. But when I say that Socialism's mission is to teach, I =
do
not mean that its mission is a merely verbal and mental one; it must use all
instruments and teach by example as well as precept. Socialism by becoming
charitable and merciful will not cease to be militant. Socialism must, lovi=
ngly
but resolutely, use law, use force, to dispossess the owners of socially
disadvantageous wealth, as one coerces a lunatic brother or takes a wrongfu=
lly
acquired toy from a spoilt and obstinate child. It must intervene between a=
ll
who would keep their children from instruction in the business of citizensh=
ip
and the lessons of fraternity. It must build and guard what it builds with =
laws
and with that sword which is behind all laws. Non-resistance is for the non=
-constructive
man, for the hermit in the cave and the naked saint in the dust; the builder
and maker with the first stroke of his foundation spade uses force and opens
war against the anti-builder.
3.6. THE PRELIMINARY SOCI=
AL
DUTY.
The belief I have
that contributing to the development of the collective being of man is the
individual's general meaning and duty, and the formulae of the Socialism wh=
ich
embodies this belief so far as our common activities go, give a general
framework and direction how a man or woman should live. (I do throughout all
this book mean man or woman equally when I write of "man," unless=
it
is manifestly inapplicable.)
And first in this
present time he must see to it that he does live, that is to say he must get
food, clothing, covering, and adequate leisure for the finer aspects of liv=
ing.
Socialism plans an organized civilization in which these things will be a
collective solicitude, and the gaining of a subsistence an easy preliminary=
to
the fine drama of existence, but in the world as we have it we are forced to
engage much of our energy in scrambling for these preliminary necessities. =
Our
problems of conduct lie in the world as it is and not in the world as we wa=
nt
it to be. First then a man must get a living, a fair civilized living for
himself. It is a fundamental duty. It must be a fair living, not pinched nor
mean nor strained. A man can do nothing higher, he can be no service to any=
cause,
until he himself is fed and clothed and equipped and free. He must earn this
living or equip himself to earn it in some way not socially disadvantageous=
, he
must contrive as far as possible that the work he does shall be constructive
and contributory to the general well-being.
And these primary
necessities of food, clothing and freedom being secured, one comes to the
general disposition of one's surplus energy. With regard to that I think th=
at a
very simple proposition follows from the broad beliefs I have chosen to ado=
pt.
The general duty of a man, his existence being secured, is to educate, and
chiefly to educate and develop himself. It is his duty to live, to make all=
he
can out of himself and life, to get full of experience, to make himself fine
and perceiving and expressive, to render his experience and perceptions hon=
estly
and helpfully to others. And in particular he has to educate himself and ot=
hers
with himself in Socialism. He has to make and keep this idea of synthetic h=
uman
effort and of conscious constructive effort clear first to himself and then
clear in the general mind. For it is an idea that comes and goes. We are al=
l of
us continually lapsing from it towards individual isolation again. He needs=
, we
all need, constant refreshment in this belief if it is to remain a predomin=
ant
living fact in our lives.
And that duty of
education, of building up the collective idea and organization of humanity,
falls into various divisions depending in their importance upon individual
quality. For all there is one personal work that none may evade, and that is
thinking hard, criticising strenuously and understanding as clearly as one =
can
religion, socialism and the general principle of one's acts. The intellectu=
al
factor is of primary importance in my religion. I can see no more reason wh=
y salvation
should come to the intellectually incapable than to the morally incapable. =
For
simple souls thinking in simple processes, salvation perhaps comes easily, =
but
there is none for the intellectual coward, for the mental sloven and slugga=
rd,
for the stupid and obdurate mind. The Believer will think hard and continue=
to
grow and learn, to read and seek discussion as his needs determine.
Correlated with o=
ne's
own intellectual activity, part of it and growing out of it for almost
everyone, is intellectual work with and upon others. By teaching we learn. =
Not
to communicate one's thoughts to others, to keep one's thoughts to oneself =
as
people say, is either cowardice or pride. It is a form of sin. It is a duty=
to
talk, teach, explain, write, lecture, read and listen. Every truly religious
man, every good Socialist, is a propagandist. Those who cannot write or dis=
cuss
can talk, those who cannot argue can induce people to listen to others and =
read.
We have a belief and an idea that we want to spread, each to the utmost of =
his
means and measure, throughout all the world. We have a thought that we want=
to
make humanity's thought. And it is a duty too that one should, within the
compass of one's ability, make teaching, writing and lecturing possible whe=
re
it has not existed before. This can be done in a hundred ways, by founding =
and
enlarging schools and universities and chairs, for example; by making print=
and
reading and all the material of thought cheap and abundant, by organizing
discussion and societies for inquiry.
And talk and thou=
ght
and study are but the more generalized aspects of duty. The Believer may fi=
nd
his own special aptitude lies rather among concrete things, in experimenting
and promoting experiments in collective action. Things teach as well as wor=
ds,
and some of us are most expressive by concrete methods. The Believer will w=
ork
himself and help others to his utmost in all those developments of material=
civilization,
in organized sanitation for example, all those developments that force
collective acts upon communities and collective realizations into the minds=
of
men. And the whole field of scientific research is a field of duty calling =
to
everyone who can enter it, to add to the permanent store of knowledge and n=
ew
resources for the race.
The Mind of that
Civilized State we seek to make by giving ourselves into its making, is
evidently the central work before us. But while the writer, the publisher a=
nd
printer, the bookseller and librarian and teacher and preacher, the
investigator and experimenter, the reader and everyone who thinks, will be
contributing themselves to this great organized mind and intention in the
world, many sorts of specialized men will be more immediately concerned with
parallel and more concrete aspects of the human synthesis. The medical work=
er
and the medical investigator, for example, will be building up the body of a
new generation, the body of the civilized state, and he will be doing all he
can, not simply as an individual, but as a citizen, to ORGANIZE his service=
s of
cure and prevention, of hygiene and selection. A great and growing multitud=
e of
men will be working out the apparatus of the civilized state; the organizer=
s of
transit and housing, the engineers in their incessantly increasing variety,=
the
miners and geologists estimating the world's resources in metals and minera=
ls,
the mechanical inventors perpetually economizing force. The scientific
agriculturist again will be studying the food supply of the world as a whol=
e,
and how it may be increased and distributed and economized. And to the stud=
ent of
law comes the task of rephrasing his intricate and often quite beautiful
science in relation to modern conceptions. All these and a hundred other as=
pects
are integral to the wide project of Constructive Socialism as it shapes its=
elf
in my faith.
When we lay down =
the
proposition that it is one's duty to get one's living in some way not socia=
lly
disadvantageous, and as far as possible by work that is contributory to the
general well-being and development, when we state that one's surplus energi=
es,
after one's living is gained, must be devoted to experience, self-developme=
nt
and constructive work, it is clear we condemn by implication many modes of =
life
that are followed to-day.
For example, it is
manifest we condemn living in idleness or on non-productive sport, on the
income derived from private property, and all sorts of ways of earning a li=
ving
that cannot be shown to conduce to the constructive process. We condemn tra=
ding
that is merely speculative, and in fact all trading and manufacture that is=
not
a positive social service; we condemn living by gambling or by playing games
for either stakes or pay. Much more do we condemn dishonest or fraudulent
trading and every act of advertisement that is not punctiliously truthful. =
We must
condemn too the taking of any income from the community that is neither ear=
ned
nor conceded in the collective interest. But to this last point, and to cer=
tain
issues arising out of it, I will return in the section next following this =
one.
And it follows evidently from our general propositions that every form of prostitution is a double sin, against one's individuality and against the species which we se= rve by the development of that individuality's preferences and idiosyncracies.<= o:p>
And by prostituti=
on I
mean not simply the act of a woman who sells for money, and against her
thoughts and preferences, her smiles and endearments and the secret beauty =
and pleasure
of her body, but the act of anyone who, to gain a living, suppresses himsel=
f,
does things in a manner alien to himself and subserves aims and purposes wi=
th
which he disagrees. The journalist who writes against his personal convicti=
ons,
the solicitor who knowingly assists the schemes of rogues, the barrister who
pits himself against what he perceives is justice and the right, the artist=
who
does unbeautiful things or less beautiful things than he might, simply to
please base employers, the craftsman who makes instruments for foolish uses=
or
bad uses, the dealer who sells and pushes an article because it fits the
customer's folly; all these are prostitutes of mind and soul if not of body,
with no right to lift an eyebrow at the painted disasters of the streets.
3.8. SOCIAL PARASITISM AND
CONTEMPORARY INJUSTICES.
These broad
principles about one's way of living are very simple; our minds move freely
among them. But the real interest is with the individual case, and the
individual case is almost always complicated by the fact that the existing
social and economic system is based upon conditions that the growing collec=
tive
intelligence condemns as unjust and undesirable, and that the constructive
spirit in men now seeks to supersede. We have to live in a provisional State
while we dream of and work for a better one.
The ideal life for
the ordinary man in a civilized, that is to say a Socialist, State would be=
in
public employment or in private enterprise aiming at public recognition. Bu=
t in
our present world only a small minority can have that direct and honourable
relation of public service in the work they do; most of the important busin=
ess
of the community is done upon the older and more tortuous private ownership
system, and the great mass of men in socially useful employment find themse=
lves
working only indirectly for the community and directly for the profit of a =
private
owner, or they themselves are private owners. Every man who has any money p=
ut
by in the bank, or any money invested, is a private owner, and in so far as=
he
draws interest or profit from this investment he is a social parasite. It i=
s in
practice almost impossible to divest oneself of that parasitic quality howe=
ver
straightforward the general principle may be.
It is practically
impossible for two equally valid sets of reasons. The first is that under
existing conditions, saving and investment constitute the only way to rest =
and
security in old age, to leisure, study and intellectual independence, to the
safe upbringing of a family and the happiness of one's weaker dependents. T=
hese
are things that should not be left for the individual to provide; in the
civilized state, the state itself will insure every citizen against these a=
nxieties
that now make the study of the City Article almost a duty. To abandon saving
and investment to-day, and to do so is of course to abandon all insurance, =
is
to become a driven and uncertain worker, to risk one's personal freedom and
culture and the upbringing and efficiency of one's children. It is to lower=
the
standard of one's personal civilization, to think with less deliberation and
less detachment, to fall away from that work of accumulating fine habits an=
d beautiful
and pleasant ways of living contributory to the coming State. And in the se=
cond
place there is not only no return for such a sacrifice in anything won for
Socialism, but for fine-thinking and living people to give up property is
merely to let it pass into the hands of more egoistic possessors. Since at
present things must be privately owned, it is better that they should be ow=
ned
by people consciously working for social development and willing to use the=
m to
that end.
We have to live in
the present system and under the conditions of the present system, while we
work with all our power to change that system for a better one.
The case of Cadbu=
rys
the cocoa and chocolate makers, and the practical slavery under the Portugu=
ese
of the East African negroes who grow the raw material for Messrs. Cadbury, =
is
an illuminating one in this connection. The Cadburys, like the Rowntrees, a=
re
well known as an energetic and public-spirited family, their social and
industrial experiments at Bournville and their general social and political=
activities
are broad and constructive in the best sense. But they find themselves in t=
he
peculiar dilemma that they must either abandon an important and profitable
portion of their great manufacture or continue to buy produce grown under c=
ruel
and even horrible conditions. Their retirement from the branch of the cocoa=
and
chocolate trade concerned would, under these circumstances, mean no diminut=
ion
of the manufacture or of the horrors of this particular slavery; it would
merely mean that less humanitarian manufacturers would step in to take up t=
he
abandoned trade. The self-righteous individualist would have no doubts about
the question; he would keep his hands clean anyhow, retrench his social wor=
k,
abandon the types of cocoa involved, and pass by on the other side. But ind=
eed
I do not believe we came into the mire of life simply to hold our hands up =
out
of it. Messrs. Cadbury follow a better line; they keep their business going,
and exert themselves in every way to let light into the secrets of Portugue=
se
East Africa and to organize a better control of these labour cruelties. Tha=
t I
think is altogether the right course in this difficulty.
We cannot keep our
hands clean in this world as it is. There is no excuse indeed for a life of
fraud or any other positive fruitless wrong-doing or for a purely parasitic
non-productive life, yet all but the fortunate few who are properly paid and
recognized state servants must in financial and business matters do their b=
est
amidst and through institutions tainted with injustice and flawed with
unrealities. All Socialists everywhere are like expeditionary soldiers far
ahead of the main advance. The organized state that should own and administ=
er
their possessions for the general good has not arrived to take them over; a=
nd in
the meanwhile they must act like its anticipatory agents according to their
lights and make things ready for its coming.
The Believer then=
who
is not in the public service, whose life lies among the operations of priva=
te
enterprise, must work always on the supposition that the property he
administers, the business in which he works, the profession he follows, is
destined to be taken over and organized collectively for the commonweal and
must be made ready for the taking over; that the private outlook he secures=
by
investment, the provision he makes for his friends and children, are tempor=
ary,
wasteful, though at present unavoidable devices to be presently merged in a=
nd
superseded by the broad and scientific previsions of the co-operative
commonwealth.
3.9. THE CASE OF THE WIFE=
AND
MOTHER.
These principles =
give
a rule also for the problem that faces the great majority of thinking wives=
and
mothers to-day. The most urgent and necessary social work falls upon them; =
they
bear, and largely educate and order the homes of, the next generation, and =
they
have no direct recognition from the community for either of these supreme
functions. They are supposed to perform them not for God or the world, but =
to please
and satisfy a particular man. Our laws, our social conventions, our economic
methods, so hem a woman about that, however fitted for and desirous of
maternity she may be, she can only effectually do that duty in a dependent
relation to her husband. Nearly always he is the paymaster, and if his paym=
ents
are grudging or irregular, she has little remedy short of a breach and the
rupture of the home. Her duty is conceived of as first to him and only
secondarily to her children and the State. Many wives become under these
circumstances mere prostitutes to their husbands, often evading the bearing=
of
children with their consent and even at their request, and "loving for=
a
living." That is a natural outcome of the proprietary theory of the fa=
mily
out of which our civilization emerges. But our modern ideas trend more and =
more
to regard a woman's primary duty to be her duty to the children and to the
world to which she gives them. She is to be a citizen side by side with her=
husband;
no longer is he to intervene between her and the community. As a matter of
contemporary fact he can do so and does so habitually, and most women have =
to
square their ideas of life to that possibility.
Before any woman =
who
is clear-headed enough to perceive that this great business of motherhood is
one of supreme public importance, there are a number of alternatives at the
present time. She may, like Grant Allan's heroine in "The Woman Who
Did," declare an exaggerated and impossible independence, refuse the
fetters of marriage and bear children to a lover. This, in the present stat=
e of
public opinion in almost every existing social atmosphere, would be a purely
anarchistic course. It would mean a fatherless home, and since the woman wi=
ll
have to play the double part of income-earner and mother, an impoverished a=
nd
struggling home. It would mean also an unsocial because ostracized home. In
most cases, and even assuming it to be right in idea, it would still be on =
all
fours with that immediate abandonment of private property we have already
discussed, a sort of suicide that helps the world nothing.
Or she may
"strike," refuse marriage and pursue a solitary and childless car=
eer,
engaging her surplus energies in constructive work. But that also is suicid=
e;
it is to miss the keenest experiences, the finest realities life has to off=
er.
Or she may meet a= man whom she can trust to keep a treaty with her and supplement the common interpretations and legal insufficiencies of the marriage bond, who will respect her always as a free and independent person, will abstain absolutely from authoritative methods, and will either share and trust his income and property with her in a frank communism, or give her a sufficient and private income for her personal use. It is only fair under existing economic condit= ions that at marriage a husband should insure his life in his wife's interest, a= nd I do not think it would be impossible to bring our legal marriage contract in= to accordance with modern ideas in that matter. Certainly it should be legally imperative that at the birth of each child a new policy upon its father's life, as the income-getter, should begin. The latter provision at least should be a norm= al condition of marriage and one that the wife should have power to enforce wh= en payments fall away. With such safeguards and under such conditions marriage ceases to be a haphazard dependence for a woman, and she may live, teaching= and rearing and free, almost as though the co-operative commonwealth had come.<= o:p>
But in many cases,
since great numbers of women marry so young and so ignorantly that their
thinking about realities begins only after marriage, a woman will find hers=
elf
already married to a man before she realizes the significance of these thin=
gs.
She may be already the mother of children. Her husband's ideas may not be h=
er
ideas. He may dominate, he may prohibit, he may intervene, he may default. =
He
may, if he sees fit, burthen the family income with the charges of his
illegitimate offspring.
We live in the wo=
rld
as it is and not in the world as it should be. That sentence becomes the
refrain of this discussion.
The normal modern
married woman has to make the best of a bad position, to do her best under =
the
old conditions, to live as though she was under the new conditions, to make
good citizens, to give her spare energies as far as she can to bringing abo=
ut a
better state of affairs. Like the private property owner and the official i=
n a
privately owned business, her best method of conduct is to consider herself=
an
unrecognized public official, irregularly commanded and improperly paid. Th=
ere
is no good in flagrant rebellion. She has to study her particular circumsta=
nces
and make what good she can out of them, keeping her face towards the coming=
time.
I cannot better the image I have already used for the thinking and believing
modern-minded people of to-day as an advance guard cut off from proper
supplies, ill furnished so that makeshift prevails, and rather demoralized.=
We
have to be wise as well as loyal; discretion itself is loyalty to the coming
State.
In the previous
section I have dealt with the single individual's duty in relation to the
general community and to law and generally received institutions. But there=
is
a new set of questions now to be considered. Let us take up the modificatio=
ns
that arise when it is not one isolated individual but a group of individuals
who find themselves in disagreement with contemporary rule or usage and
disposed to find a rightness in things not established or not conceded. They
too live in the world as it is and not in the world as it ought to be, but
their association opens up quite new possibilities of anticipating coming d=
evelopments
of living, and of protecting and guaranteeing one another from what for a
single unprotected individual would be the inevitable consequences of a
particular line of conduct, conduct which happened to be unorthodox or only=
, in
the face of existing conditions, unwise.
