If we imagine, for a moment, a whole society of savages suddenly introduced to a set of ideal laws by—we will say—some one individual from out an ideal society, who proclaims these laws and then returns to his own land, we shall not be able to imagine such laws remaining in force for any great length of time. If we suppose our own ancestors of the stone age introduced to our own laws by some one from out the present century returning to them as Mark Twain's Yankee returned to the court of King Arthur, we shall not imagine those laws as very long binding; and nothing could be truer to facts of psychology than the gigantic tragedy with which Mr. Clemens' book closes. No set of ideal laws introduced to an inideal society can be regarded as the "environment" of that society, which shall render it ideal. The more democratic a country, the more the passing, even, of a law or measure depends on the general sentiment; but many laws have been passed and many measures of government projected which have failed completely in administration because they were too far in advance of the general moral status. External morality of institutions and internal morality of character in society as a union of many individuals can only increase together, and gradually, by reciprocal action. In other words, the evolution necessary to the attainment of any ideal condition where poverty and crime are eliminated must be internal as well as external; and this is a fact that few Socialists recognize, at least practically, and that even the Fabians, accepting as they do the theory of evolution, continually fail to take account of in the application of their theories. They have indeed received the theory of evolution as regards external institutions; but, with perhaps a few exceptions, they have not regarded it in its inner, psychical significance. This is made evidentby the continual recurrence of such references and remarks as we have criticised, which trace all evil to our "artificial system," refer to character as bad because "saturated with immoral principles by our commercial system,"[279]and reckon upon a change in this "artificial system" which, first accomplished, will cause a revolution in character. The acknowledgment of the necessity of evolution is, for the most part, forgotten in practical discussion; and the reason of this forgetfulness is easily understood from just the fact noticed—that the evolution, the necessity of which is recognized, is the mere external one of state institutions. Character is regarded in any case as a dependent, an effect; and this is in accordance with the old theory of the will as passive and as determined by the rest of nature, never as the active and independent factor determining and instituting. Thus, even a Fabian is likely to look with only half-approval at institutions like the Society for Ethical Culture, which has for its first object the cultivation of character; and many Socialists, until very lately the great majority, have regarded all improvements which did not bear directly towards Socialism as mere temporizing. The socialistic government was to be first established, and this would perform all the reforms necessary; or, rather, evils would disappear of themselves when once it was established. Fortunately, Socialism is itself undergoing an evolution.
But again, even those Socialists who talk of an evolution up to "socialistic forms" are continually found representing the ease with which government might, at present, take over the business of the nation. This is the natural result of the fact that the evolution recognized as necessary is only that of institutions, not that of character. The perception, on the other hand, that character is not, at present, capable of receiving or administering a socialistic form of government, is the reason of much of the resistance opposed to a party which, whatever a very small minority may claim as to theory, is practically endeavoring to force a system of government upon peoples not prepared for carrying it out with success. There are few governments, as yet, where even the democratic idea has sufficiently taken root to render the people at all used to self-government; and where they exist, the good they confer is not unmixed. I am not advancing an argument against democracy; but the defects of human nature which renderits benefits of a mixed character must hinder in an incomparably greater measure a scheme which would place all power, even to the control of all wealth, in the hands of the administration; in other words, Socialism, if introduced to-day, could no more get rid of poverty and crime than democracy can get rid of them; and the gulf between the old and the new order being so great a one, the danger attending the new institutions would be particularly great. As Höffding remarks, it is not proved, because we intrust many things to state-government (with mixed good and evil) that it would be well to intrust the management ofallmatters to it. The Socialists propose to secure the perfection of system by making the government responsible to the people and the executive responsible to the government; but in democratic governments this principle is already carried out. Are we to suppose that the possession of still greater power and so still larger opportunities for fraud would afford the people greater security? Or how could the responsibility of the legislative and administrative functions to the people be still better secured than it is anywhere at present? The power of the people might be extended to include interference with both functions. But the socialistic government must, in any case, be excessively complicated; even Bellamy, whose government is much simplified by the supposition of the immediate attainment of an ideal character through the action of the social "environment," designates the scheme as "very elaborate." The difficulties of direct interference with the legislative functions in countries larger than Switzerland (where the referendum is occasionally resorted to), the difficulties of deciding on evidence before the court of the whole country in cases where the power of deposition might be used, the labor of arriving at a general verdict about which there should be no dispute, the strife and party feeling which must be thus continually engendered in the contest of opinions as long as men have not attained to an ideal character, would be likely, if such powers of national interference were often exercised, to keep the country in a state of continual uproar; while, on the other hand, if peace were purchased at the sacrifice of the power of direct interference, the machinery of state would no more than at present secure the nation from fraud, which must be greater as the power in the hands of a socialistic government would be larger. To the man of principle, it would doubtless appear foolishas well as wrong to sacrifice position, comparative comfort, and the esteem of fellow-citizens, for mere gain in wealth by dishonest means; but as long as there are many men by whom temporary gratification is often preferred even at the sacrifice of more lasting pleasure, and selfish pleasure is of more account than public esteem, as long as there are men to whom the element of excitement in crime is an attraction, as long as women are often unscrupulous and men the slaves of passion, as long as there are those who find the power to command by means of wealth more desirable than security in moderation, and as long as there remain others who will bow down to wealth fraudulently acquired, as long, too, as there are countries anywhere upon the earth in which malefactors may find refuge, the chances of fraud under a socialistic government are large. They must be particularly large where "inordinate luxury and the hope of it" are abolished; for, leaving out of account all question as to the morality of luxury, there are undoubtedly many men who desire as much of it as they can obtain. Bellamy discreetly supposes his ideal government to be adopted at once by all nations, thus paying no attention to the obviously very different degrees of social development represented by those different nations. But as long as any communication of trade whatever existed with nations still under the old régime, ingenuity could devise ways of theft, and foreign lands would constitute a goal for the enjoyment of the spoil. There are, and will be for very many years yet, plenty of places of refuge for the clever thief. Moreover, communication and commerce with other lands not only being necessary but becoming daily more and more desirable, a law excluding all foreigners would be difficult to establish; and this being the case, the social equilibrium must be continually disturbed, and inner character affected by the influx from other nations.