For example, a fr=
iend
of mine who had read a copy of the preceding section wrote as follows:--
"I can see no
reason why even to-day a number of persons avowedly united in the same 'Bel=
ief'
and recognizing each other as the self-constituted social vanguard should n=
ot
form a recognized spiritual community centering round some kind of 'religio=
us'
edifice and ritual, and agree to register and consecrate the union of any
couples of the members according to a contract which the whole community sh=
ould
have voted acceptable. The community would be the guardian of money deposit=
ed
or paid in gradually as insurance for the children. And the fact of the who=
le
business being regular, open and connected with a common intellectual and m=
oral
ritual and a common name, such for example as your name of 'The Samurai,' w=
ould
secure the respect of outsiders, so that eventually these new marriage
arrangements would modify the old ones. People would ask, 'Were you married
before the registrar?' and the answer would be, 'No, we are Samurai and were
united before the Elders.' In Catholic countries those who use only the civ=
il
marriage are considered outcasts by the religiously minded, which shows tha=
t recognition
by the State is not as potent as recognition by the community to which one
belongs. The religious marriage is considered the only one binding by
Catholics, and the civil ceremony is respected merely because the State has
brute force behind it."
There is in this
passage one particularly valuable idea, the idea of an association of peopl=
e to
guarantee the welfare of their children in common. I will follow that a lit=
tle,
though it takes me away from my main line of thought. It seems to me that s=
uch
an association might be found in many cases a practicable way of easing the
conflict that so many men and women experience, between their individual pu=
blic
service and their duty to their own families. Many people of exceptional gi=
fts,
whose gifts are not necessarily remunerative, are forced by these personal =
considerations
to direct them more or less askew, to divert them from their best applicati=
on
to some inferior but money-making use; and many more are given the disagree=
able
alternative of evading parentage or losing the freedom of mind needed for
socially beneficial work. This is particularly the case with many scientific
investigators, many sociological and philosophical workers, many artists,
teachers and the like. Even when such people are fairly prosperous personal=
ly
they do not care to incur the obligation to keep prosperous at any cost to
their work that a family in our competitive system involves. It gives great=
ease
of mind to any sort of artistic or intellectual worker to feel free to beco=
me
poor. I do not see why a group of such people should not attempt a merger of
their family anxieties and family adventures, insure all its members, and w=
hile
each retains a sufficient personal independence for freedom of word and
movement, pool their family solicitudes and resources, organize a collective
school and a common maintenance fund for all the children born of members o=
f the
association. I do not see why they should not in fact develop a permanent t=
rust
to maintain, educate and send out all their children into the world, a trus=
t to
which their childless friends and associates could contribute by gift and
bequest, and to which the irregular good fortune that is not uncommon in the
careers of these exceptional types could be devoted. I do not mean any sort=
of
charity but an enlarged family basis.
Such an idea pass=
es
very readily into the form of a Eugenic association. It would be quite poss=
ible
and very interesting for prosperous people interested in Eugenics to create=
a
trust for the offspring of a selected band of beneficiaries, and with
increasing resources to admit new members and so build up within the present
social system a special strain of chosen people. So far people with eugenic
ideas and people with conceptions of associated and consolidated families h=
ave
been too various and too dispersed for such associations to be practicable,=
but
as such views of life become more common, the chance of a number of suffici=
ently
homogeneous and congenial people working out the method of such a grouping
increases steadily.
Moreover, I can
imagine no reason to prevent any women who are in agreement with the moral
standards of the "Woman who Did" (standards I will not discuss at
this present point but defer for a later section) combining for mutual
protection and social support and the welfare of such children as they may
bear. Then certainly, to the extent that this succeeds, the objections that
arise from the evil effects upon the children of social isolation disappear.
This isolation would be at worst a group isolation, and there can be no dou=
bt
that my friend is right in pointing out that there is much more social
toleration for an act committed under the sanction of a group than for an
isolated act that may be merely impulsive misbehaviour masquerading as high
principle.
It seems to me
remarkable that, to the best of my knowledge, so obvious a form of combinat=
ion
has never yet been put in practice. It is remarkable but not inexplicable. =
The
first people to develop novel ideas, more particularly of this type, are
usually people in isolated circumstances and temperamentally incapable of
disciplined cooperation.
3.11. OF AN ORGANIZED
BROTHERHOOD.
The idea of
organizing the progressive elements in the social chaos into a regular
developing force is one that has had a great attraction for me. I have writ=
ten
upon it elsewhere, and I make no apology for returning to it here and exami=
ning
it in the light of various afterthoughts and with fresh suggestions.
I first broached =
this
idea in a book called "Anticipations," wherein I described a poss=
ible
development of thought and concerted action which I called the New
Republicanism, and afterwards I redrew the thing rather more elaborately in=
my
"Modern Utopia." I had been struck by the apparently chaotic and
wasteful character of most contemporary reform movements, and it seemed
reasonable to suppose that those who aimed at organizing society and replac=
ing
chaos and waste by wise arrangements, might very well begin by producing a =
more
effective organization for their own efforts. These complexities of good
intention made me impatient, and I sought industriously in my mind for a sh=
ort
cut through them. In doing so I think I overlooked altogether too much how =
heterogeneous
all progressive thought and progressive people must be.
In my "Modern Utopia" I turned this idea of an organized brotherhood about very thoroughly and looked at it from this point and that; I let it loose as it were, and gave it its fullest development, and so produced a sort of secular Order of governing men and women. In a spirit entirely journalistic I called this the Order of the Samurai, for at the time I wrote there was much inter= est in Bushido because of the capacity for hardship and self-sacrifice this chivalrous culture appears to have developed in the Japanese. These Samurai= of mine were a sort of voluntary nobility who supplied the administrative and organizing forces that held my Utopian world together. They were the "= New Republicans" of my "Anticipations" and "Mankind in the Making," much developed and supposed triumphant and ruling the world.<= o:p>
I sought of cours=
e to
set out these ideas as attractively as possible in my books, and they have =
as a
matter of fact proved very attractive to a certain number of people. Quite a
number have wanted to go on with them. Several little organizations of Utop=
ians
and Samurai and the like have sprung up and informed me of themselves, and =
some
survive; and young men do still at times drop into my world "personall=
y or
by letter" declaring themselves New Republicans.
All this has been
very helpful and at times a little embarrassing to me. It has given me an
opportunity of seeing the ideals I flung into the distance beyond Sirius and
among the mountain snows coming home partially incarnate in girls and young
men. It has made me look into individualized human aspirations, human
impatience, human vanity and a certain human need of fellowship, at close
quarters. It has illuminated subtle and fine traits; it has displayed
nobilities, and it has brought out aspects of human absurdity to which only=
the
pencil of Mr. George Morrow could do adequate justice. The thing I have had=
to
explain most generally is that my New Republicans and Samurai are but figur=
es
of suggestion, figures to think over and use in planning disciplines, but b=
y no
means copies to follow. I have had to go over again, as though it had never
been raised before in any previous writings, the difference between the spi=
rit
and the letter.
These responses h=
ave
on the whole confirmed my main idea that there is a real need, a need that =
many
people, and especially adolescent people, feel very strongly, for some sort=
of
constructive brotherhood of a closer type than mere political association, =
to
co-ordinate and partly guide their loose chaotic efforts to get hold of
life--but they have also convinced me that no wide and comprehensive
organization can supply that want.
My New Republicans
were presented as in many respects harsh and overbearing people, "a so=
rt
of outspoken secret society" for the organization of the world. They w=
ere
not so much an ideal order as the Samurai of the later book, being rather
deduced as a possible outcome of certain forces and tendencies in contempor=
ary
life (A.D. 1900) than, as literary people say, "created." They we=
re
to be drawn from among engineers, doctors, scientific business organizers a=
nd
the like, and I found that it is to energetic young men of the more respons=
ible
classes that this particular ideal appeals. Their organization was quite in=
formal,
a common purpose held them together.
Most of the people
who have written to me to call themselves New Republicans are I find also
Imperialists and Tariff Reformers, and I suppose that among the prominent
political figures of to-day the nearest approach to my New Republicans is L=
ord
Milner and the Socialist-Unionists of his group. It is a type harshly
constructive, inclined to an unscrupulous pose and slipping readily into a =
Kiplingesque
brutality.
The Samurai on the
other hand were more picturesque figures, with a much more elaborated
organization.
I may perhaps
recapitulate the points about that Order here.
In the "Mode=
rn
Utopia" the visitor from earth remarks:--
"These Samur=
ai
form the real body of the State. All this time that I have spent going to a=
nd
fro in this planet, it has been growing upon me that this order of men and
women, wearing such a uniform as you wear, and with faces strengthened by
discipline and touched with devotion, is the Utopian reality; that but for =
them
the whole fabric of these fair appearances would crumble and tarnish, shrink
and shrivel, until at last, back I should be amidst the grime and disorders=
of
the life of earth. Tell me about these Samurai, who remind me of Plato's
guardians, who look like Knight Templars, who bear a name that recalls the =
swordsmen
of Japan. What are they? Are they an hereditary cast, a specially educated
order, an elected class? For, certainly, this world turns upon them as a do=
or
upon its hinges."
His informant
explains:--
"Practically=
the
whole of the responsible rule of the world is in their hands; all our head
teachers and disciplinary heads of colleges, our judges, barristers, employ=
ers
of labour beyond a certain limit, practising medical men, legislators, must=
be
Samurai, and all the executive committees and so forth, that play so large a
part in our affairs, are drawn by lot exclusively from them. The order is n=
ot hereditary--we
know just enough of biology and the uncertainties of inheritance to know how
silly that would be--and it does not require an early consecration or novit=
iate
or ceremonies and initiations of that sort. The Samurai are, in fact,
volunteers. Any intelligent adult in a reasonably healthy and efficient sta=
te
may, at any age after five and twenty, become one of the Samurai and take a
hand in the universal control."
"Provided he
follows the Rule."
"Precisely--=
provided
he follows the Rule."
"I have heard
the phrase, 'voluntary nobility.'"
"That was the
idea of our Founders. They made a noble and privileged order--open to the w=
hole
world. No one could complain of an unjust exclusion, for the only thing that
could exclude them from the order was unwillingness or inability to follow =
the
Rule.
"The Rule ai=
ms
to exclude the dull and base altogether, to discipline the impulses and
emotions, to develop a moral habit and sustain a man in periods of stress,
fatigue and temptation, to produce the maximum co-operation of all men of
good-intent, and in fact to keep all the Samurai in a state of moral and bo=
dily
health and efficiency. It does as much of this as well as it can, but of
course, like all general propositions, it does not do it in any case with
absolute precision. AT FIRST IN THE MILITANT DAYS, IT WAS A TRIFLE HARD AND
UNCOMPROMISING; IT HAD RATHER TOO STRONG AN APPEAL TO THE MORAL PRIG AND THE
HARSHLY RIGHTEOUS MAN, but it has undergone, and still undergoes, revision =
and expansion,
and every year it becomes a little better adapted to the need of a general =
rule
of life that all men may try to follow. We have now a whole literature with
many very fine things in it, written about the Rule.
"The Rule
consists of three parts; there is the list of things that qualify, the list=
of
things that must not be done, and the list of things that must be done.
Qualification exacts a little exertion as evidence of good faith and it is
designed to weed out the duller dull and many of the base."
He goes on to tel=
l of
certain intellectual qualifications and disciplines.
"Next to the
intellectual qualification comes the physical, the man must be in sound hea=
lth,
free from certain foul, avoidable and demoralizing diseases, and in good tr=
aining.
We reject men who are fat, or thin, or flabby, or whose nerves are shaky--we
refer them back to training. And finally the man or woman must be fully
adult."
"Twenty-one?=
But
you said twenty-five!"
"The age has
varied. At first it was twenty-five or over; then the minimum became
twenty-five for men and twenty-one for women. Now there is a feeling that it
ought to be raised. We don't want to take advantage of mere boy and girl
emotions--men of my way of thinking, at any rate, don't--we want to get our
Samurai with experiences, with settled mature conviction. Our hygiene and
regimen are rapidly pushing back old age and death, and keeping men hale and
hearty to eighty and more. There's no need to hurry the young. Let them hav=
e a
chance of wine, love and song; let them feel the bite of full-blooded desir=
e,
and know what devils they have to reckon with...
"We forbid a
good deal. Many small pleasures do no great harm, but we think it well to
forbid them none the less, so that we can weed out the self-indulgent. We t=
hink
that a constant resistance to little seductions is good for a man's quality=
. At
any rate, it shows that a man is prepared to pay something for his honour a=
nd
privileges. We prescribe a regimen of food, forbid tobacco, wine, or any
alcoholic drink, all narcotic drugs...
"Originally =
the
Samurai were forbidden usury, that is to say, the lending of money at fixed
rates of interest. They are still under that interdiction, but since our
commercial code practically prevents usury altogether, and our law will not
recognize contracts for interest upon private accommodation loans to
unprosperous borrowers," (he is speaking of Utopia), "it is now
scarcely necessary. The idea of a man growing richer by mere inaction and at
the expense of an impoverished debtor is profoundly distasteful to Utopian
ideas, and our State insists pretty effectually now upon the participation =
of
the lender in the borrower's risks. This, however, is only one part of a se=
ries
of limitations of the same character. It is felt that to buy simply in orde=
r to
sell again brings out many unsocial human qualities; it makes a man seek to
enhance profits and falsify values, and so the Samurai are forbidden to buy=
or sell
on their own account or for any employer save the State, unless by some pro=
cess
of manufacture they change the nature of the commodity (a mere change in bu=
lk
or packing does not suffice), and they are forbidden salesmanship and all i=
ts
arts. Nor may the Samurai do personal services, except in the matter of
medicine or surgery; they may not be barbers, for example, nor inn waiters =
nor
boot cleaners, men do such services for themselves. Nor may a man under the
Rule be any man's servant, pledged to do whatever he is told. He may neithe=
r be
a servant nor keep one; he must shave and dress and serve himself, carry his
own food from the helper's place, redd his sleeping room and leave it
clean..."
Finally came the
things they had to do. Their Rule contained:--
"many precise
directions regarding his health, and rules that would aim at once at health=
and
that constant exercise or will that makes life good. Save in specified
exceptional circumstances, the Samurai must bathe in cold water and the men
shave every day; they have the precisest directions in such matters; the bo=
dy
must be in health, the skin and nerves and muscles in perfect tone, or the
Samurai must go to the doctors of the order and give implicit obedience to =
the
regimen prescribed. They must sleep alone at least four nights in five; and
they must eat with and talk to anyone in their fellowship who cares for the=
ir conversation
for an hour at least, at the nearest club-house of the Samurai, once on thr=
ee
chosen days in every week. Moreover they must read aloud from the Book of t=
he
Samurai for at least five minutes every day. Every month they must buy and =
read
faithfully through at least one book that has been published during the past
five years, and the only intervention with private choice in that matter is=
the
prescription of a certain minimum of length for the monthly book or books. =
But
the full rule in these minor compulsory matters is voluminous and detailed,=
and
it abounds with alternatives. Its aim is rather to keep before the Samurai =
by a
number of simple duties, as it were, the need of and some of the chief meth=
ods
towards health of body and mind rather than to provide a comprehensive rule,
and to ensure the maintenance of a community of feeling and interests among=
the
Samurai through habit, intercourse and a living contemporary literature. Th=
ese
minor obligations do not earmark more than an hour in the day. Yet they ser=
ve
to break down isolations of sympathy, all sorts of physical and intellectual
sluggishness and the development of unsocial preoccupations of many sorts..=
.
"So far as t=
he
Samurai have a purpose in common in maintaining the State and the order and
discipline of the world, so far, by their discipline and denial, by their
public work and effort, they worship God together. But the ultimate fount of
motives lies in the individual life, it lies in silent and deliberate
reflections, and at this the most striking of all the rules of the Samurai
aims. For seven consecutive days of the year, at least, each man or woman u=
nder
the Rule must go right out of all the life of men into some wild and solita=
ry
place, must speak to no man or woman and have no sort of intercourse with
mankind. They must go bookless and weaponless, without pen or paper or mone=
y.
Provision must be taken for the period of the journey, a rug or sleeping
sack--for they must sleep under the open sky--but no means of making a fire.
They may study maps before to guide them, showing any difficulties and dang=
ers in
the journey, but they may not carry such helps. They must not go by beaten =
ways
or wherever there are inhabited houses, but into the bare, quiet places of =
the
globe--the regions set apart for them.
"This discip=
line
was invented to secure a certain stoutness of heart and body in the Samurai.
Otherwise the order might have lain open to too many timorous, merely
abstemious men and women. Many things had been suggested, sword-play and te=
sts
that verged on torture, climbing in giddy places and the like, before this =
was
chosen. Partly, it is to ensure good training and sturdiness of body and mi=
nd,
but partly also, it is to draw the minds of the Samurai for a space from the
insistent details of life, from the intricate arguments and the fretting ef=
fort
to work, from personal quarrels and personal affections and the things of t=
he
heated room. Out they must go, clean out of the world..."
These passages wi=
ll
at least serve to present the Samurai idea and the idea of common Rule of
conduct it embodied.
In the "Mode=
rn
Utopia" I discuss also a lesser Rule and the modification of the Rule =
for
women and the relation to the order of what I call the poietic types, those
types whose business in life seems to be rather to experience and express t=
han
to act and effectually do. For those things I must refer the reader to the =
book
itself. Together with a sentence I have put in italics above, they serve to
show that even when I was devising these Samurai I was not unmindful of the
defects that are essential to such a scheme.
This dream of the
Samurai proved attractive to a much more various group of readers than the =
New
Republican suggestion, and there have been actual attempts to realise the w=
ay
of life proposed. In most of these cases there was manifest a disposition
greatly to over-accentuate organization, to make too much of the disciplina=
ry
side of the Rule and to forget the entire subordination of such things to
active thought and constructive effort. They are valuable and indeed only
justifiable as a means to an end. These attempts of a number of people of v=
ery miscellaneous
origins and social traditions to come together and work like one machine ma=
de
the essential wastefulness of any terrestrial realization of my Samurai very
clear. The only reason for such an Order is the economy and development of
force, and under existing conditions disciplines would consume more force t=
han
they would engender. The Order, so far from being a power, would be an
isolation. Manifestly the elements of organization and uniformity were over=
done
in my Utopia; in this matter I was nearer the truth in the case of my New
Republicans. These, in contrast with the Samurai, had no formal general
organization, they worked for a common end, because their minds and the
suggestion of their circumstances pointed them to a common end. Nothing was
enforced upon them in the way of observance or discipline. They were not sh=
epherded
and trained together, they came together. It was assumed that if they wanted
strongly they would see to it that they lived in the manner most conducive =
to
their end just as in all this book I am taking it for granted that to belie=
ve
truly is to want to do right. It was not even required of them that they sh=
ould
sedulously propagate their constructive idea.
Apart from the
illumination of my ideas by these experiments and proposals, my Samurai idea
has also had a quite unmerited amount of subtle and able criticism from peo=
ple
who found it at once interesting and antipathetic. My friends Vernon Lee and
G.K. Chesterton, for example, have criticized it, and I think very justly, =
on
the ground that the invincible tortuousness of human pride and class-feeling
would inevitably vitiate its working. All its disciplines would tend to giv=
e its
members a sense of distinctness, would tend to syndicate power and rob it of
any intimacy and sympathy with those outside the Order...
It seems to me now
that anyone who shares the faith I have been developing in this book will s=
ee
the value of these comments and recognize with me that this dream is a drea=
m;
the Samurai are just one more picture of the Perfect Knight, an ideal of cl=
ean,
resolute and balanced living. They may be valuable as an ideal of attitude =
but
not as an ideal of organization. They are never to be put, as people say, u=
pon a
business footing and made available as a refuge from the individual problem=
.
To modernize the
parable, the Believer must not only not bury his talent but he must not ban=
k it
with an organization. Each Believer must decide for himself how far he want=
s to
be kinetic or efficient, how far he needs a stringent rule of conduct, how =
far
he is poietic and may loiter and adventure among the coarse and dangerous t=
hings
of life. There is no reason why one should not, and there is every reason w=
hy
one should, discuss one's personal needs and habits and disciplines and
elaborate one's way of life with those about one, and form perhaps with tho=
se
of like training and congenial temperament small groups for mutual support.=
That
sort of association I have already discussed in the previous section. With
adolescent people in particular such association is in many cases an almost
instinctive necessity. There is no reason moreover why everyone who is lone=
ly
should not seek out congenial minds and contrive a grouping with them. All
mutual lovers for example are Orders of a limited membership, many married
couples and endless cliques and sets are that. Such small and natural assoc=
iations
are indeed force-giving Orders because they are brought together by a common
innate disposition out of a possibility of mutual assistance and inspiratio=
n; they
observe a Rule that springs up and not a Rule imposed. The more of such gro=
ups
and Orders we have the better. I do not see why having formed themselves th=
ey
should not define and organize themselves. I believe there is a phase somew=
here
between fifteen and thirty, in the life of nearly everybody, when such a gr=
oup
is sought, is needed and would be helpful in self-development and
self-discovery. In leagues and societies for specific ends, too, we must all
participate. But the order of the Samurai as a great progressive force
controlling a multitude of lives right down to their intimate details and
through all the phases of personal development is a thing unrealizable. To =
seek
to realize it is impatience. True brotherhood is universal brotherhood. The=
way
to that is long and toilsome, but it is a way that permits of no such energ=
etic
short cuts as this militant order of my dream would achieve.
3.12. CONCERNING NEW STAR=
TS
AND NEW RELIGIONS.
When one is
discussing this possible formation of cults and brotherhoods, it may be wel=
l to
consider a few of the conditions that rule such human re-groupings. We live=
in
the world as it is and not in the world as we want it to be, that is the
practical rule by which we steer, and in directing our lives we must consta=
ntly
consider the forces and practicabilities of the social medium in which we m=
ove.
In contemporary l=
ife
the existing ties are so various and so imperative that the detachment
necessary as a preliminary condition to such new groupings is rarely found.
This is not a period in which large numbers of people break away easily and
completely from old connexions. Things change less catastrophically than on=
ce
they did. More particularly is there less driving out into the wilderness.
There is less heresy hunting; persecution is frequently reluctant and can be
evaded by slight concessions. The world as a whole is less harsh and emphat=
ic
than it was. Customs and customary attitudes change nowadays not so much by=
open,
defiant and revolutionary breaches as by the attrition of partial negligenc=
es
and new glosses. Innovating people do conform to current usage, albeit they
conform unwillingly and imperfectly. There is a constant breaking down and
building up of usage, and as a consequence a lessened need of wholesale
substitutions. Human methods have become viviparous; the New nowadays lives=
for
a time in the form of the Old. The friend I quote in Chapter 2.10 writes of=
a
possible sect with a "religious edifice" and ritual of its own, a=
new
religious edifice and a new ritual. In practice I doubt whether
"real" people, people who matter, people who are getting things d=
one
and who have already developed complex associations, can afford the extensi=
ve
re-adjustment implied in such a new grouping. It would mean too much loss of
time, too much loss of energy and attention, too much sacrifice of existing=
co-operations.
New cults, new
religions, new organizations of all sorts, insisting upon their novelty and
difference, are most prolific and most successful wherever there is an abun=
dant
supply of dissociated people, where movement is in excess of deliberation, =
and
creeds and formulae unyielding and unadaptable because they are unthinking.=
In
England, for example, in the last century, where social conditions have bee=
n comparatively
stable, discussion good and abundant and internal migration small, there ha=
ve
been far fewer such developments than in the United States of America. In
England toleration has become an institution, and where Tory and Socialist,
Bishop and Infidel, can all meet at the same dinner-table and spend an
agreeable week-end together, there is no need for defensive segregations. In
such an atmosphere opinion and usage change and change continually, not
dramatically as the results of separations and pitched battles but continuo=
usly
and fluently as the outcome of innumerable personal reactions. America, on =
the other
hand, because of its material preoccupations, because of the dispersal of i=
ts
thinking classes over great areas, because of the cruder understanding of i=
ts
more heterogeneous population (which constantly renders hard and explicit
statement necessary), MEANS its creeds much more literally and is at once m=
ore
experimental and less compromising and tolerant. It is there if anywhere th=
at
new brotherhoods and new creeds will continue to appear. But even in Americ=
a I
think the trend of things is away from separations and segregations and new
starts, and towards more comprehensive and graduated methods of development=
.
New religions, I
think, appear and are possible and necessary in phases of social
disorganization, in phases when considerable numbers of people are detached
from old systems of direction and unsettled and distressed. So, at any rate=
, it
was Christianity appeared, in a strained and disturbed community, in the cl=
ash
of Roman and Oriental thought, and for a long time it was confined to the
drifting population of seaports and great cities and to wealthy virgins and
widows, reaching the most settled and most adjusted class, the pagani, last=
of
all and in its most adaptable forms. It was the greatest new beginning in t=
he
world's history, and the wealth of political and literary and social and ar=
tistic
traditions it abandoned had subsequently to be revived and assimilated to it
fragment by fragment from the past it had submerged. Now, I do not see that=
the
world to-day presents any fair parallelism to that sere age of stresses in
whose recasting Christianity played the part of a flux. Ours is on the whol=
e an
organizing and synthetic rather than a disintegrating phase throughout the
world. Old institutions are neither hard nor obstinate to-day, and the imme=
nse
and various constructive forces at work are saturated now with the concepti=
on of
evolution, of secular progressive development, as opposed to the revolution=
ary
idea. Only a very vast and terrible war explosion can, I think, change this
state of affairs.
This conveys in
general terms, at least, my interpretation of the present time, and it is in
accordance with this view that the world is moving forward as a whole and w=
ith
much dispersed and discrepant rightness, that I do not want to go apart fro=
m the
world as a whole into any smaller community, with all the implication of an
exclusive possession of right which such a going apart involves. Put to the
test by my own Samurai for example by a particularly urgent and enthusiasti=
c discipline,
I found I did not in the least want to be one of that organization, that it
only expressed one side of a much more complex self than its disciplines
permitted. And still less do I want to hamper the play of my thoughts and
motives by going apart into the particularism of a new religion. Such refug=
es
are well enough when the times threaten to overwhelm one. The point about t=
he
present age, so far as I am able to judge the world, is that it does not
threaten to overwhelm; that at the worst, by my standards, it maintains its=
way
of thinking instead of assimilating mine.
3.13. THE IDEA OF THE CHU=
RCH.
Now all this leads
very directly to a discussion of the relations of a person of my way of
thinking to the Church and religious institutions generally. I have already
discussed my relation to commonly accepted beliefs, but the question of
institutions is, it seems to me, a different one altogether. Not to realize
that, to confuse a church with its creed, is to prepare the ground for a ma=
ss
of disastrous and life-wasting errors.
Now my rules of
conduct are based on the supposition that moral decisions are to be determi=
ned
by the belief that the individual life guided by its perception of beauty is
incidental, experimental, and contributory to the undying life of the blood=
and
race. I have decided for myself that the general business of life is the
development of a collective consciousness and will and purpose out of a cha=
os
of individual consciousnesses and wills and purposes, and that the way to t=
hat
is through the development of the Socialist State, through the socializatio=
n of
existing State organizations and their merger of pacific association in a W=
orld
State. But so far I have not taken up the collateral aspect of the synthesi=
s of
human consciousness, the development of collective feeling and willing and
expression in the form, among others, of religious institutions.
Religious
institutions are things to be legitimately distinguished from the creeds and
cosmogonies with which one finds them associated. Customs are far more endu=
ring
things than ideas,--witness the mistletoe at Christmas, or the old lady tur=
ning
her money in her pocket at the sight of the new moon. And the exact origin =
of a
religious institution is of much less significance to us than its present
effect. The theory of a religion may propose the attainment of Nirvana or t=
he
propitiation of an irascible Deity or a dozen other things as its end and a=
im;
the practical fact is that it draws together great multitudes of diverse in=
dividualized
people in a common solemnity and self-subordination however vague, and is so
far, like the State, and in a manner far more intimate and emotional and
fundamental than the State, a synthetic power. And in particular, the idea =
of
the Catholic Church is charged with synthetic suggestion; it is in many way=
s an
idea broader and finer than the constructive idea of any existing State. And
just as the Beliefs I have adopted lead me to regard myself as in and of th=
e existing
State, such as it is, and working for its rectification and development, so=
I
think there is a reasonable case for considering oneself in and of the Cath=
olic
Church and bound to work for its rectification and development; and this in
spite of the fact that one may not feel justified in calling oneself a
Christian in any sense of the term.
It may be maintai=
ned
very plausibly that the Catholic Church is something greater than Christian=
ity,
however much the Christians may have contributed to its making. From the
historical point of view it is a religious and social method that developed
with the later development of the world empire of Rome and as the expressio=
n of
its moral and spiritual side. Its head was, and so far as its main body is
concerned still is, the pontifex maximus of the Roman world empire, an offi=
cial
who was performing sacrifices centuries before Christ was born. It is easy =
to
assert that the Empire was converted to Christianity and submitted to its
terrestrial leader, the bishop of Rome; it is quite equally plausible to say
that the religious organization of the Empire adopted Christianity and so m=
ade
Rome, which had hitherto had no priority over Jerusalem or Antioch in the
Christian Church, the headquarters of the adopted cult. And if the Christian
movement could take over and assimilate the prestige, the world predominance
and sacrificial conception of the pontifex maximus and go on with that as p=
art
at any rate of the basis of a universal Church, it is manifest that now in =
the
fulness of time this great organization, after its accumulation of Christian
tradition, may conceivably go on still further to alter and broaden its
teaching and observances and formulae.
In a sense no dou=
bt
all we moderns are bound to consider ourselves children of the Catholic Chu=
rch,
albeit critical and innovating children with a tendency to hark back to our
Greek grandparents; we cannot detach ourselves absolutely from the Church
without at the same time detaching ourselves from the main process of spiri=
tual
synthesis that has made us what we are. And there is a strong case for supp=
osing
that not only is this reasonable for us who live in the tradition of Western
Europe, but that we are legitimately entitled to call upon extra European
peoples to join with us in that attitude of filiation to the Catholic Church
since, outside it, there is no organization whatever aiming at a religious =
catholicity
and professing or attempting to formulate a collective religious consciousn=
ess
in the world. So far as they come to a conception of a human synthesis they
come to it by coming into our tradition.
I write here of t=
he
Catholic Church as an idea. To come from that idea to the world of present
realities is to come to a tangle of difficulties. Is the Catholic Church me=
rely
the Roman communion or does it include the Greek and Protestant Churches? S=
ome
of these bodies are declaredly dissentient, some claim to be integral porti=
ons
of the Catholic Church which have protested against and abandoned certain e=
rrors
of the central organization. I admit it becomes a very confusing riddle in =
such
a country as England to determine which is the Catholic Church; whether it =
is
the body which possesses and administers Canterbury Cathedral and Westminst=
er
Abbey, or the bodies claiming to represent purer and finer or more authentic
and authoritative forms of Catholic teaching which have erected that new
Byzantine-looking cathedral in Westminster, or Whitfield's Tabernacle in the
Tottenham Court Road, or a hundred or so other organized and independent
bodies. It is still more perplexing to settle upon the Catholic Church in A=
merica
among an immense confusion of sectarian fragments.
Many people, I kn=
ow,
take refuge from the struggle with this tangle of controversies by refusing=
to
recognize any institutions whatever as representing the Church. They assume=
a
mystical Church made up of all true believers, of all men and women of good
intent, whatever their formulae or connexion. Wherever there is worship, th=
ere,
they say, is a fragment of the Church. All and none of these bodies are the
true Church.
This is no doubt =
profoundly
true. It gives something like a working assumption for the needs of the pre=
sent
time. People can get along upon that. But it does not exhaust the question.=
We
seek a real and understanding synthesis. We want a real collectivism, not a
poetical idea; a means whereby men and women of all sorts, all kinds of
humanity, may pray together, sing together, stand side by side, feel the sa=
me
wave of emotion, develop a collective being. Doubtless right-spirited men a=
re praying
now at a thousand discrepant altars. But for the most part those who pray
imagine those others who do not pray beside them are in error, they do not =
know
their common brotherhood and salvation. Their brotherhood is masked by
unanalyzable differences; theirs is a dispersed collectivism; their churches
are only a little more extensive than their individualities and intenser in
their collective separations.
The true Church
towards which my own thoughts tend will be the conscious illuminated expres=
sion
of Catholic brotherhood. It must, I think, develop out of the existing medl=
ey
of Church fragments and out of all that is worthy in our poetry and literat=
ure,
just as the worldwide Socialist State at which I aim must develop out of su=
ch
state and casual economic organizations and constructive movements as exist
to-day. There is no "beginning again" in these things. In neither
case will going apart out of existing organizations secure our ends. Out of
what is, we have to develop what has to be. To work for the Reformation of =
the Catholic
Church is an integral part of the duty of a believer.
It is curious how
misleading a word can be. We speak of a certain phase in the history of
Christianity as the Reformation, and that word effectually conceals from mo=
st
people the simple indisputable fact that there has been no Reformation. The=
re
was an attempt at a Reformation in the Catholic Church, and through a varie=
ty
of causes it failed. It detached great masses from the Catholic Church and =
left
that organization impoverished intellectually and spiritually, but it achie=
ved
no reconstruction at all. It achieved no reconstruction because the movemen=
t as
a whole lacked an adequate grasp of one fundamentally necessary idea, the i=
dea
of Catholicity. It fell into particularism and failed. It set up a vast pro=
cess
of fragmentation among Christian associations. It drove huge fissures throu=
gh
the once common platform. In innumerable cases they were fissures of
organization and prejudice rather than real differences in belief and mental
habit. Sometimes it was manifestly conflicting material interests that made=
the
split. People are now divided by forgotten points of difference, by sides t=
aken
by their predecessors in the disputes of the sixteenth century, by mere sec=
tarian
names and the walls of separate meeting places. In the present time, as a
result of the dissenting method, there are multitudes of believing men
scattered quite solitarily through the world.
The Reformation, =
the
Reconstruction of the Catholic Church lies still before us. It is a necessa=
ry
work. It is a work strictly parallel to the reformation and expansion of the
organized State. Together, these processes constitute the general duty befo=
re
mankind.
The whole trend o=
f my
thought in matters of conduct is against whatever accentuates one's individ=
ual
separation from the collective consciousness. It follows naturally from my
fundamental creed that avoidable silences and secrecy are sins, just as
abstinences are in themselves sins rather than virtues. And so I think that=
to
leave any organization or human association except for a wider and larger a=
ssociation,
to detach oneself in order to go alone, or to go apart narrowly with just a
few, is fragmentation and sin. Even if one disagrees with the professions or
formulae or usages of an association, one should be sure that the disagreem=
ent
is sufficiently profound to justify one's secession, and in any case of dou=
bt,
one should remain. I count schism a graver sin than heresy.
No profession of
faith, no formula, no usage can be perfect. It is only required that it sho=
uld
be possible. More particularly does this apply to churches and religious
organizations. There never was a creed nor a religious declaration but admi=
tted
of a wide variety of interpretations and implied both more and less than it
expressed. The pedantically conscientious man, in his search for an unblemi=
shed
religious brotherhood, has tended always to a solitude of universal dissent=
.