There is another general objection to socialistic schemes which bears on the point of their application to present conditions, namely, their arbitrary nature, the manner in which they would decide summarily many questions on which society is at present most at variance and different individuals entertain the most conflicting opinions, the comparative value of which can be tested only by experiment. This feature of Socialism is inseparable from the general condition of things. Many feel, therefore, and feel with reason, that sympathy is not yet sufficiently general andstrong to warrant the entrusting of all interests of the individual to a majority of his fellow-men. It is even a question whether free scientific investigation would not be imperilled if some Socialists had their way. It is not long since that I heard an "evolutionary" Socialist expressing his opinion emphatically that the waste of time and energy in the pursuit of ambitions never to be realized was so undesirable that he questioned whether the individual ought to be permitted to choose a vocation in which it is believed he will fail. But the element of interest that causes a man to choose a given occupation is the very factor which most often results in efficient labor; and it is the testimony of many that the perseverance possible through love of their work has prevailed in direct opposition to the predictions of onlookers. Thousands of men have succeeded against all expectations. It is by no means those who apparently possess most ability who succeed best or profit the world most by their work. There are projects of arbitrariness very similar in sort and nearly as great in degree in all the Socialistic schemes in which the questions of the day are furnished with cut and dried answers. It is strange, for instance, that American advocates of women's right to a free choice of a vocation have failed to discover with what dexterity Bellamy avoids the whole question of women's capacity, by the discreetly blind remark that they are not only inferior to men in strength, but "further disqualified in special ways" (a formula which the author finds so successful that he repeats the words in a subsequent essay), while he appears practically to side with the Conservatives in thought on the matter. The government of Bellamy provides, furthermore, that one can change his vocation only up to the age of thirty-five, and even to this date only "under proper restrictions"; the experience of mankind has shown, however, that a man's best inspirations may come to him after this age, and lead to a development of talents heretofore unsuspected even by himself. The "aids to choice" in a state may be as numerous as you like; but they can never give a man of thirty the experience and mental development of the man of thirty-five, thirty-seven, or forty. The assistance which the judgment of others can give in the choice of a vocation is, for the most part, of little use to the adult; and whatever the minor advantages of an elimination of the certain amount of disturbance consequent on changes ofoccupation, the harm to society of restriction on efforts in any direction of useful labor must more than counterbalance these.
The method of newspaper-editing in Bellamy's state is also peculiar. The people who desire any special interest to be brought before the public choose an editor, establish a newspaper "reflecting their opinions and devoted especially to their locality, trade, or profession," and when the editor fails to give satisfaction in his publications, simply "remove him." This method would, I fear, scarcely meet the desires of any editor possessed with a brain, and to whom his profession was something more than a matter of mere automatism.
Indeed, the whole order of Bellamy's state is of too military and automatic a character; though it is easy, in a work of fiction, to represent the members of his industrial army as universally content and universally virtuous.
It is in consequence of the more or less distinct perception that, for all these reasons, human nature of the present time is unsuited to the absolute coöperation involved in Socialism, that many Individualists advocate a continuation of the system of competition. From ancient savagery up to our present half-civilization has been a gradual evolution, not of government with character as its effect, but of government and character as coördinates, or (if we view them in another light) as advancing by mutual action and reaction; and our future must constitute a like gradual evolution (though with continual acceleration of velocity) of character and government as coördinates; the attempt of individuals or parties to force one of these coördinates before the other must always result in failure. It is true, as Mr. Grant Allen stated in a lecture before the London Fabians—designed as refutation of the Individualistic theory that competition is necessary for the best social evolution—that natural selection favors coöperation,[280]that is, that those societies in which the efforts of individuals are most supplemented by the aid of others, have the best chance of life and health both as wholes and in their individual units; but this fact does not do away with the necessity of the evolution of coöperationcoördinate with character. "We know now," says another Fabian, "that in natural selection at the stage of development where the existence of civilized man is at stake, the units selected from arenot individuals but societies."[281]This, however, we do not know. Natural selection acts on cell, on individual, and on all the various social units to which men combine, in their multiplicity of relations. It does not cease to act on individuals because it acts also on social organizations, any more than it ceases to act on cells in acting on organisms as wholes; it is only true that the line of the preservation of the individual and that of the preservation of the whole of society approach each other more and more nearly with social progress. The tendency of the whole of social evolution has been one of increasing coöperation coördinate with increasing social instinct or sympathy in all its complex relations and dependences; and with the attainment of the maximum of sympathy we can not well imagine or suppose anything else than the maximum of coöperation. On the other hand, the gradual nature of social evolution up to this maximum, and the contest of differing opinions, secures a sufficient experiment, and so the protection of the people from tyranny under another name; for it is not the emotional nature of man alone which must grow to greater harmony, it is also his intellectual nature; as opinions are brought nearer and nearer to each other by mutual criticism, men become more capable of coöperation; and this intellectual agreement represents the line of adjustment or natural selection, since it is the conclusion reached by means of experience—the common knowledge bought through the practical application of various principles. A tribe of savages would be incapable of administration of the government of our so-called civilized states, as also of obedience to it:—both because the individual would rebel in opinion and in emotion at the barriers imposed by it, and because the functions of administration in the hands of savages would tend to injustice that would be greater as the sphere of government exceeded that to which the tribe had been used; and for similar reasons, the present age is incapable of that maximum of coöperation in all relations which is involved in Socialism. Even the æsthetic use of wealth, moderation and taste in enjoyment, must be learned by degrees; it cannot be infused by any government. The savage envies, in our more civilized states, chiefly the opportunities for the gorging of good things and for self-adornment which they afford; and the savage lack of self-control where alcohol is concerned, is proverbial; theaverage of more civilized societies shows a much greater self-control and moderation in the face of opportunities of purely sensual gratification, and a much greater love of more æsthetic and more moral pleasures. Or rather, we should perhaps say, as before, the sensuality becomes more refined, and is gratified in more moral ways, through its organization with higher instincts. It is not among the wealthier classes, who have had the use of wealth, that taste is poorest; on the contrary, the average of taste is smaller, the outlay for foolish ornament of all sorts larger in proportion to means, in the poorer classes; and were these classes to come without change of character into possession of considerable means of enjoyment, it is to be suspected that expenditure for tasteless adornments would, in many cases, and especially among the women, precede and exceed expenditure for higher things.
And this brings me to a more especial consideration of that very large portion of the Socialist party who acknowledge no necessity for an evolution up to Socialism in any sense, but desire a revolution. Bellamy distinctly denies the necessity of an evolution, and many of his followers agree with him on this point; but the revolution he believes in and hopes for is a bloodless and peaceful one. To this conception the preceding objections sufficiently apply.