In the religious =
as
in the economic sphere one must not look for perfect conditions. Setting up=
for
oneself in a new sect is like founding Utopias in Paraguay, an evasion of t=
he
essential question; our real business is to take what we have, live in and =
by
it, use it and do our best to better such faults as are manifest to us, in =
the
direction of a wider and nobler organization. If you do not agree with the
church in which you find yourself, your best course is to become a reformer=
IN
that church, to declare it a detached forgetful part of the greater church =
that
ought to be, just as your State is a detached unawakened part of the World
State. You take it at what it is and try and broaden it towards reunion. It=
is
only when secession is absolutely unavoidable that it is right to secede.
This is particula=
rly
true of state churches such as is the Church of England. These are bodies
constituted by the national law and amenable to the collective will. I do n=
ot
think a man should consider himself excluded from them because they have
articles of religion to which he cannot subscribe and creeds he will not sa=
y. A
national state church has no right to be thus limited and exclusive. Rather
then let any man, just to the very limit that is possible for his intellect=
ual
or moral temperament, remain in his church to redress the balance and do hi=
s utmost
to change and broaden it.
But perhaps the
Church will not endure a broad-minded man in its body, speaking and reformi=
ng,
and will expel him?
Be expelled--well=
and
good! That is altogether different. Let them expel you, struggling valiantly
and resolved to return so soon as they release you, to hammer at the door. =
But
withdrawing--sulking--going off in a serene huff to live by yourself
spiritually and materially in your own way--that is voluntary damnation, the
denial of the Brotherhood of Man. Be a rebel or a revolutionary to your hea=
rt's
content, but a mere seceder never.
For otherwise it =
is
manifest that we shall have to pay for each step of moral and intellectual
progress with a fresh start, with a conflict between the new organization a=
nd
the old from which it sprang, a perpetually-recurring parricide. There will=
be
a series of religious institutions in developing order, each containing the
remnant too dull or too hypocritical to secede at the time of stress that b=
egan
the new body. Something of the sort has indeed happened to both the Catholi=
c and
the English Protestant churches. We have the intellectual and moral guidanc=
e of
the people falling more and more into the hands of an informal Church of
morally impassioned leaders, writers, speakers, and the like, while the
beautiful cathedrals in which their predecessors sheltered fall more and mo=
re
into the hands of an uninspiring, retrogressive but conforming clergy.
Now this was all =
very
well for the Individualist Liberal of the Early Victorian period, but Indiv=
idualist
Liberalism was a mere destructive phase in the process of renewing the old
Catholic order, a clearing up of the site. We Socialists want a Church thro=
ugh
which we can feel and think collectively, as much as we want a State that we
can serve and be served by. Whether as members or external critics we have =
to
do our best to get rid of obsolete doctrinal and ceremonial barriers, so th=
at the
churches may merge again in a universal Church, and that Church comprehend
again the whole growing and amplifying spiritual life of the race.
I do not know if I make my meaning perfectly clear here. By conformity I do not mean silent conformity. It is a man's primary duty to convey his individual difference = to the minds of his fellow men. It is because I want that difference to tell to the utmost that I suggest he should not leave the assembly. But in particul= ar instances he may find it more striking and significant to stand out and spe= ak as a man detached from the general persuasion, just as obstructed and embar= rassed ministers of State can best serve their country at times by resigning office and appealing to the public judgment by this striking and significant act.<= o:p>
We are led by this
discussion of secession straight between the horns of a moral dilemma. We h=
ave
come to two conclusions; to secede is a grave sin, but to lie is also a gra=
ve
sin.
But often the
practical alternative is between futile secession or implicit or actual
falsehood. It has been the instinct of the aggressive controversialist in a=
ll
ages to seize upon collective organizations and fence them about with oaths=
and
declarations of such a nature as to bar out anyone not of his own way of
thinking. In a democracy, for example, to take an extreme caricature of our
case, a triumphant majority in power, before allowing anyone to vote, might
impose an oath whereby the leader of the minority and all his aims were
specifically renounced. And if no country goes so far as that, nearly all
countries and all churches make some such restrictions upon opinion. The Un=
ited
States, that land of abandoned and receding freedoms, imposes upon everyone=
who
crosses the Atlantic to its shores a childish ineffectual declaration again=
st anarchy
and polygamy. None of these tests exclude the unhesitating liar, but they do
bar out many proud and honest minded people. They "fix" and kill
things that should be living and fluid; they are offences against the mind =
of
the race. How is a man then to behave towards these test oaths and
affirmations, towards repeating creeds, signing assent to articles of relig=
ion
and the like? Do not these unavoidable barriers to public service, or relig=
ious
work, stand on a special footing?
Personally I think
they do.
I think that in m=
ost
cases personal isolation and disuse is the greater evil. I think if there i=
s no
other way to constructive service except through test oaths and declaration=
s,
one must take then. This is a particular case that stands apart from all ot=
her
cases. The man who preaches a sermon and pretends therein to any belief he =
does
not truly hold is an abominable scoundrel, but I do not think he need troub=
le his
soul very greatly about the barrier he stepped over to get into the pulpit,=
if
he felt the call to preach, so long as the preaching be honest. A Republican
who takes the oath of allegiance to the King and wears his uniform is in a
similar case. These things stand apart; they are so formal as to be scarcely
more reprehensible than the falsehood of calling a correspondent
"Dear," or asking a tiresome lady to whom one is being kind and
civil, for the pleasure of dancing with her. We ought to do what we can to
abolish these absurd barriers and petty falsehoods, but we ought not to com=
mit
a social suicide against them.
That is how I thi=
nk
and feel in this matter, but if a man sees the matter more gravely, if his
conscience tells him relentlessly and uncompromisingly, "this is a
lie," then it is a lie and he must not be guilty of it. But then I thi=
nk
it ill becomes him to be silently excluded. His work is to clamour against =
the
existence of the barrier that wastes him.
I do not see that
lying is a fundamental sin. In the first place some lying, that is to say s=
ome
unavoidable inaccuracy of statement, is necessary to nearly everything we d=
o,
and the truest statement becomes false if we forget or alter the angle at w=
hich
it is made, the direction in which it points. In the next the really
fundamental and most generalized sin is self-isolation. Lying is a sin only
because self-isolation is a sin, because it is an effectual way of cutting =
oneself
off from human co-operation. That is why there is no sin in telling a fairy
tale to a child. But telling the truth when it will be misunderstood is no =
whit
better than lying; silences are often blacker than any lies. I class secrets
with lies and cannot comprehend the moral standards that exonerate secrecy =
in
human affairs.
To all these thin=
gs
one must bring a personal conscience and be prepared to examine particular
cases. The excuses I have made, for example, for a very broad churchman to =
stay
in the Church might very well be twisted into an excuse for taking an oath =
in
something one did not to the slightest extent believe, in order to enter and
betray some organization to which one was violently hostile. I admit that t=
here
may be every gradation between these two things. The individual must examine
his special case and weigh the element of treachery against the possibility=
of
co-operation. I do not see how there can be a general rule. I have already
shown why in my own case I hesitate to profess a belief in God, because, I
think, the misleading element in that profession would outweigh the advanta=
ge
of sympathy and confidence gained.
The preceding sec=
tion
has been criticized by a friend who writes:--
"In religious
matters apparent assent produces false unanimity. There is no convention ab=
out
these things; if there were they would not exist. On the contrary, the only=
way
to get perfunctory tests and so forth abrogated, is for a sufficient number=
of
people to refuse to take them. It is in this case as in every other; secess=
ion
is the beginning of a new integration. The living elements leave the dead or
dying form and gradually create in virtue of their own combinations a new f=
orm
more suited to present things. There is a formative, a creative power in si=
ncerity
and also in segregation itself. And the new form, the new species produced =
by
variation and segregation will measure itself and its qualities with the old
one. The old one will either go to the wall, accept the new one and be rene=
wed
by it, or the new one will itself be pushed out of existence if the old one=
has
more vitality and is better adapted to the circumstances. This process of
variation, competition and selection, also of intermarriage between equally
vital and equally adapted varieties, is after all the process by which not =
only
races exist but all human thoughts."
So my friend, who=
I
think is altogether too strongly swayed by biological analogies. But I am
thinking not of the assertion of opinions primarily but of co-operation wit=
h an
organization with which, save for the matter of the test, one may agree.
Secession may not involve the development of a new and better moral
organization; it may simply mean the suicide of one's public aspect. There =
may
be no room or no need of a rival organization. To secede from State employm=
ent,
for example, is not to create the beginnings of a new State, however
many--short of a revolution--may secede with you. It is to become a
disconnected private person, and throw up one's social side.
I do not think a
discussion of man's social relations can be considered at all complete or
satisfactory until we have gone into the question of military service. To-d=
ay,
in an increasing number of countries, military service is an essential part=
of
citizenship and the prospect of war lies like a great shadow across the who=
le
bright complex prospect of human affairs. What should be the attitude of a
right-living man towards his State at war and to warlike preparations?
In no other conne=
xion
are the confusions and uncertainty of the contemporary mind more manifest. =
It
is an odd contradiction that in Great Britain and Western Europe generally,
just those parties that stand most distinctly for personal devotion to the =
State
in economic matters, the Socialist and Socialistic parties, are most oppose=
d to
the idea of military service, and just those parties that defend individual=
self-seeking
and social disloyalty in the sphere of property are most urgent for
conscription. No doubt some of this uncertainty is due to the mixing in of
private interests with public professions, but much more is it, I think, the
result of mere muddle-headedness and an insufficient grasp of the implicati=
ons
of the propositions under discussion. The ordinary political Socialist desi=
res,
as I desire, and as I suppose every sane man desires as an ultimate ideal,
universal peace, the merger of national partitions in loyalty to the World
State. But he does not recognize that the way to reach that goal is not
necessarily by minimizing and specializing war and war responsibility at the
present time. There he falls short of his own constructive conceptions and =
lapses
into the secessionist methods of the earlier Radicals. We have here another
case strictly parallel to several we have already considered. War is a
collective concern; to turn one's back upon it, to refuse to consider it as=
a
possibility, is to leave it entirely to those who are least prepared to deal
with it in a broad spirit.
In many ways war =
is
the most socialistic of all forces. In many ways military organization is t=
he
most peaceful of activities. When the contemporary man steps from the stree=
t of
clamorous insincere advertisement, push, adulteration, under-selling and
intermittent employment, into the barrack-yard, he steps on to a higher soc=
ial
plane, into an atmosphere of service and co-operation and of infinitely mor=
e honourable
emulations. Here at least men are not flung out of employment to degenerate
because there is no immediate work for them to do. They are fed and drilled=
and
trained for better services. Here a man is at least supposed to win promoti=
on
by self-forgetfulness and not by self-seeking. And beside the feeble and
irregular endowment of research by commercialism, its little short-sighted
snatches at profit by innovation and scientific economy, see how remarkable=
is
the steady and rapid development of method and appliances in naval and mili=
tary
affairs! Nothing is more striking than to compare the progress of civil con=
veniences
which has been left almost entirely to the trader, to the progress in milit=
ary
apparatus during the last few decades. The house appliances of to-day for
example, are little better than they were fifty years ago. A house of to-da=
y is
still almost as ill-ventilated, badly heated by wasteful fires, clumsily
arranged and furnished as the house of 1858. Houses a couple of hundred yea=
rs
old are still satisfactory places of residence, so little have our standards
risen. But the rifle or battleship of fifty years ago was beyond all compar=
ison
inferior to those we possess; in power, in speed, in convenience alike. No =
one
has a use now for such superannuated things.
What is the meani=
ng
of war in life?
War is manifestly=
not
a thing in itself, it is something correlated with the whole fabric of human
life. That violence and killing which between animals of the same species is
private and individual becomes socialized in war. It is a co-operation for
killing that carries with it also a co-operation for saving and a great
development of mutual help and development within the war-making group.
War, it seems to =
me,
is really the elimination of violent competition as between man and man, an
excretion of violence from the developing social group. Through war and
military organization, and through war and military organization only, has =
it
become possible to conceive of peace.
This violence was=
a
necessary phase in human and indeed in all animal development. Among low ty=
pes
of men and animals it seems an inevitable condition of the vigour of the
species and the beauty of life. The more vital and various individual must =
lead
and prevail, leave progeny and make the major contribution to the synthesis=
of
the race; the weaker individual must take a subservient place and leave no
offspring. That means in practice that the former must directly or indirect=
ly
kill the latter until some mitigated but equally effectual substitute for t=
hat killing
is invented. That duel disappears from life, the fight of the beasts for fo=
od
and the fight of the bulls for the cows, only by virtue of its replacement =
by
new forms of competition. With the development of primitive war we have suc=
h a
replacement. The competition becomes a competition to serve and rule in the
group, the stronger take the leadership and the larger share of life, and t=
he
weaker co-operate in subordination, they waive and compromise the conflict =
and
use their conjoint strength against a common rival.
Competition is a
necessary condition of progressive life. I do not know if so far I have made
that belief sufficiently clear in these confessions. Perhaps in my anxiety =
to
convey my idea of a human synthesis I have not sufficiently insisted upon t=
he
part played by competition in that synthesis. But the implications of the v=
iew
that I have set forth are fairly plain. Every individual, I have stated, is=
an
experiment for the synthesis of the species, and upon that idea my system of
conduct so far as it is a system is built. Manifestly the individual's func=
tion
is either self-development, service and reproduction, or failure and an end=
.
With moral and
intellectual development the desire to serve and participate in a collective
purpose arises to control the blind and passionate impulse to survival and
reproduction that the struggle for life has given us, but it does not aboli=
sh
the fact of selection, of competition. I contemplate no end of competition.=
But
for competition that is passionate, egoistic and limitless, cruel, clumsy a=
nd
wasteful, I desire to see competition that is controlled and fair-minded an=
d devoted,
men and women doing their utmost with themselves and making their utmost
contribution to the specific accumulation, but in the end content to abide =
by a
verdict.
The whole develop=
ment
of civilization, it seems to me, consists in the development of adequate te=
sts
of survival and of an intellectual and moral atmosphere about those tests so
that they shall be neither cruel nor wasteful. If the test is not to be 'are
you strong enough to kill everyone you do not like?' that will only be beca=
use
it will ask still more comprehensively and with regard to a multitude of
qualities other than brute killing power, 'are you adding worthily to the
synthesis by existence and survival?'
I am very clear i=
n my
mind on this perpetual need of competition. I admit that upon that turns the
practicability of all the great series of organizing schemes that are called
Socialism. The Socialist scheme must show a system in which predominance and
reproduction are correlated with the quality and amount of an individual's
social contribution, and so far I acknowledge it is only in the most general
terms that this can be claimed as done. We Socialists have to work out all
these questions far more thoroughly than we have done hitherto. We owe that=
to
our movement and the world.
It is no adequate
answer to our antagonists to say, indeed it is a mere tu quoque to say, that
the existing system does not present such a correlation, that it puts a pre=
mium
on secretiveness and self-seeking and a discount on many most necessary for=
ms
of social service. That is a mere temporary argument for a delay in judgmen=
t.
The whole history=
of
humanity seems to me to present a spectacle of this organizing specializati=
on
of competition, this replacement of the indiscriminate and collectively bli=
nd
struggle for life by an organized and collectively intelligent development =
of
life. We see a secular replacement of brute conflict by the law, a secular
replacement of indiscriminate brute lust by marriage and sexual taboos, and=
now
with the development of Socialistic ideas and methods, the steady replaceme=
nt of
blind industrial competition by public economic organization. And moreover
there is going on a great educational process bringing a greater and greate=
r proportion
of the minds of the community into relations of understanding and interchan=
ge.
Just as this proc=
ess
of organization proceeds, the violent and chaotic conflict of individuals a=
nd
presently of groups of individuals disappears, personal violence, private w=
ar,
cut-throat competition, local war, each in turn is replaced by a more effic=
ient
and more economical method of survival, a method of survival giving constan=
tly and
selecting always more accurately a finer type of survivor.
I might compare t=
he
social synthesis to crystals growing out of a fluid matrix. It is where the
growing order of the crystals has as yet not spread that the old resource to
destruction and violent personal or associated acts remains.
But this metaphor=
of
crystals is a very inadequate one, because crystals have no will in themsel=
ves;
nor do crystals, having failed to grow in some particular form, presently
modify that form more or less and try again. I see the organizing of forces,
not simply law and police which are indeed paid mercenaries from the region=
of
violence, but legislation and literature, teaching and tradition, organized
religion, getting themselves and the social structure together, year after =
year
and age after age, halting, failing, breaking up in order to try again. And=
it
seems to me that the amount of lawlessness and crime, the amount of waste a=
nd
futility, the amount of war and war possibility and war danger in the world=
are
just the measure of the present inadequacy of the world's system of collect=
ive
organization to the purpose before them.
It follows from t=
his
very directly that only one thing can end war on the earth and that is a su=
btle
mental development, an idea, the development of the idea of the world
commonweal in the collective mind. The only real method of abolishing war i=
s to
perceive it, to realize it, to express it, to think it out and think about =
it,
to make all the world understand its significance, and to clear and preserve
its significant functions. In human affairs to understand an evil is to abo=
lish
it; it is the only way to abolish any evil that arises out of the untutored=
nature
of man. Which brings me back here again to my already repeated persuasion, =
that
in expressing things, rendering things to each other, discussing our
differences, clearing up the metaphysical conceptions upon which differences
are discussed, and in a phrase evolving the collective mind, lies not only =
the
cures of war and poverty but the general form of all a man's duty and the
essential work of mankind.
In our contempora=
ry
world, in our particular phase, military and naval organization loom up,
colossal and unprecedent facts. They have the effect of an overhanging disa=
ster
that grows every year more tremendous, every year in more sinister contrast=
with
the increasing securities and tolerations of the everyday life. It is
impossible to imagine now what a great war in Europe would be like; the cha=
nge
in material and method has been so profound since the last cycle of wars en=
ded
with the downfall of the Third Napoleon. But there can be little or no doubt
that it would involve a destruction of property and industrial and social d=
isorganization
of the most monstrous dimensions. No man, I think, can mark the limits of t=
he
destruction of a great European conflict were it to occur at the present ti=
me;
and the near advent of practicable flying machines opens a whole new world =
of
frightful possibilities.
For my own part I=
can
imagine that a collision between such powers as Great Britain, Germany or
America, might very well involve nearly every other power in the world, mig=
ht
shatter the whole fabric of credit upon which our present system of economi=
cs
rests and put back the orderly progress of social construction for a vast
interval of time. One figures great towns red with destruction while giant
airships darken the sky, one pictures the crash of mighty ironclads, the
bursting of tremendous shells fired from beyond the range of sight into
unprotected cities. One thinks of congested ways swarming with desperate fi=
ghters,
of torrents of fugitives and of battles gone out of the control of their
generals into unappeasable slaughter. There is a vision of interrupted comm=
unications,
of wrecked food trains and sunken food ships, of vast masses of people thro=
wn
out of employment and darkly tumultuous in the streets, of famine and
famine-driven rioters. What modern population will stand a famine? For the
first time in the history of warfare the rear of the victor, the rear of the
fighting line becomes insecure, assailable by flying machines and subject to
unprecedented and unimaginable panics. No man can tell what savagery of
desperation these new conditions may not release in the soul of man. A
conspiracy of adverse chances, I say, might contrive so great a cataclysm. =
There
is no effectual guarantee that it could not occur.
But in spite of t=
hat,
I believe that on the whole there is far more good than evil in the enormous
military growths that have occurred in the last half century. I cannot esti=
mate
how far the alternative to war is lethargy. It is through military urgencies
alone that many men can be brought to consent to the collective endowment of
research, to public education and to a thousand interferences with their
private self-seeking. Just as the pestilence of cholera was necessary before
men could be brought to consent to public sanitation, so perhaps the dread =
of
foreign violence is an unavoidable spur in an age of chaotic industrial
production in order that men may be brought to subserve the growth of a Sta=
te
whose purpose might otherwise be too high for them to understand. Men must =
be
forced to care for fleets and armies until they have learnt to value cities=
and
self development and a beautiful social life.
The real danger of
modern war lies not in the disciplined power of the fighting machine but in=
the
undisciplined forces in the collective mind that may set that machine in
motion. It is not that our guns and ships are marvellously good, but that o=
ur
press and political organizations are haphazard growths entirely inferior to
them. If this present phase of civilization should end in a debacle, if
presently humanity finds itself beginning again at a lower level of
organization, it will not be because we have developed these enormous power=
s of
destruction but because we have failed to develop adequate powers of control
for them and collective determination. This panoply of war waits as the tes=
t of
our progress towards the realization of that collective mind which I hold m=
ust
ultimately direct the evolution of our specific being. It is here to measure
our incoherence and error, and in the measure of those defects to refer us =
back
to our studies.
Just as we unders=
tand
does war become needless.
But I do not think
that war and military organization will so much disappear as change its nat=
ure
as the years advance. I think that the phase of universal military service =
we
seem to be approaching is one through which the mass of mankind may have to
pass, learning something that can be learnt in no other way, that the unifo=
rms
and flags, the conceptions of order and discipline, the tradition of service
and devotion, of physical fitness, unstinted exertion and universal respons=
ibility,
will remain a permanent acquisition, though the last ammunition has been us=
ed
ages since in the pyrotechnic display that welcomed the coming of the ultim=
ate
Peace.
3.20. OF ABSTINENCES AND
DISCIPLINES.
From these large
issues of conduct, let me come now to more intimate things, to one's self
control, the regulation of one's personal life. And first about abstinences=
and
disciplines.
I have already
confessed (Chapter 2.6) that my nature is one that dislikes abstinences and=
is
wearied by and wary of excess.
I do not feel tha=
t it
is right to suppress altogether any part of one's being. In itself abstinen=
ce
seems to me a refusal to experience, and that, upon the lines of thought I
follow, is to say that abstinence for its own sake is evil. But for an end =
all
abstinences are permissible, and if the kinetic type of believer finds both=
his
individual and his associated efficiency enhanced by a systematic disciplin=
e,
if he is convinced that he must specialize because of the discursiveness of=
his
motives, because there is something he wants to do or be so good that the r=
est
of them may very well be suppressed for its sake, then he must suppress. But
the virtue is in what he gets done and not in what he does not do. Reasonab=
le
fear is a sound reason for abstinence, as when a man has a passion like a
lightly sleeping maniac that the slightest indulgence will arouse. Then he =
must
needs adopt heroic abstinence, and even more so must he take to preventive
restraint if he sees any motive becoming unruly and urgent and troublesome.
Fear is a sound reason for abstinence and so is love. Many who have sensiti=
ve
imaginations nowadays very properly abstain from meat because of butchery. =
And
it is often needful, out of love and brotherhood, to abstain from things
harmless to oneself because they are inconveniently alluring to others link=
ed
to us. The moderate drinker who sits at table sipping his wine in the sight=
of one
he knows to be a potential dipsomaniac is at best an unloving fool.
But mere abstinen=
ce
and the doing of barren toilsome unrewarding things for the sake of the toi=
l,
is a perversion of one's impulses. There is neither honour nor virtue nor g=
ood
in that.
I do not believe =
in
negative virtues. I think the ideas of them arise out of the system of
metaphysical errors I have roughly analyzed in my first Book, out of the
inherent tendency of the mind to make the relative absolute and to convert
quantitative into qualitative differences. Our minds fall very readily under
the spell of such unmitigated words as Purity and Chastity. Only death beyo=
nd
decay, absolute non-existence, can be Pure and Chaste. Life is impurity, fa=
ct is
impure. Everything has traces of alien matter; our very health is dependent=
on
parasitic bacteria; the purest blood in the world has a tainted ancestor, a=
nd
not a saint but has evil thoughts. It was blindness to that which set men
stoning the woman taken in adultery. They forgot what they were made of. Th=
is
stupidity, this unreasonable idealism of the common mind, fills life to-day
with cruelties and exclusions, with partial suicides and secret shames. But=
we
are born impure, we die impure; it is a fable that spotless white lilies sp=
rang
from any saint's decay, and the chastity of a monk or nun is but introverted
impurity. We have to take life valiantly on these conditions and make such
honour and beauty and sympathy out of our confusions, gather such construct=
ive
experience, as we may.
There is a mass of
real superstition upon these points, a belief in a magic purity, in magic
personalities who can say:--
My strength is as the
strength of ten Because my heart =
is
pure,
and wonderful
clairvoyant innocents like the young man in Mr. Kipling's "Finest Stor=
y in
the World."
There is a lurking
disposition to believe, even among those who lead the normal type of life, =
that
the abstinent and chastely celibate are exceptionally healthy, energetic,
immune. The wildest claims are made. But indeed it is true for all who can =
see
the facts of life simply and plainly, that man is an omnivorous, versatile,
various creature and can draw his strength from a hundred varieties of
nourishment. He has physiological idiosyncrasies too that are indifferent to
biological classifications and moral generalities. It is not true that his =
absorbent
vessels begin their task as children begin the guessing game, by asking,
"Is it animal, vegetable or mineral?" He responds to stimulation =
and
recuperates after the exhaustion of his response, and his being is singular=
ly
careless whether the stimulation comes as a drug or stimulant, or as anger =
or
music or noble appeals.
Most people speak=
of
drugs in the spirit of that admirable firm of soap-boilers which assures its
customers that the soap they make "contains no chemicals." Drugs =
are
supposed to be a mystic diabolical class of substance, remote from and
contrasting in their nature with all other things. So they banish a tonic f=
rom
the house and stuff their children with manufactured cereals and chocolate
creams. The drunken helot of this system of absurdities is the Christian
Scientist who denies healing only to those who have studied pathology, and
declares that anything whatever put into a bottle and labelled with directi=
ons for
its use by a doctor is thereby damnable and damned. But indeed all drugs and
all the things of life have their uses and dangers, and there is no wholesa=
le
truth to excuse us a particular wisdom and watchfulness in these matters.
Unless we except smoking as an unclean and needless artificiality, all these
matters of eating and drinking and habit are matters of more or less. It se=
ems
to me foolish to make anything that is stimulating and pleasurable into a
habit, for that is slowly and surely to lose a stimulus and pleasure and cr=
eate
a need that it may become painful to check or control. The moral rule of my
standards is irregularity. If I were a father confessor I should begin my
catalogue of sins by asking: "are you a man of regular life?" And=
I
would charge my penitent to go away forthwith and commit some practicable
saving irregularity; to fast or get drunk or climb a mountain or sup on pork
and beans or give up smoking or spend a month with publicans and sinners. R=
ight
conduct for the common unspecialized man lies delicately adjusted between
defect and excess as a watch is adjusted and adjustable between fast and sl=
ow.
We none of us altogether and always keep the balance or are altogether safe=
from
losing it. We swing, balancing and adjusting, along our path. Life is that,=
and
abstinence is for the most part a mere evasion of life.
3.21. ON FORGETTING, AND =
THE
NEED OF PRAYER, READING, DISCUSSION AND WORSHIP.
One aspect of lif=
e I
had very much in mind when I planned those Samurai disciplines of mine. It =
was
forgetting.
We forget.
Even after we have
found Salvation, we have to keep hold of Salvation; believing, we must cont=
inue
to believe. We cannot always be at a high level of noble emotion. We have
clambered on the ship of Faith and found our place and work aboard, and even
while we are busied upon it, behold we are back and drowning in the sea of
chaotic things.
Every religious b=
ody,
every religious teacher, has appreciated this difficulty and the need there=
is
of reminders and renewals. Faith needs restatement and revival as the body
needs food. And since the Believer is to seek much experience and be a judg=
e of
less or more in many things, it is particularly necessary that he should ke=
ep
hold upon a living Faith.
How may he best do
this?
I think we may st=
ate
it as a general duty that he must do whatever he can to keep his faith
constantly alive. But beyond that, what a man must do depends almost entire=
ly
upon his own intellectual character. Many people of a regular type of mind =
can
refresh themselves by some recurrent duty, by repeating a daily prayer, by
daily reading or re-reading some devotional book. With others constant
repetition leads to a mental and spiritual deadening, until beautiful phras=
es
become unmeaning, eloquent statements inane and ridiculous,--matter for par=
ody.
All who can, I think, should pray and should read and re-read what they have
found spiritually helpful, and if they know of others of kindred dispositio=
ns
and can organize these exercises, they should do so. Collective worship aga=
in
is a necessity for many Believers. For many, the public religious services =
of
this or that form of Christianity supply an atmosphere rich in the essential
quality of religion and abounding in phrases about the religious life, mell=
ow
from the use of centuries and almost immediately applicable. It seems to me
that if one can do so, one should participate in such public worship and
habituate oneself to read back into it that collective purpose and conscien=
ce
it once embodied.
Very much is to be
said for the ceremony of Holy Communion or the Mass, for those whom acciden=
t or
scruples do not debar. I do not think your modern liberal thinkers quite
appreciate the finer aspects of this, the one universal service of the
Christian Church. Some of them are set forth very finely by a man who has b=
een
something of a martyr for conscience' sake, and is for me a hero as well as=
a
friend, in a world not rich in heroes, the Rev. Stewart Headlam, in his boo=
k,
"The Meaning of the Mass."
With others again,
Faith can be most animated by writing, by confession, by discussion, by talk
with friends or antagonists.
One or other or a=
ll
of these things the Believer must do, for the mind is a living and moving
process, and the thing that lies inert in it is presently covered up by new
interests and lost. If you make a sort of King Log of your faith, presently
something else will be sitting upon it, pride or self-interest, or some reb=
el
craving, King de facto of your soul, directing it back to anarchy.
For many types th=
at,
however, is exactly what happens with public worship. They DO get a King Lo=
g in
ceremony. And if you deliberately overcome and suppress your perception of =
and
repugnance to the perfunctoriness of religion in nine-tenths of the worship=
pers
about you, you may be destroying at the same time your own intellectual and
moral sensitiveness. But I am not suggesting that you should force yourself=
to take
part in public worship against your perceptions, but only that if it helps =
you
to worship you should not hesitate to do so.
We deal here with=
a
real need that is not to be fettered by any general prescription. I have one
Cambridge friend who finds nothing so uplifting in the world as the atmosph=
ere
of the afternoon service in the choir of King's College Chapel, and another=
, a
very great and distinguished and theologically sceptical woman, who accusto=
med
herself for some time to hear from a distant corner the evening service in =
St.
Paul's Cathedral and who would go great distances to do that.
Many people find =
an
exaltation and broadening of the mind in mountain scenery and the starry
heavens and the wide arc of the sea; and as I have already said, it was par=
t of
the disciplines of these Samurai of mine that yearly they should go apart f=
or
at least a week of solitary wandering and meditation in lonely and desolate
places. Music again is a frequent means of release from the narrow life as =
it
closes about us. One man I know makes an anthology into which he copies to
re-read any passage that stirs and revives in him the sense of broad issues.
Others again seem able to refresh their nobility of outlook in the atmosphe=
re of
an intense personal love.
Some of us seem to
forget almost as if it were an essential part of ourselves. Such a man as
myself, irritable, easily fatigued and bored, versatile, sensuous, curious,=
and
a little greedy for experience, is perpetually losing touch with his faith,=
so
that indeed I sometimes turn over these pages that I have written and come =
upon
my declarations and confessions with a sense of alien surprise.
It may be, I say,
that for some of us forgetting is the normal process, that one has to belie=
ve
and forget and blunder and learn something and regret and suffer and so come
again to belief much as we have to eat and grow hungry and eat again. What
these others can get in their temples we, after our own manner, must distil
through sleepless and lonely nights, from unavoidable humiliations, from the
smarting of bruised shins.
3.22. DEMOCRACY AND
ARISTOCRACY.
And now having de=
alt
with the general form of a man's duty and with his duty to himself, let me =
come
to his attitude to his individual fellow-men.
The broad princip=
les
determining that attitude are involved in things already written in this bo=
ok.
The belief in a collective being gathering experience and developing will, =
to
which every life is subordinated, renders the cruder conception of aristocr=
acy,
the idea of a select life going on amidst a majority of trivial and
contemptible persons who "do not exist," untenable. It abolishes
contempt. Indeed to believe at all in a comprehensive purpose in things is =
to
abandon that attitude and all the habits and acts that imply it. But a beli=
ef
in universal significance does not altogether preclude a belief in an
aristocratic method of progress, in the idea of the subordination of a numb=
er of
individuals to others who can utilize their lives and help and contributory
achievements in the general purpose. To a certain extent, indeed, this last=
conception
is almost inevitable. We must needs so think of ourselves in relation to pl=
ants
and animals, and I see no reason why we should not think so of our relation=
s to
other men. There are clearly great differences in the capacity and range of
experience of man and man and in their power of using and rendering their
experiences for the racial synthesis. Vigorous persons do look naturally for
help and service to persons of less initiative, and we are all more or less=
capable
of admiration and hero-worship and pleased to help and give ourselves to th=
ose
we feel to be finer or better or completer or more forceful and leaderly th=
an
ourselves. This is natural and inevitable aristocracy.
For that reason i=
t is
not to be organized. We organize things that are not inevitable, but this is
clearly a complex matter of accident and personalities for which there can =
be
no general rule. All organized aristocracy is manifestly begotten by that
fallacy of classification my Metaphysical book set itself to expose. Its ef=
fect
is, and has been in all cases, to mask natural aristocracy, to draw the lin=
es
by wholesale and wrong, to bolster up weak and ineffectual persons in false
positions and to fetter or hamper strong and vigorous people. The false
aristocrat is a figure of pride and claims, a consumer followed by dupes. H=
e is
proudly secretive, pretending to aims beyond the common understanding. The =
true
aristocrat is known rather than knows; he makes and serves. He exacts no
deference. He is urgent to makes others share what he knows and wants and
achieves. He does not think of others as his but as the End's.
There is a base
democracy just as there is a base aristocracy, the swaggering, aggressive
disposition of the vulgar soul that admits neither of superiors nor leaders.
Its true name is insubordination. It resents rules and refinements, delicac=
ies,
differences and organization. It dreams that its leaders are its delegates.=
It
takes refuge from all superiority, all special knowledge, in a phantom idea=
l,
the People, the sublime and wonderful People. "You can fool some of the
people all the time, and all the people some of the time, but you can't fool
all the people all the time," expresses I think quite the quintessence=
of
this mystical faith, this faith in which men take refuge from the demand fo=
r order,
discipline and conscious light. In England it has never been of any great
account, but in America the vulgar individualist's self-protective exaltati=
on
of an idealized Common Man has worked and is working infinite mischief.
In politics the c=
rude
democratic faith leads directly to the submission of every question, however
subtle and special its issues may be, to a popular vote. The community is
regarded as a consultative committee of profoundly wise, alert and
well-informed Common Men. Since the common man is, as Gustave le Bon has
pointed out, a gregarious animal, collectively rather like a sheep, emotion=
al,
hasty and shallow, the practical outcome of political democracy in all large
communities under modern conditions is to put power into the hands of rich
newspaper proprietors, advertising producers and the energetic wealthy
generally who are best able to flood the collective mind freely with the su=
ggestions
on which it acts.
But democracy has
acquired a better meaning than its first crude intentions--there never was a
theory started yet in the human mind that did not beget a finer offspring t=
han
itself--and the secondary meaning brings it at last into entire accordance =
with
the subtler conception of aristocracy. The test of this quintessential
democracy is neither a passionate insistence upon voting and the majority r=
ule,
nor an arrogant bearing towards those who are one's betters in this aspect =
or
that, but fellowship. The true democrat and the true aristocrat meet and are
one in feeling themselves parts of one synthesis under one purpose and one =
scheme.
Both realize that self-concealment is the last evil, both make frankness and
veracity the basis of their intercourse. The general rightness of living for
you and others and for others and you is to understand them to the best of =
your
ability and to make them all, to the utmost limits of your capacity of
expression and their understanding and sympathy, participators in your act =
and
thought.