A revolution in the ordinary sense of the word is always, however, the sign of powerful opposition between two parties, of which one may gain the immediate ascendancy by force; but will surely be exposed, afterwards, to the long-enduring hatred, opposition, and revenge of a strong minority, that will make itself felt with an energy greatly increased by the vindictiveness which naturally follows on war and defeat. France is still suffering from her revolutions even at this length of time after their occurrence. Where the people have no vote and real influence upon the government, and even the expression of opinion is restricted by law, so that to gain an influence is practically impossible, a political revolution may take place; but its results, both immediate and remote, must contain a very large modicum of evil even if some advance is accomplished by it. A revolution to obtain the establishment of absolute coöperation would be self-contradictory, and the self-contradiction of character implied in it would result in its failure; it could not happen in a country at all prepared for absolute coöperation, or even for a very high degree of coöperation. A revolution in any country at the present time would have to reckon with all sorts ofdepraved tastes and vicious characters, matters of organization and inheritance which neither in the individual, nor in the line of descent, could be gotten rid of in a day; which must, indeed, affect society for many generations, and before they could be eradicated would do away with Socialism or destroy its success. Poverty and crime cannot be banished by any device of mere legislation; only with time and by gradual means can they be gotten rid of.
Socialism is, then, as a whole, too impetuous, if Individualism is, as a whole, too reluctant. But Socialism is undergoing an evolution, as has been said. Arising as the voice of the poor, the oppressed, the miserable, the hungry, it has made itself heard and has materially modified public opinion, while it has, at the same time, been itself modified, according to the universal law of the equilibration of forces. Forced by necessity practically, and gradually altered by criticism as to theory, it is coming to give its energies less and less to a consideration of the final socialistic government which should do away with the necessity of further reforms because accomplishing an immediate and universal one, and devoting them more and more to present measures of reform, many of which are simply liberal measures proposed by non-Socialists and such as would have had no meaning to the majority of Socialists of a few years past, or would have been regarded by them as useless temporizing. In its mutual action and reaction with Individualism, it will doubtless still more modify and be modified, so that more and more ground for united action will be won. The cause of the laborer is the most urgent of our times; but increase of wages will be of very little use except as it is steadily accompanied by aids to knowledge and self-direction, aids in the formation of character, in the use of self and of the means of enjoyment; otherwise, the laborer must continually defeat his own cause, and renew the old problems.
The education of self-control must begin with the child. The education of the child is never to be considered by itself; the child is not one individual and the adult another, neither is there any dividing line between childhood and maturity; and that which the individual is to become in later life he must grow towards as a child. The habits which the man would exercise the child must learn. In Germany, where the military spirit prevails, implicit obedience to authority is ranked among thehighest virtues, and habits of strict military discipline are carried into the family as well as exercised in all public relations. In countries where more democratic ideas are strong, the older methods are giving way to milder ones. These sometimes degenerate into the opposite extreme of careless indulgence, with bad results; but taken on the average, their beneficial influence is seen in the greater alertness, originality, and openness of the children brought up under them. Frankness and originality are on the average incompatible with harsh or stern treatment; the latter is more likely to generate craftiness, fawning hypocrisy, or an unloving and unlovable rigidity of character; and any of these qualities is compatible with secret self-indulgence in any form, wherever this is possible. Only an education in freedom can teach the use of freedom. The old, hard, religious idea of "breaking the will" (the natural outcome of a religion based on blind faith, "fear," and unquestioning obedience) was a sad blunder; what we need is not less but more will, with better direction of it. True, the wisdom of experience must always guide the young; but its guidance, to attain the best results, should make itself as little felt as authority as possible, and should withdraw into the background as early as possible. Not that it should degenerate into slipshod yielding to importunities, but that it should endeavor to give reasons rather than mere rules of conduct, to instil principles and ideas rather than laws, and so to develop the power of self-direction. It is often objected that the young child is incapable of comprehending principles; but so is the infant incapable of comprehending speech, and yet it is through the use of speech to the infant that comprehension is gradually attained; as sounds are fixed in the receptive memory of the infant, and slowly acquire meaning, so ethical principles, simply stated, may be communicated, and will be better and better understood as the child develops. This method of instruction is, rightly understood, as far from weakness as it is from tyranny and dogmatism; indeed, no method demands in the instructor so much care, thought, and patience. It must be judicious and consistent, never capricious, and its fundamental principle must be the cultivation of justice through justice, and so of kindness through kindness. Especially should the young be prepared in the home, by self-knowledge, for the trials and temptations which menace in the world outside, through the passions of maturity. To theearnest man or woman, nothing appears more trivial than the false shame which hinders, even in the home and between parents and children, the moral discussion of some of the most important of human relations for good or evil. To the pure all things are pure; but, unfortunately, it is also true that to the impure all things are impure. Nothing is more injurious to children than the morbid curiosity stimulated through the secrecy and deception which are ordinarily practised, and which inspires them with the sense of a mystery that is half criminal, half sacred. Curiosity grows under such tuition, a disproportionate interest is awakened and often comes to be satisfied from sources outside the home, with an admixture of deplorable vulgarity, the influence of which is not soon lost. Such a tuition tends, not to purity of thought, but to impurity, and often directly to vice. The mystery with which natural, and what may be perfectly moral, relations is thus invested, is often the source of a fatal attraction to ignorant youth. What we need to make out of our children is not puppets of which the world as well as ourselves may pull the wires, but earnest and self-comprehending men and women, self-reliant and fearless because life is no strange country filled with unknown shadows and pitfalls, but a pleasant land, whose dangers, known, may be avoided, and the road through which leads to a comprehended and desirable goal.
Parental power was once held sacred and beyond interference; nevertheless the use made of it does not seem to have been always a sacred one. The Roman law allowed parents to put their children to death. The modern state has tended, on the other hand, to take away more and more power from the parents, extending its protection to the helpless child. And this is well; the child, as well as the adult, should have the right of protection against abuse. Nevertheless, the theories which would relegate the whole education and care of the child to the state must be regarded as too extreme. Whatever disadvantages there may be in the government of parents, especially at the present day when the education of women is still so inadequate, there is yet nothing which the child cannot better miss out of his education than the influence of parental love, the lack of which no state institution can ever supply. Granted that parental government is of a most mistaken sort in some cases, and that it is not perfect in any case, it still remains true that family affection furnishes one of mankind'sgreatest joys, and that the love of the parent should, and even does, on the average, make the best protection and educator weak and clinging childhood can have. No one who has at all studied the condition of children in orphan asylums and other institutions under the care of the state, can have failed to notice, even in those institutions managed with the greatest kindness, the immense difference in happiness and attractiveness between their inmates and the children used to family love and mother's caresses. The lack of love makes the child unlovable. The fundamental method of reform lies, not in the withdrawal of all power from parents, but rather in the better preparation of men, and especially of women, to fulfil the duties of parentage. Such a preparation must consist, however, less in any particular study than in such general physical, intellectual, and moral discipline and education as shall expand all the powers in health and harmony, thus securing to children a good physical inheritance and an early guidance both wise and moral. A higher morality must particularly emphasize the fact that not self alone or even merely the two parties to a marriage are to be considered; that the welfare of possible offspring must be regarded; and that, therefore, marriage with the morally unfit is a crime against future generations as well as against self, and marriage of the physically unfit, where offspring are permitted, is equally a wrong. The old idea, encouraged in women, that it was a good and noble use of life to "marry a man in order to reform him," is beginning to go out of vogue; and future standards will not tolerate the present social dogma that, however much of a profligate a man may have been, whatever associates he may have affected, however he may have betrayed the innocent and debauched his own moral sense, he is still fit to mate with any pure and good woman.