My ethical dispos=
ition
is all against punctilio and I set no greater value on unblemished honour t=
han
I do on purity. I never yet met a man who talked proudly of his honour who =
did
not end by cheating or trying to cheat me, nor a code of honour that did not
impress me as a conspiracy against the common welfare and purpose in life.
There is honour among thieves, and I think it might well end there as an ob=
ligation
in conduct. The soldier who risks a life he owes to his army in a duel upon
some silly matter of personal pride is no better to me than the clerk who
gambles with the money in his master's till. When I was a boy I once paid a
debt of honour, and it is one of the things I am most ashamed of. I had pla=
yed
cards into debt and I still remember burningly how I went flushed and
shrill-voiced to my mother and got the money she could so ill afford to give
me. I would not pay such a debt of honour now. If I were to wake up one mor=
ning
owing big sums that I had staked overnight I would set to work at once by e=
very
means in my power to evade and repudiate that obligation. Such money as I h=
ave
I owe under our present system to wife and sons and my work and the world, =
and
I see no valid reason why I should hand it over to Smith because he and I h=
ave played
the fool and rascal and gambled. Better by far to accept that fact and be f=
or
my own part published fool and rascal.
I have never been
able to understand the sentimental spectacle of sons toiling dreadfully and
wasting themselves upon mere money-making to save the secret of a father's
peculations and the "honour of the family," or men conspiring to
weave a wide and mischievous net of lies to save the "honour" of a
woman. In the conventional drama the preservation of the honour of a woman
seems an adequate excuse for nearly any offence short of murder; the
preservation that is to say of the appearance of something that is already
gone. Here it is that I do definitely part company with the false aristocrat
who is by nature and intent a humbug and fabricator of sham attitudes, and =
ally
myself with democracy. Fact, valiantly faced, is of more value than any
reputation. The false aristocrat is robed to the chin and unwashed beneath,=
the
true goes stark as Apollo. The false is ridiculous with undignified insiste=
nce upon
his dignity; the true says like God, "I am that I am."
One word has so f=
ar
played a very little part in this book, and that is the word Justice.
Those who have re=
ad
the opening book on Metaphysics will perhaps see that this is a necessary
corollary of the system of thought developed therein. In my philosophy, with
its insistence upon uniqueness and marginal differences and the provisional
nature of numbers and classes, there is little scope for that blind-folded =
lady
with the balances, seeking always exact equivalents. Nowhere in my system of
thought is there work for the idea of Rights and the conception of
conscientious litigious-spirited people exactly observing nicely defined re=
lationships.
You will note, for
example, that I base my Socialism on the idea of a collective development a=
nd
not on the "right" of every man to his own labour, or his
"right" to work, or his "right" to subsistence. All the=
se ideas
of "rights" and of a social "contract" however implicit=
are
merely conventional ways of looking at things, conventions that have arisen=
in the
mercantile phase of human development.
Laws and rights, =
like
common terms in speech, are provisional things, conveniences for taking hol=
d of
a number of cases that would otherwise be unmanageable. The appeal to Justi=
ce
is a necessarily inadequate attempt to de-individualize a case, to eliminate
the self's biassed attitude. I have declared that it is my wilful belief th=
at
everything that exists is significant and necessary. The idea of Justice se=
ems
to me a defective, quantitative application of the spirit of that belief to=
men
and women. In every case you try and discover and act upon a plausible equi=
ty
that must necessarily be based on arbitrary assumptions.
There is no equit=
y in
the universe, in the various spectacle outside our minds, and the most terr=
ible
nightmare the human imagination has ever engendered is a Just God, measurin=
g,
with himself as the Standard, against finite men. Ultimately there is no
adequacy, we are all weighed in the balance and found wanting.
So, as the
recognition of this has grown, Justice has been tempered with Mercy, which
indeed is no more than an attempt to equalize things by making the factors =
of
the very defect that is condemned, its condonation. The modern mind fluctua=
tes
uncertainly somewhere between these extremes, now harsh and now ineffectual=
.
To me there seems=
no
validity in these quasi-absolute standards.
A man seeks and o=
beys
standards of equity simply to economize his moral effort, not because there=
is
anything true or sublime about justice, but because he knows he is too egoi=
stic
and weak-minded and obsessed to do any perfect thing at all, because he can=
not
trust himself with his own transitory emotions unless he trains himself
beforehand to observe a predetermined rule. There is scarcely an eventualit=
y in
life that without the help of these generalizations would not exceed the
average man's intellectual power and moral energy, just as there is scarcel=
y an
idea or an emotion that can be conveyed without the use of faulty and defec=
tive
common names. Justice and Mercy are indeed not ultimately different in their
nature from such other conventions as the rules of a game, the rules of
etiquette, forms of address, cab tariffs and standards of all sorts. They a=
re
mere organizations of relationship either to economize thought or else to
facilitate mutual understanding and codify common action. Modesty and
self-submission, love and service are, in the right system of my beliefs, f=
ar
more fundamental rightnesses and duties.
We are not mercan=
tile
and litigious units such as making Justice our social basis would imply, we=
are
not select responsible persons mixed with and tending weak irresponsible wr=
ong
persons such as the notion of Mercy suggests, we are parts of one being and
body, each unique yet sharing a common nature and a variety of imperfections
and working together (albeit more or less darkly and ignorantly) for a comm=
on
end.
We are strong and weak together and in one brotherhood. The weak have no essential rights aga= inst the strong, nor the strong against the weak. The world does not exist for o= ur weaknesses but our strength. And the real justification of democracy lies in the fact that none of us are altogether strong nor altogether weak; for everyone there is an aspect wherein he is seen to be weak; for everyone the= re is a strength though it may be only a little peculiar strength or an undeveloped potentiality. The unconverted man uses his strength egotistical= ly, emphasizes himself harshly against the man who is weak where he is strong, and hates a= nd conceals his own weakness. The Believer, in the measure of his belief, resp= ects and seeks to understand the different strength of others and to use his own distinctive power with and not against his fellow men, in the common servic= e of that synthesis to which each one of them is ultimately as necessary as he.<= o:p>
Now here the frie=
nd
who has read the first draft of this book falls into something like a dispu=
te
with me. She does not, I think, like this dismissal of Justice from a prima=
ry
place in my scheme of conduct.
"Justice,&qu=
ot;
she asserts, "is an instinctive craving very nearly akin to the physic=
al
craving for equilibrium. Its social importance corresponds. It seeks to keep
the individual's claims in such a position as to conflict as little as poss=
ible
with those of others. Justice is the root instinct of all social feeling, of
all feeling which does not take account of whether we like or dislike
individuals, it is the feeling of an orderly position of our Ego towards
others, merely considered AS others, and of all the Egos merely AS Egos tow=
ards
each other. LOVE cannot be felt towards others AS others. Love is the
expression of individual suitability and preference, its positive existence=
in
some cases implies its absolute negation in others. Hence Love can never be=
the
essential and root of social feeling, and hence the necessity for the insti=
nct
of abstract justice which takes no account of preferences or aversions. And
here I may say that all application of the word LOVE to unknown, distant
creatures, to mere OTHERS, is a perversion and a wasting of the word love,
which, taking its origin in sexual and parental preference, always implies a
preference of one object to the other. To love everybody is simply not to l=
ove
at all. And it is JUST BECAUSE of the passionate preference instinctively f=
elt
for some individuals, that mankind requires the self-regarding and self-res=
pecting
passion of justice."
Now this is not
altogether contradictory of what I hold. I disagree that because love
necessarily expresses itself in preference, selecting this rather than that,
that it follows necessarily that its absolute negation is implied in the
non-selected cases. A man may go into the world as a child goes into a gard=
en
and gathers its hands full of the flowers that please it best and then desi=
sts,
but only because its hands are full and not because it is at an end of the
flowers that it can find delight in. So the man finds at last his memory and
apprehensions glutted. It is not that he could not love those others. And I
dispute that to love everybody is not to love at all. To love two people is
surely to love more than to love just one person, and so by way of three and
four to a very large number. But if it is put that love must be a preferenc=
e because
of the mental limitations that forbid us to apprehend and understand more t=
han
a few of the multitudinous lovables of life, then I agree. For all the
individuals and things and cases for which we have inadequate time and ener=
gy,
we need a wholesale method--justice. That is exactly what I have said in the
previous section.
3.26. THE WEAKNESS OF
IMMATURITY.
One is apt to wri=
te
and talk of strong and weak as though some were always strong, some always =
weak.
But that is quite a misleading version of life. Apart from the fact that
everyone is fluctuatingly strong and fluctuatingly weak, and weak and strong
according to the quality we judge them by, we have to remember that we are =
all
developing and learning and changing, gaining strength and at last losing i=
t,
from the cradle to the grave. We are all, to borrow the old scholastic term=
, pupil-teachers
of Life; the term is none the less appropriate because the pupil-teacher ta=
ught
badly and learnt under difficulties.
It may seem to be=
a
crowning feat of platitude to write that "we have to remember" th=
is,
but it is overlooked in a whole mass of legal, social and economic literatu=
re.
Those extraordinary imaginary cases as between a man A and a man B who start
level, on a desert island or elsewhere, and work or do not work, or save or=
do
not save, become the basis of immense schemes of just arrangement which soa=
r up
confidently and serenely regardless of the fact that never did anything like
that equal start occur; that from the beginning there were family groups and
old heads and young heads, help, guidance and sacrifice, and those who had =
learnt
and those who had still to learn, jumbled together in confused transactions.
Deals, tradings and so forth are entirely secondary aspects of these primar=
ies,
and the attempt to get an idea of abstract relationship by beginning upon a
secondary issue is the fatal pervading fallacy in all these regions of thou=
ght.
At the present moment the average age of the world is I suppose about 21 or=
22,
the normal death somewhen about 44 or 45, that is to say nearly half the wo=
rld
is "under age," green, inexperienced, demanding help, easily misl=
ed
and put in the wrong and betrayed. Yet the younger moiety, if we do indeed
assume life's object is a collective synthesis, is more important than the =
older,
and every older person bound to be something of a guardian to the younger. =
It
follows directly from the fundamental beliefs I have assumed that we are
missing the most important aspects of life if we are not directly or indire=
ctly
serving the young, helping them individually or collectively. Just in the
measure that one's living falls away from that, do we fall away from life i=
nto
a mere futility of existence, and approach the state, the extraordinary and
wonderful middle state of (for example) those extinct and entirely damned o=
ld
gentlemen one sees and hears eating and sleeping in every comfortable London
club.
That constructive
synthetic purpose which I have made the ruling idea in my scheme of conduct=
may
be indeed completely restated in another form, a form I adopted for a book I
wrote some years ago called "Mankind in the Making." In this I
pointed out that "Life is a tissue of births";
"and if the
whole of life is an evolving succession of births, then not only must a man=
in
his individual capacity (physically as parent, doctor, food dealer, food
carrier, home builder, protector; or mentally as teacher, news dealer, auth=
or,
preacher) contribute to births and growths and the fine future of mankind, =
but
the collective aspects of man, his social and political organizations must =
also
be, in the essence, organizations that more or less profitably and more or =
less
intentionally set themselves towards this end. They are finally concerned w=
ith
the birth, and with the sound development towards still better births, of h=
uman
lives, just as every implement in the toolshed of a seedsman's nursery, even
the hoe and the roller, is concerned finally with the seeding and with the
sound development towards still better seeding of plants. The private and
personal motive of the seedsman in procuring and using these tools may be
avarice, ambition, a religious belief in the saving efficacy of nursery kee=
ping
or a simple passion for bettering flowers, that does not affect the definite
final purpose of his outfit of tools.
"And just as=
we
might judge completely and criticize and improve that outfit from an attent=
ive
study of the welfare of plants, and with an entire disregard of his remoter
motives, so we may judge all collective human enterprises from the standpoi=
nt
of an attentive study of human births and development. ANY COLLECTIVE HUMAN
ENTERPRISE, INSTITUTION, MOVEMENT, PARTY OR STATE, IS TO BE JUDGED AS A WHO=
LE
AND COMPLETELY, AS IT CONDUCES MORE OR LESS TO WHOLESOME AND HOPEFUL BIRTHS,
AND ACCORDING TO THE QUALITATIVE AND QUANTITATIVE ADVANCE DUE TO ITS INFLUE=
NCE
MADE BY EACH GENERATION OF CITIZENS BORN UNDER ITS INFLUENCE TOWARDS A HIGH=
ER AND
AMPLER STANDARD OF LIFE."
And individual
conduct, quite as much as collective affairs, comes under the same test. We=
are
guides and school builders, helpers and influences every hour of our lives,=
and
by that standard we can and must judge all our ways of living.
3.27. POSSIBILITY OF A NEW
ETIQUETTE.
These two ideas,
firstly the pupil-teacher parental idea and secondly the democratic idea (t=
hat
is to say the idea of an equal ultimate significance), the second correcting
any tendency in the first to pedagogic arrogance and tactful concealments, =
do I
think give, when taken together, the general attitude a right-living man wi=
ll
take to his individual fellow creature. They play against each other, provi=
ding
elements of contradiction and determining a balanced course. It seems to me=
to
follow necessarily from my fundamental beliefs that the Believer will tend =
to
be and want to be and seek to be friendly to, and interested in, all sorts =
of
people, and truthful and helpful and hating concealment. To be that with any
approach to perfection demands an intricate and difficult effort, introspec=
tion
to the hilt of one's power, a saving natural gift; one has to avoid pedantr=
y,
aggression, brutality, amiable tiresomeness--there are pitfalls on every si=
de.
The more one thinks about other people the more interesting and pleasing th=
ey
are; I am all for kindly gossip and knowing things about them, and all agai=
nst
the silly and limiting hardness of soul that will not look into one's fello=
ws
nor go out to them. The use and justification of most literature, of fictio=
n,
verse, history, biography, is that it lets us into understandings and the
suggestion of human possibilities. The general purpose of intercourse is to=
get
as close as one can to the realities of the people one meets, and to give
oneself to them just so far as possible.
From that I think
there arises naturally a newer etiquette that would set aside many of the
rigidities of procedure that keep people apart to-day. There is a fading
prejudice against asking personal questions, against talking about oneself =
or
one's immediate personal interests, against discussing religion and politics
and any such keenly felt matter. No doubt it is necessary at times to prote=
ct
oneself against clumsy and stupid familiarities, against noisy and inattent=
ive
egotists, against intriguers and liars, but only in the last resort do such=
breaches
of patience seem justifiable to me; for the most part our traditions of spe=
ech
and intercourse altogether overdo separations, the preservation of distances
and protective devices in general.
So far I have ign=
ored
the immense importance of Sex in our lives and for the most part kept the
discussion so generalized as to apply impartially to women and men. But now=
I
have reached a point when this great boundary line between two halves of the
world and the intense and intimate personal problems that play across it mu=
st
be faced.
For not only must=
we
bend our general activities and our intellectual life to the conception of a
human synthesis, but out of our bodies and emotional possibilities we have =
to
make the new world bodily and emotionally. To the test of that we have to b=
ring
all sorts of questions that agitate us to-day, the social and political
equality and personal freedom of women, the differing code of honour for the
sexes, the controls and limitations to set upon love and desire. If, for
example, it is for the good of the species that a whole half of its individ=
uals
should be specialized and subordinated to the physical sexual life, as in
certain phases of human development women have tended to be, then certainly=
we
must do nothing to prevent that. We have set aside the conception of Justic=
e as
in any sense a countervailing idea to that of the synthetic process.
And it is well to
remember that for the whole of sexual conduct there is quite conceivably no
general simple rule. It is quite possible that, as Metchnikoff maintains in=
his
extraordinarily illuminating "Nature of Man," we are dealing with=
an
irresolvable tangle of disharmonies. We have passions that do not insist up=
on
their physiological end, desires that may be prematurely vivid in childhood=
, a
fantastic curiosity, old needs of the ape but thinly overlaid by the
acquisitions of the man, emotions that jar with physical impulses, inexplic=
able
pains and diseases. And not only have we to remember that we are dealing wi=
th disharmonies
that may at the very best be only patched together, but we are dealing with
matters in which the element of idiosyncrasy is essential, insisting upon an
incalculable flexibility in any rule we make, unless we are to take types a=
nd
indeed whole classes of personality and write them down as absolutely bad a=
nd
fit only for suppression and restraint. And on the mental side we are furth=
er perplexed
by the extraordinary suggestibility of human beings. In sexual matters there
seems to me--and I think I share a general ignorance here--to be no directi=
ng
instinct at all, but only an instinct to do something generally sexual; the=
re
are almost equally powerful desires to do right and not to act under
compulsion. The specific forms of conduct imposed upon these instincts and
desires depend upon a vast confusion of suggestions, institutions, conventi=
ons,
ways of putting things. We are dealing therefore with problems ineradicably
complex, varying endlessly in their instances, and changing as we deal with
them. I am inclined to think that the only really profitable discussion of
sexual matters is in terms of individuality, through the novel, the lyric, =
the play,
autobiography or biography of the frankest sort. But such generalizations a=
s I
can make I will.
To me it seems
manifest that sexual matters may be discussed generally in at least three
permissible and valid ways, of which the consideration of the world as a sy=
stem
of births and education is only the dominant chief. There is next the quest=
ion
of the physical health and beauty of the community and how far sexual rules=
and
customs affect that, and thirdly the question of the mental and moral
atmosphere in which sexual conventions and laws must necessarily be an
important factor. It is alleged that probably in the case of men, and certa=
inly
in the case of women, some sexual intercourse is a necessary phase in
existence; that without it there is an incompleteness, a failure in the life
cycle, a real wilting and failure of energy and vitality and the developmen=
t of
morbid states. And for most of us half the friendships and intimacies from
which we derive the daily interest and sustaining force in our lives, draw
mysterious elements from sexual attraction, and depend and hesitate upon our
conception of the liberties and limits we must give to that force.
3.29. THE INSTITUTION OF
MARRIAGE.