The necessity of a better physical and intellectual education for the mothers of the race, as a preparation for the adequate performance of their duties, must be, at the present time, especially emphasized. The task of the mother in the early training of children is one that requires practical knowledge of the world, broad views, and that power of judgment which is possible only through mental discipline. Superstition, narrowness, subjection to tradition and dogma, are incompatible with efficient motherhood. The education must, then, be real, no cramming with stale facts and staler theories; it must advance with the science of the day, and deal with its vital questions.
But the standpoint which regards women only as means to ends outside themselves, which calculates all the advantages to be permitted them by the measure alone of their usefulness to husbands or children, is a poor one. To afford to all individuals the full and free development of capacity must be the ideal of society. The ancient conceptions which laid little emphasis practically, whatever they might do theoretically, upon the woman's right to opportunities for her own sake, which made meekness and self-abnegation her chief virtues, and fixed its regard always upon future generations in her case, is one that cannot be defended from a higher ethical standpoint. If no man lives unto himself alone, neither should any man, or woman either, be expected to spend his life merely as a means to others and having no end in himself. Every human being has a right to a share in the general privileges and pleasures. For their own sake, and that of society as a whole, as well as for that of their immediate friends and family, women should share equally with men the benefits of mental culture, its æsthetic enjoyments, its consolations and distractions, and the calm and self-poise bestowed by its broad outlook. To women as well as to men applies what has already been said of the folly and sin of ignorance of the world. We have only to look at France in order to perceive the evils of a system which brings girls to maturity in a condition of seclusion, ignorance, and dependence, and then suddenly launches them upon society wholly unprepared to withstand the temptations it presents. The evil results of a less degree of the same system are visible all over the world. On the other hand, it is in just that country—America—where women have had the most freedom, that they are also most capable of enduring freedom, and that their civilizing influence is most visible. They are not the less womanly for this liberty, and society is very much the better for it. Indeed, their attractiveness and the power they wield through it is not equalled in any other country. "I wonder," writes George Eliot, "whether the subtle measuring of forces will ever come to measure the force there would be in one beautiful woman whose mind was as noble as her face was beautiful—who made a man's passion for her rush in one current with all the great aims of his life." "It is terrible—the keen, bright eye of a woman when it has once been turned with admiration on what is severely true; but then the severely true rarely comes within its range of vision."
The questions of marriage and prostitution may be reduced to the single question of the desirability of monogamy. No one can well deny the evils attending the existence of a class of prostitutes isolated from moral associations, despised and ill-treated, daily sinking lower and lower through this isolation, and contaminating, by their influence, those who come in contact with them. The practical question is, then, would it be well for society as a whole to assume another attitude, of open approval, towards prostitution, to admit those who are now outcasts to a position on a par with faithful wives and pure maidens. This was the position of Athenian prostitutes, and it existed together with, we may suppose, comparative chastity on the part of maidens and faithfulness on the part of wives. These, however, did not take part in the social life of the men, but lived in seclusion in their homes; it would be impossible to accord a similar position to prostitutes in modern society unless with the practical surrender of any demand or expectancy of faithfulness on the part of wives, or of chastity on the part of maidens. Even in France, where the position of prostitutes most nearly approximates the Athenian, a very distinct dividing-line is drawn between thedemi-mondeand the rest of society; and, indeed, special precautions are taken to secure the chastity of girls. In like manner, purity might perhaps still be secured in girls, after the admission of prostitutes to a position of equality with other women, by a convent education and the greatest watchfulness; but the lack of self-dependence would be likely to be followed, as it now so often is in France, only in far greater degree, by excesses after the attainment of comparative self-direction with marriage. The profligate soon tires of the prostitute, and desires higher game; unbridled license begets morbid passion; the sense of honor is blunted; the pure cease to be safe except as far as they are able, by self-control and self-defence, to protect themselves; and for such self-poise only an education of freedom, of knowledge of the world and of self, can prepare. Nor could even such a system of seclusion as we have imagined exist for any length of time side by side with the full acceptance of prostitution as perfectly honorable and right; the two things are self-contradictory and incompatible; in France, faithfulness is not less desired of wives than in other countries. Indeed, the majority of men in civilized countries would never consent to a system of general promiscuity; they desire women,that is, a large number of women, a sufficient number to supply them with wives, to remain pure, whatever liberty they demand for themselves. The whole progress of society has been in the direction of monogamy, and the reason of this is obvious: as reason and taste develop, man ceases to be satisfied with the mere enjoyments of the animal; he develops higher powers and instincts which also demand their satisfaction; these powers, too, are not separate entities, but are organized with the more primitive capacities and the whole organization becomes another through their appearance. As the social instinct grows, and intellect comes to take a higher place, the mere or chiefly physical passion felt between the sexes of lower species becomes the higher human love, an organized instinct in which all the moral and intellectual desires, the highest aims and emotions of the individual are fused to a whole. Moreover, momentary pleasure becomes, with social progress, indeed with all evolution, less and less the ruling power; man, above all creatures, comes to demand enduring sources of satisfaction. Faithfulness in love is as necessary to perfect satisfaction as is faithfulness in friendship; and the long as well as the close companionship of congenial natures is now, and must more and more become, the spring of our highest human joys. Disappointment in marriage may incline the individual to doubt, by a universalization from his own case,—to which disappointment is prone,—whether life-long love and faithfulness are possible; but he still must feel that this is the ideal. It has been said that men are naturally polygamous, women monogamous; but this statement is obviously erroneous, since men by no means favor general polygamy; even the savage is capable of jealousy, and men have continually used the superior power they have possessed in law and public opinion to emphasize the exclusive claim they have upon the women they take to wife. It is only true that, having also had the power in their hands of refusing a like faithfulness to that which they demand from women, they have used this power to their own advantage. Women desire faithful love on the part of men quite as much as men desire it on the part of women; and women are quite as capable of physical excesses and of fickleness as are men, when the restraints of public opinion and social law are once broken over.