The individual
attitudes of men to women and of women to men are necessarily determined to=
a
large extent by certain general ideas of relationship, by institutions and
conventions. One of the most important and debatable of these is whether we=
are
to consider and treat women as citizens and fellows, or as beings differing
mentally from men and grouped in positions of at least material dependence =
to
individual men. Our decision in that direction will affect all our conduct =
from
the larger matters down to the smallest points of deportment; it will affec=
t even
our manner of address and determine whether when we speak to a woman we sha=
ll
be as frank and unaffected as with a man or touched with a faint suggestion=
of
the reserves of a cat which does not wish to be suspected of wanting to ste=
al
the milk.
Now so far as that
goes it follows almost necessarily from my views upon aristocracy and democ=
racy
that I declare for the conventional equality of women, that is to say for t=
he
determination to make neither sex nor any sexual characteristic a standard =
of
superiority or inferiority, for the view that a woman is a person as import=
ant
and necessary, as much to be consulted, and entitled to as much freedom of
action as a man. I admit that this decision is a choice into which temperam=
ent
enters, that I cannot produce compelling reasons why anyone else should ado=
pt
my view. I can produce considerations in support of my view, that is all. B=
ut
they are so implicit in all that has gone before that I will not trouble to
detail them here.
The conception of
equality and fellowship between men and women is an idea at least as old as
Plato and one that has recurred wherever civilization has reached a phase in
which men and women were sufficiently released from militant and economic
urgency to talk and read and think. But it has never yet been, at least in =
the
historical period and in any but isolated social groups, a working structur=
al
idea. The working structural idea is the Patriarchal Family in which the wo=
man is
inferior and submits herself and is subordinated to the man, the head of the
family.
We live in a
constantly changing development and modification of that tradition. It is w=
ell
to bring that factor of constant change into mind at the outset of this
discussion and to keep it there. To forget it, and it is commonly forgotten=
, is
to falsify every issue. Marriage and the Family are perennially fluctuating
institutions, and probably scarcely anything in modern life is changing so
much; they are in their legal constitution or their moral and emotional qua=
lity
profoundly different things from what they were a hundred years ago. A woman
who marries nowadays marries, if one may put it quantitatively, far less th=
an
she did even half a century ago; the married woman's property act, for exam=
ple,
has revolutionized the economic relationship; her husband has lost his righ=
t to
assault her and he cannot even compel her to cohabit with him if she refuse=
s to
do so. Legal separations and divorces have come to modify the quality and
logical consequences of the bond. The rights of parent over the child have =
been
even more completely qualified. The State has come in as protector and educ=
ator
of the children, taking over personal powers and responsibilities that have=
been
essential to the family institution ever since the dawn of history. It inse=
rts
itself more and more between child and parent. It invades what were once the
most sacred intimacies, and the Salvation Army is now promoting legislation=
to
invade those overcrowded homes in which children (it is estimated to the nu=
mber
of thirty or forty thousand) are living as I write, daily witnesses of their
mother's prostitution or in constant danger of incestuous attack from drunk=
en
fathers and brothers. And finally as another indication of profound
differences, births were almost universally accidental a hundred years ago;
they are now in an increasing number of families controlled and deliberate =
acts
of will. In every one of their relations do Marriage and the Family change =
and continue
to change.
But the inherent
defectiveness of the human mind which my metaphysical book sets itself to
analyze, does lead it constantly to speak of Marriage and the Family as thi=
ngs
as fixed and unalterable as, let us say, the characteristics of oxygen. One=
is
asked, Do you believe in Marriage and the Family? as if it was a case of ei=
ther
having or not having some definite thing. Socialists are accused of being &=
quot;against
the Family," as if it were not the case that Socialists, Individualist=
s, high
Anglicans and Roman Catholics are ALL against Marriage and the Family as th=
ese
institutions exist at the present time. But once we have realized the absur=
dity
of this absolute treatment, then it should become clear that with it goes m=
ost
of the fabric of right and wrong, and nearly all those arbitrary standards =
by
which we classify people into moral and immoral. Those last words are used =
when
as a matter of fact we mean either conforming or failing to conform to chan=
ging
laws and developing institutional customs we may or may not consider right =
or
wrong. Their use imparts a flavour of essential wrong-doing and obliquity i=
nto
acts and relations that may be in many cases no more than social indiscipli=
ne,
which may be even conceivably a courageous act of defiance to an obsolescent
limitation. Such, until a little while ago, was a man's cohabitation with h=
is
deceased wife's sister. This, which was scandalous yesterday, is now a lega=
lly
honourable relationship, albeit I believe still regarded by the high Anglic=
an
as incestuous wickedness.
Now I will not de=
al
here with the institutional changes that are involved in that general schem=
e of
progress called Socialism. I have discussed the relation of Socialism to
Marriage and the Family quite fully in my "New Worlds for Old"
("New Worlds for Old" (A. Constable and Co., 1908).) and to that I
must refer the reader. Therein he will see how the economic freedom and
independent citizenship of women, and indeed also the welfare of the whole =
next
generation, hang on the idea of endowing motherhood, and he will find too h=
ow
much of the nature of the marriage contract is outside the scope of Sociali=
st
proposals altogether.
Apart from the br=
oad
proposals of Socialism, as a matter of personal conviction quite outside the
scope of Socialism altogether, I am persuaded of the need of much greater
facilities of divorce than exist at present, divorce on the score of mutual
consent, of faithlessness, of simple cruelty, of insanity, habitual vice or=
the
prolonged imprisonment of either party. And this being so I find it impossi=
ble
to condemn on any ground, except that it is "breaking ranks" and
making a confusion, those who by anticipating such wide facilities as I pro=
pose
have sinned by existing standards. How far and in what manner such breaking=
of
ranks is to be condoned I will presently discuss. But it is clear it is an
offence of a different nature from actions one believes to be in themselves=
and
apart from the law reprehensible things.
But my scepticisms
about the current legal institutions and customary code are not exhausted by
these modifications I have suggested. I believe firmly in some sort of
marriage, that is to say an open declaration of the existence of sexual
relations between a man and a woman, because I am averse to all unnecessary
secrecies and because the existence of these peculiarly intimate relationsh=
ips
affects everybody about the persons concerned. It is ridiculous to say as s=
ome
do that sexual relations between two people affect no one but themselves un=
less
a child is born. They do, because they tend to break down barriers and set =
up a
peculiar emotional partnership. It is a partnership that kept secret may wo=
rk
as anti-socially as a secret business partnership or a secret preferential
railway tariff. And I believe too in the general social desirability of the
family group, the normal group of father, mother and children, and in the
extreme efficacy in the normal human being of the blood link and pride link
between parent and child in securing loving care and upbringing for the chi=
ld.
But this clear adhesion to Marriage and to the Family grouping about mother=
and
father does not close the door to a large series of exceptional cases which=
our
existing institutions and customs ignore or crush.
For example, mono=
gamy
in general seems to me to be clearly indicated (as doctors say) by the fact
that there are not several women in the world for every man, but quite as
clearly does it seem necessary to recognize that the fact that there are (or
were in 1901) 21,436,107 females to 20,172,984 males in our British communi=
ty
seems to condemn our present rigorous insistence upon monogamy, unless femi=
nine
celibacy has its own delights. But, as I have said, it is now largely belie=
ved
that the sexual life of a woman is more important to her than his sexual li=
fe
to a man and less easily ignored.
It is true also on
the former side that for the great majority of people one knows personally,=
any
sort of household but a monogamous one conjures up painful and unpleasant
visions. The ordinary civilized woman and the ordinary civilized man are al=
ike
obsessed with the idea of meeting and possessing one peculiar intimate pers=
on,
one special exclusive lover who is their very own, and a third person of ei=
ther
sex cannot be associated with that couple without an intolerable sense of p=
rivacy
and confidence and possession destroyed. It is difficult to imagine a second
wife in a home who would not be and feel herself to be a rather excluded and
inferior person. But that does not abolish the possibility that there are
exceptional people somewhere capable of, to coin a phrase, triangular
mutuality, and I do not see why we should either forbid or treat with
bitterness or hostility a grouping we may consider so inadvisable or so
unworkable as never to be adopted, if three people of their own free will
desire it.
The peculiar defe=
cts
of the human mind when they approach these questions of sex are reinforced =
by
passions peculiar to the topic, and it is perhaps advisable to point out th=
at
to discuss these possibilities is not the same thing as to urge the married
reader to take unto himself or herself a second partner or a series of
additional partners. We are trained from the nursery to become secretive,
muddle-headed and vehemently conclusive upon sexual matters, until at last =
the
editors of magazines blush at the very phrase and long to put a petticoat o=
ver the
page that bears it. Yet our rebellious natures insist on being interested by
it. It seems to me that to judge these large questions from the personal po=
int
of view, to insist upon the whole world without exception living exactly in=
the
manner that suits oneself or accords with one's emotional imagination and t=
he
forms of delicacy in which one has been trained, is not the proper way to d=
eal
with them. I want as a sane social organizer to get just as many contented =
and
law-abiding citizens as possible; I do not want to force people who would
otherwise be useful citizens into rebellion, concealments and the dark and
furtive ways of vice, because they may not love and marry as their temperam=
ents
command, and so I want to make the meshes of the law as wide as possible. B=
ut
the common man will not understand this yet, and seeks to make the meshes j=
ust
as small as his own private case demands.
Then marriage, to
resume my main discussion, does not necessarily mean cohabitation. All women
who desire children do not want to be entrusted with their upbringing. Some
women are sexual and philoprogenitive without being sedulously maternal, and
some are maternal without much or any sexual passion. There are men and wom=
en
in the world now, great allies, fond and passionate lovers who do not live =
nor
want to live constantly together. It is at least conceivable that there are
women who, while desiring offspring, do not want to abandon great careers f=
or the
work of maternity, women again who would be happiest managing and rearing
children in manless households that they might even share with other women
friends, and men to correspond with these who do not wish to live in a
household with wife and children. I submit, these temperaments exist and ha=
ve a
right to exist in their own way. But one must recognize that the possibilit=
y of
these departures from the normal type of household opens up other
possibilities. The polygamy that is degrading or absurd under one roof assu=
mes
a different appearance when one considers it from the point of view of peop=
le
whose habits of life do not centre upon an isolated home.
All the relations=
I
have glanced at above do as a matter of fact exist to-day, but shamefully a=
nd
shabbily, tainted with what seems to me an unmerited and unnecessary ignomi=
ny.
The punishment for bigamy seems to me insane in its severity, contrasted as=
it
is with our leniency to the common seducer. Better ruin a score of women, s=
ays
the law, than marry two. I do not see why in these matters there should not=
be
much ampler freedom than there is, and this being so I can hardly be expect=
ed
to condemn with any moral fervour or exclude from my society those who have=
seen
fit to behave by what I believe may be the standards of A.D. 2000 instead o=
f by
the standards of 1850. These are offences, so far as they are offences, on =
an
altogether different footing from murder, or exacting usury, or the sweatin=
g of
children, or cruelty, or transmitting diseases, or unveracity, or commercia=
l or
intellectual or physical prostitution, or any such essentially grave
anti-social deeds. We must distinguish between sins on the one hand and mere
errors of judgment and differences of taste from ourselves. To draw up harsh
laws, to practise exclusions against everyone who does not see fit to dupli=
cate
one's own blameless home life, is to waste a number of courageous and excep=
tional
persons in every generation, to drive many of them into a forced alliance w=
ith
real crime and embittered rebellion against custom and the law.
3.30. CONDUCT IN RELATION=
TO
THE THING THAT IS.
But the reader mu=
st
keep clear in his mind the distinction between conduct that is right or
permissible in itself and conduct that becomes either inadvisable or
mischievous and wrong because of the circumstances about it. There is no ha=
rm
under ordinary conditions in asking a boy with a pleasant voice to sing a s=
ong
in the night, but the case is altered altogether if you have reason to supp=
ose
that a Red Indian is lying in wait a hundred yards off, holding a loaded ri=
fle
and ready to fire at the voice. It is a valid objection to many actions tha=
t I
do not think objectionable in themselves, that to do them will discharge a
loaded prejudice into the heart of my friend--or even into my own. I belong=
to
the world and my work, and I must not lightly throw my time, my power, my
influence away. For a splendid thing any risk or any defiance may be
justifiable, but is it a sufficiently splendid thing? So far as he possibly=
can
a man must conform to common prejudices, prevalent customs and all laws,
whatever his estimate of them may be. But he must at the same time to his
utmost to change what he thinks to be wrong.
And I think that
conformity must be honest conformity. There is no more anti-social act than
secret breaches, and only some very urgent and exceptional occasion justifi=
es
even the unveracity of silence about the thing done. If your personal
convictions bring you to a breach, let it be an open breach, let there be no
misrepresentation of attitudes, no meanness, no deception of honourable
friends. Of course an open breach need not be an ostentatious breach; to do
what is right to yourself without fraud or concealment is one thing, to mak=
e a
challenge and aggression quite another. Your friends may understand and
sympathize and condone, but it does not lie upon you to force them to ident=
ify themselves
with your act and situation. But better too much openness than too little.
Squalid intrigue was the shadow of the old intolerably narrow order; it is a
shadow we want to illuminate out of existence. Secrets will be contraband in
the new time.
And if it chances=
to
you to feel called upon to make a breach with the institution or custom or
prejudice that is, remember that doing so is your own affair. You are going=
to
take risks and specialize as an experiment. You must not expect other people
about you to share the consequences of your dash forward. You must not drag=
in
confidants and secondaries. You must fight your little battle in front on y=
our
own responsibility, unsupported--and take the consequences without repining=
.
3.31. CONDUCT TOWARDS
TRANSGRESSORS.
So far as breache=
s of
the prohibitions and laws of marriage go, to me it seems they are to be
tolerated by us in others just in the measure that, within the limits set by
discretion, they are frank and truthful and animated by spontaneous passion=
and
pervaded by the quality of beauty. I hate the vulgar sexual intriguer, man =
or
woman, and the smart and shallow atmosphere of unloving lust and vanity abo=
ut
the type as I hate few kinds of human life; I would as lief have a polecat =
in
my home as this sort of person; and every sort of prostitute except the vic=
tim
of utter necessity I despise, even though marriage be the fee. But honest l=
overs
should be I think a charge and pleasure for us. We must judge each pair as =
we
can.
One thing renders=
a
sexual relationship incurably offensive to others and altogether wrong, and
that is cruelty. But who can define cruelty? How far is the leaving of a th=
ird
person to count as cruelty? There again I hesitate to judge. To love and no=
t be
loved is a fate for which it seems no one can be blamed; to lose love and to
change one's loving belongs to a subtle interplay beyond analysis or contro=
l,
but to be deceived or mocked or deliberately robbed of love, that at any ra=
te
is an abominable wrong.
In all these matt=
ers
I perceive a general rule is in itself a possible instrument of cruelty. I =
set
down what I can in the way of general principles, but it all leaves off far
short of the point of application. Every case among those we know I think we
moderns must judge for ourselves. Where there is doubt, there I hold must be
charity. And with regard to strangers, manifestly our duty is to avoid
inquisitorial and uncharitable acts.
This is as true of
financial and economic misconduct as of sexual misconduct, of ways of living
that are socially harmful and of political faith. We are dealing with peopl=
e in
a maladjusted world to whom absolute right living is practically impossible,
because there are no absolutely right institutions and no simple choice of =
good
or evil, and we have to balance merits and defects in every case.
Some people are
manifestly and essentially base and self-seeking and regardless of the
happiness and welfare of their fellows, some in business affairs and politi=
cs
as others in love. Some wrong-doers again are evidently so through
heedlessness, through weakness, timidity or haste. We have to judge and deal
with each sort upon no clear issue, but upon impressions they have given us=
of
their spirit and purpose. We owe it to them and ourselves not to judge too
rashly or too harshly, but for all that we are obliged to judge and take si=
des,
to avoid the malignant and exclude them from further opportunity, to help a=
nd
champion the cheated and the betrayed, to forgive and aid the repentant
blunderer and by mercy to save the lesser sinner from desperate alliance wi=
th
the greater. That is the broad rule, and it is as much as we have to go upo=
n until
the individual case comes before us.
BOOK THE FOURTH -- SOME
PERSONAL THINGS.
4.1. PERSONAL LOVE AND LI=
FE.
It has been most
convenient to discuss all that might be generalized about conduct first, to=
put
in the common background, the vistas and atmosphere of the scene. But a man=
's
relations are of two orders, and these questions of rule and principle are =
over
and about and round more vivid and immediate interests. A man is not simply=
a
relationship between his individual self and the race, society, the world a=
nd
God's Purpose. Close about him are persons, friends and enemies and lovers =
and
beloved people. He desires them, lusts after them, craves their affection,
needs their presence, abhors them, hates and desires to limit and suppress
them. This is for most of us the flesh and blood of life. We go through the
noble scene of the world neither alone, nor alone with God, nor serving an
undistinguishable multitude, but in a company of individualized people.
Here is a system =
of
motives and passions, imperious and powerful, which follows no broad general
rule and in which each man must needs be a light unto himself upon innumera=
ble
issues. I am satisfied that these personal urgencies are neither to be
suppressed nor crudely nor ruthlessly subordinated to the general issues.
Religious and moral teachers are apt to make this part of life either too
detached or too insignificant. They teach it either as if it did not matter=
or
as if it ought not to matter. Indeed our individual friends and enemies sta=
nd between
us and hide or interpret for us all the larger things. Few of us can even
worship alone. We must feel others, and those not strangers, kneeling beside
us.
I have already sp=
oken
under the heading of Beliefs of the part that the idea of a Mediator has pl=
ayed
and can play in the religious life. I have pointed out how the imagination =
of
men has sought and found in certain personalities, historical or fictitious=
, a
bridge between the blood-warm private life and the intolerable spaciousness=
of
right and wrong. The world is full of such figures and their images, Christ=
and
Mary and the Saints and all the lesser, dearer gods of heathendom. These th=
ings
and the human passion for living leaders and heroes and leagues and brother=
hoods
all confess the mediatory role, the mediatory possibilities of personal love
between the individual and the great synthesis of which he is a part and ag=
ent.