A condition of promiscuity is impossible in an ideal society, and can never be the goal towards which we tend. Men wouldnot submit to it in the women they loved; and if it is not possible for wives, then we have left us only the alternative of prostitution in its present form, increasingly worse in character as the ideal of faithfulness is more universally demanded and more completely carried out in wives, and the necessary coördinate social ostracism and disgrace of the prostitute increases. But this also cannot assuredly be our ideal; the increasing misery of the class of prostitutes is not a thing to be sought. The whole theory which tolerates prostitution is, in fact, illogical and only devised as a prop for the selfishness of men, who are content to take their pleasure at the expense of so much misery. The same thing cannot be, as some one has said, at once right for the man to demand and infamous for the woman to permit. Where the act is one to which both sexes are necessary, it must, if it be right at all, be right for both, and if it is wrong, then wrong for both. And this would remain true even if it were proved that, because of greater strength or for any other reason, the sexual passion of men ought not to be restrained; for, the responsibility of the prostitute's misery is thus laid at the door of men; if the women who ply this traffic are prompted by no passion, but only compelled by destitution, then the blame of their unhappy compulsion to such a traffic rests more than ever on the heads of those who furnish the demand to which their supply answers. In any case, the man is an accessory before the fact to a thing which he acknowledges wrong on the part of its performer.
But the plea that passion is stronger in the man for an act which dates back to the point in evolution where sexual propagation first began, and which has been performed equally by both sexes through all the range of species up to man, and even equally by both sexes of the human species except during the comparatively short period of higher civilization, is absurd. The difference between the sexes in degree of sexual gratification is,among those who transmit their instincts to offspring, not great even under civilization. There is probably more excess in marriage than outside it. But apart from this fact, the fact of cross-heredity is to be taken into consideration. The sexual is no more than any other instinct a separate part of the individual character; it is organically interwoven with all other instincts and tendencies; and it is scarcely supposable that thus fused with the rest of character, it would not be subject, as all other traits, to cross-inheritancefrom father to daughter as well as from mother to son,—that the father's life would not, in many cases, affect his daughter's propensities, and the mother's life her son's. Thisa priorireasoning is supported by facts of observation, among which those of pathology and criminology are naturally the most marked. Man is an animal; but, as we have said before, he is not a beast, nor does he need to imitate the beasts. He has his own social organization and must determine his own moral laws. The old theory, that any restraint at all of sexual passion is a crime against nature, and likely to result in great physical evil, is now exploded. Even if it were true that some evil to the individual was always the result of any restraint, the good of the individual is not the absolute criterion of right, and cannot stand against the claim of society as a whole; the unrestrained indulgence of sexual passion could no more be justified on this ground, and because of the fact that it is a natural instinct, than the absolute indulgence of anger can be justified because anger is a natural passion, and its expression doubtless a great satisfaction and relief to the individual. But very many medical men, and among them such men as Professor Krafft-Ebbing, the German authority on nervous diseases, are now denying that self-restraint has such evil results as have been attributed to it. Krafft-Ebbing says, on the contrary, that while physical excess is very often the precursor of harm, self-restraint is seldom so, except in cases of abnormal and morbid appetite.[282]
In other countries than the United States and England, the plea of "poetry" or "romance" is often heard in defence of prostitution, and as an excuse for the seduction of pure women. But if this is poetry, which must so end in the bitter misery, the shame, degradation, despair, and even often the utter destruction of its heroines, then, in the name of pity, let us have less of poetry and more of common humanity. To a man of anything but selfish instincts, "poetry" or "romance" could never be an excuse for connivance at such misery, either by direct act or in any way by influence. Nor is the poetry or romance of the highest order, in any case. There is no romance so powerful, no poetry so thrilling, nor any passion so strong, as that to which all the springs of intellectual aspiration and moral aim converge,and which draws its sweetness and force from a purity tainted by no degradation of ideals, galled by no bitter and humiliating recollections, checked by no self-consciousness of concealment and deceit. Compared with such a feeling, the romance of the "man of the world" is tame and flat, his poetry but the doggerel jingle of the third-rate variety-show. Physical passion the human being shares with every dog and other brute down to nearly the lowest forms of animal life; love is as truly of higher species as the æsthetic sense of the artist is of higher nature than the delight of the savage in gauds. The old idea that strong emotion of any kind was incompatible with perfect morality has already been sufficiently discussed. But this delusion has been the excuse of many a life of profound selfishness. It has led to the theory that the artistic nature must necessarily be unrestrained in the gratification of its impulses, and has furnished the libertine with a fine sense of kinship with the poet through the imitation of his sins. Perhaps the poetry of the lives of Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning has been to the world as great a gratification and of as high worth as any that they ever wrote on paper. It has dispelled once and forever the false theory of the necessities of the artistic temperament, and has enabled us to perceive the higher beauty of enduring love.
It is often urged in defence of the sexual sins of the poet or the musician, that they are natural to his temperament and that, moreover, he must be acquainted with all phases of life. But why is it not also urged, then, that he ought to be at liberty to give way to ungoverned fury, if he has inherited a tendency in that direction, or that he is justified in committing murder, arson, and all the other crimes in the catalogue for the sake of the experience and the greater power of portrayal thus gained? If the excuse suffices for one crime against the welfare of human beings, it should suffice also for others. Dickens might possibly have been able to draw the character of Bill Sykes, to depict his crime and the succeeding emotions with greater power and faithfulness, had he himself experienced all that which he wished to portray; nevertheless, society cannot concede that he would have been justified in killing for the sake of his art; and neither can it concede, from a higher ethical standpoint, that any other act in direct opposition to the general welfare is justifiable for the sake of art. It may be possible for the artist, by torturing a slaveto death, to paint a more realistic picture of dying agony; but however glorious the art, the man of finer sense and stronger sympathies must be revolted by it. Society can even better miss a little of its art than take it at the price of human misery.