The great synthesis may become incarnate in personal love, and personal love
lead us directly to universal service.
I write
"may" and temper that sentence to the quality of a possibility al=
one.
This is only true for those who believe, for those who have faith, whose li=
ves
have been unified, who have found Salvation. For those whose lives are chao=
tic,
personal loves must also be chaotic; this or that passion, malice, a jesting
humour, some physical lust, gratified vanity, egotistical pride, will rule =
and
limit the relationship and colour its ultimate futility. But the Believer u=
ses
personal love and sustains himself by personal love. It is his provender, t=
he
meat and drink of his campaign.
4.2. THE NATURE OF LOVE.<=
/span>
It is well perhap=
s to
look a little into the factors that make up Love.
Love does not see=
m to
me to be a simple elemental thing. It is, as I have already said, one of the
vicious tendencies of the human mind to think that whatever can be given a
simple name can be abstracted as a single something in a state of quintesse=
ntial
purity. I have pointed out that this is not true of Harmony or Beauty, and =
that
these are synthetic things. You bring together this which is not beautiful =
and
that which is not beautiful, and behold! Beauty! So also Love is, I think, a
synthetic thing. One observes this and that, one is interested and stirred;=
suddenly
the metal fuses, the dry bones live! One loves.
Almost every inte=
rest
in one's being may be a factor in the love synthesis. But apart from the
overflowing of the parental instinct that makes all that is fine and delica=
te
and young dear to us and to be cherished, there are two main factors that b=
ring
us into love with our fellows. There is first the emotional elements in our
nature that arise out of the tribal necessity, out of a fellowship in battle
and hunting, drinking and feasting, out of the needs and excitements and
delights of those occupations; and there is next the intenser narrower
desirings and gratitudes, satisfactions and expectations that come from sex=
ual intercourse.
Now both these factors originate in physical needs and consummate in materi=
al
acts, and it is well to remember that this great growth of love in life roo=
ts
there, and, it may be, dies when its roots are altogether cut away.
At its lowest, lo=
ve
is the mere sharing of, or rather the desire to share, pleasure and excitem=
ent,
the excitements of conflict or lust or what not. I think that the desire to
partake, the desire to merge one's individual identity with another's, rema=
ins
a necessary element in all personal loves. It is a way out of ourselves, a
breaking down of our individual separation, just as hate is an intensificat=
ion
of that. Personal love is the narrow and intense form of that breaking down,
just as what I call Salvation is its widest, most extensive form. We cast a=
side
our reserves, our secrecies, our defences; we open ourselves; touches that
would be intolerable from common people become a mystery of delight, acts of
self-abasement and self-sacrifice are charged with symbolical pleasure. We
cannot tell which of us is me, which you. Our imprisoned egoism looks out
through this window, forgets its walls, and is for those brief moments rele=
ased
and universal.
For most of us the
strain of primordial sexual emotion in our loves is very strong. Many men c=
an
love only women, many women only men, and some can scarcely love at all wit=
hout
bodily desire. But the love of fellowship is a strong one also, and for man=
y,
love is most possible and easy when the thought of physical lovemaking has =
been
banished. Then the lovers will pursue interests together, will work togethe=
r or
journey together. So we have the warm fellowships of men for men and women =
for women.
But even then it may happen that men friends together will talk of women, a=
nd
women friends of men. Nevertheless we have also the strong and altogether
sexless glow of those who have fought well together, or drunk or jested
together or hunted a common quarry.
Now it seems to me
that the Believer must also be a Lover, that he will love as much as he can=
and
as many people as he can, and in many moods and ways. As I have said alread=
y,
many of those who have taught religion and morality in the past have been
neglectful or unduly jealous of the intenser personal loves. They have been=
, to
put it by a figure, urgent upon the road to the ocean. To that they would l=
ead
us, though we come to it shivering, fearful and unprepared, and they grudge=
it
that we should strip and plunge into the wayside stream. But all streams, a=
ll rivers
come from this ocean in the beginning, lead to it in the end.
It is the essenti=
al
fact of love as I conceive it, that it breaks down the boundaries of self. =
That
love is most perfect which does most completely merge its lovers. But no lo=
ve
is altogether perfect, and for most men and women love is no more than a
partial and temporary lowering of the barriers that keep them apart. With m=
any,
the attraction of love seems always to fall short of what I hold to be its =
end,
it draws people together in the most momentary of self-forgetfulnesses, and=
for
the rest seems rather to enhance their egotisms and their difference. They =
are secret
from one another even in their embraces. There is a sort of love that is
egotistical lust almost regardless of its partner, a sort of love that is m=
ere
fleshless pride and vanity at a white heat. There is the love-making that
springs from sheer boredom, like a man reading a story-book to fill an hour.
These inferior loves seek to accomplish an agreeable act, or they seek the
pursuit or glory of a living possession, they aim at gratification or
excitement or conquest. True love seeks to be mutual and easy-minded, free =
of
doubts, but these egotistical mockeries of love have always resentment in t=
hem
and hatred in them and a watchful distrust. Jealousy is the measure of self=
-love
in love.
True love is a
synthetic thing, an outcome of life, it is not a universal thing. It is the
individualized correlative of Salvation; like that it is a synthetic
consequence of conflicts and confusions. Many people do not desire or need =
Salvation,
they cannot understand it, much less achieve it; for them chaotic life
suffices. So too, many never, save for some rare moment of illumination, de=
sire
or feel love. Its happy abandonment, its careless self-giving, these things=
are
mere foolishness to them. But much has been said and sung of faith and love=
alike,
and in their confused greed these things also they desire and parody. So th=
ey
act worship and make a fine fuss of their devotions. And also they must hav=
e a
few half-furtive, half-flaunting fallen love-triumphs prowling the secret
backstreets of their lives, they know not why.
(In setting this =
down
be it remembered I am doing my best to tell what is in me because I am tryi=
ng
to put my whole view of life before the reader without any vital omissions.
These are difficult matters to explain because they have no clear outlines;=
one
lets in a hard light suddenly upon things that have lurked in warm intimate
shadows, dim inner things engendering motives. I am not only telling
quasi-secret things but exploring them for myself. They are none the less r=
eal
and important because they are elusive.)
True love I think=
is
not simply felt but known. Just as Salvation as I conceive it demands a fine
intelligence and mental activity, so love calls to brain and body alike and=
all
one's powers. There is always elaborate thinking and dreaming in love. Love
will stir imaginations that have never stirred before.
Love may be, and =
is
for the most part, one-sided. It is the going out from oneself that is love,
and not the accident of its return. It is the expedition whether it fail or
succeed.
But an expedition
starves that comes to no port. Love always seeks mutuality and grows by the
sense of responses, or we should love beautiful inanimate things more
passionately than we do. Failing a full return, it makes the most of an
inadequate return. Failing a sustained return it welcomes a temporary
coincidence. Failing a return it finds support in accepted sacrifices. But =
it
seeks a full return, and the fulness of life has come only to those who,
loving, have met the lover.
I am trying to be=
as
explicit as possible in thus writing about Love. But the substance in which=
one
works here is emotion that evades definition, poetic flashes and figures of
speech are truer than prosaic statements. Body and the most sublimated ecst=
asy
pass into one another, exchange themselves and elude every net of words we
cast.
I have put out two
ideas of unification and self-devotion, extremes upon a scale one from anot=
her;
one of these ideas is that devotion to the Purpose in things I have called
Salvation; the other that devotion to some other most fitting and satisfying
individual which is passionate love, the former extensive as the universe, =
the
latter the intensest thing in life. These, it seems to me, are the boundary=
and
the living capital of the empire of life we rule.
All empires need a
comprehending boundary, but many have not one capital but many chief cities,
and all have cities and towns and villages beyond the capital. It is an imp=
overished
capital that has no dependent towns, and it is a poor love that will not
overflow in affection and eager kindly curiosity and sympathy and the search
for fresh mutuality. To love is to go living radiantly through the world. To
love and be loved is to be fearless of experience and rich in the power to
give.
Love is a thing t=
o a
large extent in its beginnings voluntary and controllable, and at last quite
involuntary. It is so hedged about by obligations and consequences, real and
artificial, that for the most part I think people are overmuch afraid of it.
And also the tradition of sentiment that suggests its forms and guides it in
the world about us, is far too strongly exclusive. It is not so much when l=
ove
is glowing as when it is becoming habitual that it is jealous for itself and
others. Lovers a little exhausting their mutual interest find a fillip in a=
n alliance
against the world. They bury their talent of understanding and sympathy to
return it duly in a clean napkin. They narrow their interest in life lest t=
he
other lover should misunderstand their amplitude as disloyalty.
Our institutions =
and
social customs seem all to assume a definiteness of preference, a singleness
and a limitation of love, which is not psychologically justifiable. People =
do
not, I think, fall naturally into agreement with these assumptions; they tr=
ain
themselves to agreement. They take refuge from experiences that seem to car=
ry
with them the risk at least of perplexing situations, in a theory of barred
possibilities and locked doors. How far this shy and cultivated irresponsiv=
e lovelessness
towards the world at large may not carry with it the possibility of
compensating intensities, I do not know. Quite equally probable is a starva=
tion
of one's emotional nature.
The same reasons =
that
make me decide against mere wanton abstinences make me hostile to the common
convention of emotional indifference to most of the charming and interesting
people one encounters. In pleasing and being pleased, in the mutual interes=
t,
the mutual opening out of people to one another, is the key of the door to =
all
sweet and mellow living.
For he who has fa=
ith,
death, so far as it is his own death, ceases to possess any quality of terr=
or.
The experiment will be over, the rinsed beaker returned to its shelf, the
crystals gone dissolving down the waste-pipe; the duster sweeps the bench. =
But
the deaths of those we love are harder to understand or bear.
It happens that of
those very intimate with me I have lost only one, and that came slowly and
elaborately, a long gradual separation wrought by the accumulation of years=
and
mental decay, but many close friends and many whom I have counted upon for
sympathy and fellowship have passed out of my world. I miss such a one as B=
ob
Stevenson, that luminous, extravagant talker, that eager fantastic mind. I =
miss
him whenever I write. It is less pleasure now to write a story since he will
never read it, much less give me a word of praise for it. And I miss York
Powell's friendly laughter and Henley's exuberant welcome. They made a warm=
th that
has gone, those men. I can understand why I, with my fumbling lucidities and
explanations, have to finish up presently and go, expressing as I do the mo=
od
of a type and of a time; but not those radiant presences.
And the gap these=
men
have left, these men with whom after all I only sat now and again, or wrote=
to
in a cheerful mood or got a letter from at odd times, gives me some measure=
of
the thing that happens, that may happen, when the mind that is always near
one's thoughts, the person who moves to one's movement and lights nearly all
the common flow of events about one with the reminder of fellowship and
meaning--ceases.
Faith which feeds=
on
personal love must at last prevail over it. If Faith has any virtue it must
have it here when we find ourselves bereft and isolated, facing a world from
which the light has fled leaving it bleak and strange. We live for experien=
ce
and the race; these individual interludes are just helps to that; the warm =
inn
in which we lovers met and refreshed was but a halt on a journey. When we h=
ave
loved to the intensest point we have done our best with each other. To keep=
to
that image of the inn, we must not sit overlong at our wine beside the fire=
. We
must go on to new experiences and new adventures. Death comes to part us and
turn us out and set us on the road again.
But the dead stay
where we leave them.
I suppose that is=
the
real good in death, that they do stay; that it makes them immortal for us.
Living they were mortal. But now they can never spoil themselves or be spoi=
lt
by change again. They have finished--for us indeed just as much as themselv=
es.
There they sit for ever, rounded off and bright and done. Beside these clear
and certain memories I have of my dead, my impressions of the living are va=
gue provisional
things.
And since they are
gone out of the world and become immortal memories in me, I feel no need to
think of them as in some disembodied and incomprehensible elsewhere, changed
and yet not done. I want actual immortality for those I love as little as I
desire it for myself.
Indeed I dislike =
the
idea that those I have loved are immortal in any real sense; it conjures up=
dim
uncomfortable drifting phantoms, that have no kindred with the flesh and bl=
ood
I knew. I would as soon think of them trailing after the tides up and down =
the
Channel outside my window. Bob Stevenson for me is a presence utterly concr=
ete,
slouching, eager, quick-eyed, intimate and profound, carelessly dressed (at=
Sandgate
he commonly wore a little felt hat that belonged to his son) and himself,
himself, indissoluble matter and spirit, down to the heels of his boots. I
cannot conceive of his as any but a concrete immortality. If he lives, he l=
ives
as I knew him and clothed as I knew him and with his unalterable voice, in a
heaven of daedal flowers or a hell of ineffectual flame; he lives, dreaming=
and
talking and explaining, explaining it all very earnestly and preposterously=
, so
I picture him, into the ear of the amused, incredulous, principal person in=
the
place.
I have a real hat=
red
for those dreary fools and knaves who would have me suppose that Henley, th=
at
crippled Titan, may conceivably be tapping at the underside of a mahogany t=
able
or scratching stifled incoherence into a locked slate! Henley tapping!--for=
the
professional purposes of Sludge! If he found himself among the circumstance=
s of
a spiritualist seance he would, I know, instantly smash the table with that=
big
fist of his. And as the splinters flew, surely York Powell, out of the dead
past from which he shines on me, would laugh that hearty laugh of his back =
into
the world again.
Henley is nowhere=
now
except that, red-faced and jolly like an October sunset, he leans over a ga=
te
at Worthing after a long day of picnicking at Chanctonbury Ring, or sits at=
his
Woking table praising and quoting "The Admiral Bashville," or
blue-shirted and wearing that hat that Nicholson has painted, is thrust and
lugged, laughing and talking aside in his bath-chair, along the Worthing
esplanade...
And Bob Stevenson
walks for ever about a garden in Chiswick, talking in the dusk.
4.5. THE CONSOLATION OF
FAILURE.
That parable of t=
he
talents I have made such free use of in this book has one significant defec=
t.
It gives but two cases, and three are possible. There was first the man who
buried his talent, and of his condemnation we are assured. But those others=
all
took their talents and used them courageously and came back with gain. Was =
that
gain inevitable? Does courage always ensure us victory? because if that is =
so we
can all be heroes and valour is the better part of discretion. Alas! the fa=
ith
in such magic dies. What of the possible case of the man who took his two or
three talents and invested them as best he could and was deceived or heedle=
ss
and lost them, interest and principal together?
There is something
harder to face than death, and that is the realization of failure and
misdirected effort and wrong-doing. Faith is no Open Sesame to right-doing,
much less is it the secret of success. The service of God on earth is no
processional triumph. What if one does wrong so extremely as to condemn one=
's
life, to make oneself part of the refuse and not of the building? Or what if
one is misjudged, or it may be too pitilessly judged, and one's co-operation
despised and the help one brought becomes a source of weakness? Or suppose =
that
the fine scheme one made lies shattered or wrecked by one's own act, or thr=
ough
some hidden blemish one's offering is rejected and flung back and one is th=
rust
out?
So in the end it =
may
be you or I will find we have been anvil and not hammer in the Purpose of G=
od.
Then indeed will =
come
the time for Faith, for the last word of Faith, to say still steadfastly,
disgraced or dying, defeated or discredited, that all is well:--
"This and not
that was my appointed work, and this I had to be."
So these broken
confessions and statements of mood and attitude come to an end.
But at this end,
since I have, I perceive, run a little into a pietistic strain, I must repe=
at
again how provisional and personal I know all these things to be. I began by
disavowing ultimates. My beliefs, my dogmas, my rules, they are made for my
campaigning needs, like the knapsack and water-bottle of a Cockney soldier
invading some stupendous mountain gorge. About him are fastnesses and
splendours, torrents and cataracts, glaciers and untrodden snows. He comes
tramping on heel-worn boots and ragged socks. Beauties and blue mysteries s=
hine
upon him and appeal to him, the enigma of beauty smiling the faint strange
smile of Leonardo's Mona Lisa. He sees a light on the grass like music; and=
the
blossom on the trees against the sky brings him near weeping. Such things c=
ome
to him, give themselves to him. I do not know why he should not in response
fling his shabby gear aside and behave like a god; I only know that he does=
not
do so. His grunt of appreciation is absurd, his speech goes like a crippled
thing--and withal, and partly by virtue of the knapsack and water-bottle, h=
e is
conqueror of the valley. The valley is his for the taking.
There is a dualit=
y in
life that I cannot express except by such images as this, a duality so that=
we
are at once absurd and full of sublimity, and most absurd when we are most =
anxious
to render the real splendours that pervade us. This duplicity in life seems=
to
me at times ineradicable, at times like the confusing of something essentia=
lly simple,
like the duplication when one looks through a doubly refracting medium. You
think in this latter mood that you have only to turn the crystal of Iceland
spar about in order to have the whole thing plain. But you never get it pla=
in.
I have been doing my halting utmost to get down sincerely and simply my vis=
ion
of life and duty. I have permitted myself no defensive restraints; I have
shamelessly written my starkest, and it is plain to me that a smile that is=
not
mine plays over my most urgent passages. There is a rebellious rippling of =
the
grotesque under our utmost tragedy and gravity. One's martialled phrases
grimace as one turns, and wink at the reader. None the less they signify. Do
you note how in this that I have written, such a word as Believer will begi=
n to
wear a capital letter and give itself solemn ridiculous airs? It does not m=
atter.
It carries its message for all that necessary superficial absurdity.
Thought has made =
me
shameless. It does not matter at last at all if one is a little harsh or
indelicate or ridiculous if that also is in the mystery of things.
Behind everything=
I
perceive the smile that makes all effort and discipline temporary, all the
stress and pain of life endurable. In the last resort I do not care whether=
I
am seated on a throne or drunk or dying in a gutter. I follow my leading. In
the ultimate I know, though I cannot prove my knowledge in any way whatever,
that everything is right and all things mine.
THE END.