But it is to be questioned whether the artist does not lose as much as he gains, or even more, by an immoral license of any sort. True, the artist must know human nature; but the best portrayers of criminal characters have not themselves been criminals; and if ever we should have a murderer-poet, we should in all probability feel the lack, in his verse, of various things, among these of the higher realism which comprehends higher as well as lower types. It is impossible to be merely the spectator of one's own life even if one is an artist; and especially is this true where passion is concerned. The emotions one feels, the acts one performs, must mould one's character, one's thought, opinion, the mental world in which one lives, and so one's creative genius. Nature is by no means all dunghill or reptile-haunted swamp, or even common kitchen; she has also her seas and mountains, and skies, her fields and woods, and even her sunny gardens and dainty parlors. The snow-mountain glowing under the flush of dawn is as real as the reeking dunghill; but the power to appreciate and portray the one may be lost by too close association with the other, as the fine sense of smell is dulled by sojourning in foul odors. To the rake, the character of the self-controlled and virtuous becomes incomprehensible and chimerical; and his attempts to represent it are likely to be tinged with an atmosphere of unreality. Of this we have much evidence in literature. To raise oneself to the higher standard in practice and comprehension requires an effort; but it is comparatively easy to allow oneself to sink to a level for which generations of one's ancestors has prepared innate if latent tendencies. On the other hand, though we desire to know men and things through art, we desire to keep with us through its aid, above all, that which most pleases us in the actual world—the beautiful in form, coloring, and idea, in nature outside man and in man himself; the good, if it is the truly good, and not cant or hypocrisy, is also the beautiful, and the loss of the power to portray it is a large one. And beyond the more easily definable loss which we have noticed, there is a still further one, felt in a subtle tone, a shade, an atmosphere; and which, if closely knit with our moral perceptions, is still anæsthetic as well as a moral one. The evolution of morality, could, indeed, no more take place without leaving its impress on art than without leaving it on humor. The higher sense of humor, in very proportion to its keenness, experiences a revulsion at the grotesque and gross vulgarity which passes for humor among the savage and half-civilized; and with time, the immoral comes to revolt too much to permit of æsthetic enjoyment. Had Dickens been a murderer himself, instead of the tender-hearted man he was, the world would doubtless have lost in every way æsthetically as well as morally by the fact. The old theory of the total emancipation of art from all claims of morality cannot be maintained from even the æsthetic standpoint, and certainly not from the ethical standpoint. Art has every right to be non-moral (if that which delights innocently is ever anything but positively moral), but it has none to be immoral,—to use the mighty power it possesses in the cause of evil of any sort.
Nor is it even true that all nature belongs to art. In all its history, sculpture has never, except in a few isolated cases, reproduced the forms of the withered and decrepit. The painter of the extreme realistic school may occasionally portray the scenes of the dissecting-room, but pictures of sores and ulcers are left to adorn the pages of medical works or patent-medicine advertisements. There are moral sores and ulcers as little suited to artistic literature, and belonging properly to works on social healing alone. The depiction of evil in due proportion and with such limitations belongs to the accurate representation of human character. But let its portrayal include no sin against man; let not the artist dip his hands in the dunghill, for humanity's sake and also for his art's sake; lest his picture reek of it, and we find the offal mixed with the colors.
The cant and superstition with which marriage has often been invested has doubtless been the source of the rebellion of many vigorous and original minds from the old morality; the morality founded on tradition and not on reason and sympathy has always this disadvantage. Undoubtedly, the sale of human flesh for gold or any other sordid consideration, is evil, whether done under the sanction of the marriage-law or without it. Undoubtedly also, the marriage-rite performs no miracle or magic spell, as the superstition of the past has imagined. Nevertheless, it is of importance as a civil contract, a public acknowledgment, whichfurnishes data to the state, and places it in a position to protect any injured party, and to fix the responsibility for the maintenance and education of offspring. Considering the number of individuals whose welfare is seriously concerned in these most intimate relations of life, with all their passions, the state cannot relinquish this right of arbitration, which should especially be employed for the protection of the weaker individuals concerned—the wife and children. Unfortunately, it has, as yet, too often been used rather in securing the power of tyranny and abuse than in protecting. This fact is perceptible even in modern law, as, for instance, in the unequal divorce-laws of England, and in the fact that wife-beaters are often treated with great leniency by English magistrates, while the man who abuses his mistress is liable to relatively severe punishment as having no especial power over the latter. It is, undoubtedly, the result of such laws, together with other evils incidental to the average of marriages under the present conditions of human character, that on some sides a theory has grown up in favor of the total abolition of marriage. But neither in its general application, nor in this particular instance, is the Anarchistic conception which finds the source of all evil in law, scientifically justifiable. The conditions of the evil lie in human nature itself, in the incompleteness of its evolution; of the present stage the injustice of present law is a part. The remedy lies, therefore, as far as the law is concerned, in its correction, not in its abolishment.
The ideal of love is enduring faithfulness. But when that ideal is not only unfulfilled, but marriage brings, instead of happiness, only misery, shall the bond be indissoluble, difficult, or easy to loose?
In countries where women are wholly dependent upon men, perfect facility of divorce means substantially the power of repudiation on the part of men. As long as women are incapable of efficient self-support, the advantage of very easy divorce lies largely on the side of the husband. Marriage concerns, in any case, the welfare, not of one person alone but that of husband, wife, and children, and society as a whole must place some restrictions on the selfish action of the individual which may be to the lasting disadvantage of all others concerned. But as society advances, as the education and social independence of women increase, too great stringency becomes undesirable, its advantagescontinually diminish in comparison with its disadvantages. Forced family relations where all the affection that might render them for the good of those thus related is lacking, are obviously in themselves undesirable, and in most cases where wife and children can be provided for independently of such relations, an evil to be avoided. Assuredly, it is undesirable that the moral should be tied indissolubly, or practically so, to the immoral,—that a mother, for instance, should not only be forced to bring forth children to a father whose evil qualities they may inherit, but be compelled to endure the further ruin of their character through his influence, besides bearing the personal agony of the enforced companionship with a man whose principles she can but despise. But all character is at present faulty; and a desire for perfection in husband or wife therefore certain to disappointment; hence, the relinquishment of all divorce-restrictions whatsoever is too likely to lead to promiscuity; and unless such appears desirable to society, neither public opinion nor state-law can place the power of repudiation in the hands of individuals. It is a choice of evils; the state must take human nature as it finds it, and deal with it on this basis. It has sometimes been proposed to make some substitution for the old form of marriage, as, for instance, by the adoption of a period of probation, of two, three, or five years' marriage before the signing of the final life-contract; by this method, it was proposed to obviate the necessity for divorce. As far as this last proposal is concerned, it may be remarked that applications for divorce are by no means always made in the earlier period of married life, and that, furthermore, any such arrangement would offer the very best opportunities for the unscrupulous libertine.
But beyond this, it may be repeated that, as Höffding has said, it is not in the nature of love worthy the name to calculate the possibility of its own ending, and that the highest form of love is enduring. Enduring relation must, then, form the ideal on which we must fix our eyes, even while failing to attain it; divorce, while given in cases where union seems no longer desirable, must be looked upon as indicating a failure of marriage to fulfil its end. The influence of an ideal held in mind is the continual moulding of reality to a form more nearly resembling it. But to descend to a form of contract which starts with the assumption of separation as possible or probable is to lose sight of the ideal,to relinquish it from imagination, and to do away with its influence upon public opinion, and so upon the evolution of institutions and habits. We certainly need better divorce-laws and the wider recognition of the desirability of divorce in many cases, but not the practical acceptance of an ideal of promiscuity.
The plan of such short contracts could never be carried out practically for any length of time, in any modern civilized society. Even if adopted for a time, it would speedily be abolished. Man naturally desires and takes means of enforcing, at first with the lower means of compulsion, then with the higher through the sympathies themselves, faithfulness in woman; woman also, and equally, desires faithfulness in man, but is not able to secure it. The gradual growth of woman's social independence must, however, place her more and more in a position to know of the life of men and to enforce the faithfulness she desires; that is, to punish unfaithfulness with the same penalties of disability for marriage by which men have hitherto enforced faithfulness in women. We may easily perceive that this is the direction of development. In countries where women are wholly dependent upon men, the character of a suitor in any respect is a thing little inquired into, the chief object of the parents, who ordinarily have the most to say about the matter, being to secure a husband for the girl at any cost. With the progress of society, women become less and less ready to accept the known drunkard or the confessed libertine, and it is only the seclusion of women and their consequent ignorance of the lives of men that makes marriage, at present, still comparatively easy to the discreet and clever profligate. The coördinate increase of regard for purity in wives with the aggravation of the character of prostitution, supposed above for the sake of the discussion, is possible only up to a certain point, as an oscillation in one direction resistance to which is continually accumulating, and must result in reaction in the opposite direction. The two principles are mutually contradictory, incompatible, and impossible as enduring factors in the same society. The growth of a more widely diffused and stronger sentiment against prostitution and in favor of faithfulness has, indeed, as yet led chiefly to the greater exclusion of prostitutes from association with the rest of society, and made profligacy more and more secret; but, at the same time, the gradually increasing sympathy has formed an accumulating resistance whichis rapidly taking shape in the realization that the prostitute is not more guilty in furnishing the supply than is the man whose demand makes self-profanation a source of income, that the misery of prostitution is immoral, and that the only remedy is prevention. There is no alternative to this remedy that progress can realize except, as has been shown, general promiscuity. It is best, then, that we should make up our minds between these two and act accordingly; for the action of every individual tells, for good or ill, upon society as a whole. What is the ideal? I think the answer is plain; no man who has any conception of the higher joys of love which is also friendship, intellectual companionship, can hesitate; and if this is so, then duty is plain also. No man has a right to deplore the evil by word who encourages it in any way by his act.
It is sometimes averred by those who oppose the economic independence and educational equality of women with men, that women can mingle with the world on a plane of equality with men only at the sacrifice of all the chivalry and admiration which men now give to women. But this objection opposes every step of women's progress, from the harem upwards, and every step has proved its falseness. True, in the lands where women are freest, they are less favored with insincere and fulsome compliments, with vows and protestations which, when put to the test, mean nothing, or worse than nothing. The case is, however, far otherwise with the attentions which mark sincere regard, and the consideration paid by physical strength to comparative weakness. It would, indeed, be peculiar if higher intellectual powers, a clearer insight into the "severely true," the cultivation of that nobility of character which results from self-knowledge through knowledge of others and the habit of self-reliance, should render women less attractive. The pioneers in any cause need to be the hardier individuals, and so are often those who please little æsthetically; and the kicks and scoffs of the world may take from the disposition what little grace it at first possessed; but this does not prove the moral rightness of the kicks and scoffs, or the moral culpability of those who dare to adhere to their purpose in spite of them. In the countries where excessive difficulties are placed in the way of women's work in the higher professions (there are very few placed in the way of her overwork in other directions), these have resulted naturally in the suppression of effort on the part of the majority of the morefinely constituted and more sensitive, and have left the field to the hardier and less fine; but in the United States, where women are freest in every way, they have lost neither in natural grace nor in the attention and regard of men; on the contrary, they have gained in both, and they have, furthermore, left the mark of their refining influence on the whole civilization of the country. As long as women are weaker than men physically, a higher moral standard must have regard for this weakness. When, through a more healthful life, women become more nearly equal to men in endurance, certain forms of attention will be less necessary, and will, doubtless, fall off somewhat, only to make room for a higher plane of mutual helpfulness. Yet I doubt whether the time will ever come when the grace and beauty of women, the associations of love and the memories of family affection, will not stir men of finer fibre to peculiar kindness, repaid as the appreciation of women can well repay.
There is another protest—which comes especially from the party that most exclaims against the evils of competition—against the "superstitious" respect for age. The reason is, obviously, that age tends by nature to conservatism. But the evils of the struggle for existence are not those alone of outward conditions; these are often far less hard than the bitter spirit of mental antagonism that sears and saddens the heart. Youth is daring and originative; middle age is less venturesome, but it possesses, on the other hand, a wider range of experience. Between youth and youth, or youth and middle age, the battle is more equal. But age no longer possesses the power to cope with the world physically or mentally; it is fixed in habit, and apt to follow one accustomed round of thought; we are certainly not likely to convince it by violence. It has borne its share of violence and has done its part in the battle. It has advanced with its generation, though it may not be able to advance any longer with ours. Our ideal should certainly be that of forbearance, not of intolerance towards it.
Modern opinion is becoming dissatisfied with the old methods of dealing with criminals—with the methods which continually return the criminal to society not bettered by incarceration, and ready to commit all manner of crimes again. Both the protection of society and the welfare of the criminal would be better served by a course of discipline that should only then give him back tosociety when he is fitted to live in harmony with it and to enjoy the advantages conferred by such harmony. Recent experiments in reformatories have demonstrated the immense advantage of methods which attempt something like this. Among the improved reformatories for children, many of them without walls, bolts, or bars, some have sent out cured from eighty to eighty-five per cent of the offenders committed to them. The Elmira reformatory deals especially with offenders sentenced for their first state's prison offence, and its method is at once eminently humane and remarkably successful. Offenders may be sent to it at the discretion of the judges. It contains three grades. Members of the first of these wear better clothing, eat better food, enjoy various special privileges, and are used, to some extent, as officers and monitors for the other grades. Members of the second grade are less well provided for and honored than those of the first; and members of the third grade are worst clothed and fed, and have the fewest privileges. Every man who enters the prison is submitted to a minute examination as to his antecedents, his mental, moral, and physical condition and capabilities. He is then placed in the second grade, from which he may go up or down, according to his work and conduct. Eight hours' work a day are required, and compulsory school is held in the evening, at which the common English branches are taught, and elementary instruction given in Law, Political Economy, Ethics, etc. Discussion and thought on the subjects taught are encouraged, and everything possible is done to awaken interest. "Perfect" work and conduct for six months—the standard of "perfection" is high—and a mark of 75 in a scale of 100 in the school secure a man advance into the next higher grade; and the same standard maintained for six months in the highest grade entitle a man to release on parole; so that the term of imprisonment need not exceed a year. The man must be willing, industrious, good-tempered, obedient, energetic, who gets release in this time. Work is found for every man released; he is closely watched for six months more, and if his conduct does not keep up the standard required, he is returned to the reformatory and must begin over again; if, on the other hand, his conduct and work, an attested report of which must be handed in each month, is satisfactory for these six months, he is honorably discharged. The obdurate malefactors serve out their full sentence, as they would in state's prison. Of those who go outfrom the institution, eighty per cent return to society reformed; and the superintendent is of the opinion that this percentage could still be raised were the time of detention made indeterminate and wholly dependent upon reform. All prison reformers are coming to recognize the desirability of such indeterminate sentences. The work of the men at Elmira pays over two-thirds of the expenses of the institution, and even if we consider only dollars and cents, this method of dealing with crime is evidently the cheapest; for under the old method we have to take into account the expenses of the later crimes of the men released without improvement of character. The method of parole of first offenders, newly introduced into France, and in use to some extent in other countries also, seems to have rather less to recommend it, except in special cases; since the moral, intellectual, and industrial discipline of the reformatory are lacking.
In all such reformatory work it may be remarked that hard labor and stringent discipline, as well as consistent kindness, are found absolutely necessary; and it is to be noted that the disinclination of criminals for labor and regularity of life is one of the greatest obstacles in the way of their reform.[283]Judge Green quotes from Mr. Hough on this point: "Those who are in control of penal institutions meet with no more pernicious influence than that exerted by certain well-meaning but mistaken philanthropists who are impelled by kindly hearts to slop over with sentiment. No criminal is so hard to reach as the one who fancies himself injured or has a grievance against society. Aside from treatment that compels him to feel resentment, there is no one thing that will so quickly bring this feeling as to have some tender-hearted, benevolent person tell him that they think his penalty is far more severe than his offence warrants, especially now that he has promised to pray regularly and abandon his wicked ways."[284]In connection with this point, we may notice Bellamy's theory of crime as Atavism, to be treated in the hospitals. Whether or not we regard crime as disease, a distinction must be drawn between the disease that may be regarded as physical weakness and that which does not necessarily imply such weakness, though it may imply some physical defect in the sense that the psychical characteristichas always its physical coördinate. We may call the places where our criminals are treated prisons, or we may call them hospitals; but the name will not alter the fact that crime, and even the crime the tendency to which manifests itself early in life and is most incorrigible, needs, for the most part, a wholly different treatment from that pursued with the sick or the insane. Discipline and labor may come into play in the insane asylum, and medicine and hygiene in the prison; but the methods are, nevertheless, widely separated, and need to be so in order to attain any success. Bellamy's conception of the character of the criminal by nature—such as he imagines as alone existing under the conditions of his ideal state—as rarely untruthful, does not at all accord with the facts of Psychology and Criminology. Total unreliability is one of the chief characteristics of the criminal by nature. He lies even where there is nothing to be gained by lying and often much to be lost; he lies apparently for the mere pleasure of lying; or he is crafty and cunning, and the smallest gain suffices to furnish him with a motive for falsehood. In mankind, as a whole, the love of truth, one of the latest developments of the moral sense, is likewise one of those earliest lost in any moral deterioration; and to suppose men, as a rule, strictly truthful and yet capable of committing crimes of any sort, especially in a general ideal state of society and morals, is to suppose a psychological contradiction. Moreover, the antipathy of the criminal to undergoing the penalty of his crime would still remain as long as the discipline and labor of the places for criminal treatment were not abolished; and even the restrictions of incarceration would render the penalty disagreeable, since liberty is always preferable to confinement. And if we consider the indefinite sentence, which all prison reformers now regard as the first condition of the successful treatment of crime, to be introduced, the reasons for pleading "Not Guilty" would by no means be removed. But I doubt whether a society of high moral development would sanction the doubling of the penalty which Bellamy conceives, as the punishment of simply a lie to escape it.
The question of capital punishment is more difficult than at first glance appears. One of the arguments often advanced in opposition to this form of punishment is that the fear of it is no preventive of the crime of murder (for which alone, in times of peace, it is still imposed in civilized countries), since murder still takes place. Butthe argument in this form is practically worthless; we might as well say that art exhibitions do nothing to form taste, since many people who visit them are still lacking in æsthetic feeling. The fact that men have gone away from public executions and committed murder is more to the purpose, as an indication that the influence of the spectacle is probably a bad one. As to the private execution within prison-walls, it is difficult to suppose that the mere knowledge of it could arouse a desire for blood, as the sight of it may be imagined to do. If we abandon capital punishment on this ground merely, ought we not, in consistency, to do away with all representations of violent death on the stage and all description of it in fiction, since these things must affect the imagination full as vividly. The gladiatorial shows of Rome were doubtless undesirable from a humanitarian point of view, not only in themselves, but also in their results; and it might be undesirable for most individuals to accustom themselves to the spectacle of the butchering of their meat; but, whether or not we agree with the vegetarians as to the social significance and influence of the use of animal-food (necessarily, of course, we must concede that every fact has an influence of some sort, and in some degree, upon the mind), it can scarcely be claimed that the mere knowledge that beeves are slaughtered somewhere is likely to influence the mind to such an extent as to lead to a morbid desire to imitate the deed; nor, the stimulating excitement of the actual spectacle of execution lacking, is it likely that the mere knowledge of its actuality should incite to the taking of human life. On the contrary, it appears far more likely that the would-be murderer should connect the thought of it with the possibilities of his own future in case of detection and arrest, and that he should, thus, be rather deterred from crime by it.
The vital questions appear to be whether we have a right thus to sacrifice life, and whether the evil which the murderer brings upon society may not be better prevented in some other way. Leaving out of consideration, for a moment, a point which will be considered later, the two questions will be seen to resolve themselves into one. If I should perceive an innocent man about to be murdered by a villain, who was on the point of plunging his knife into his victim's heart, and I had in my hand at the time a loaded revolver, my duty would be plain. I should have no choice as to the responsibility for one man's life; only the choice wouldbe left me as to which life I would be responsible for; and to spare the murderer would be to make myself an accomplice in the murder. The responsibility lies with every society to do the utmost in its power to prevent the murder of citizens who are, in the majority of cases, better men than their murderer; and the life, even, of the murderer cannot stand out against the life of better men. If, then, the death sentence is the best preventive of murder, and society refuses to inflict it nevertheless, it makes itself the accomplice of the murderer as much as is the man who stands by and permits the knife to be plunged into the victim's heart, rather than shoot down its wielder. It is not mercy that spares the guilty to sacrifice the innocent. If, then, we must be responsible for the death of any man, let it be for that of the murderer rather than for that of his victims. It is easy enough to say, as do some on this point, that it should never become a principle of society to do evil in order that good may come; but as long as there are conflicting conditions in society, there can be no choice of absolute good; the only choice is between lesser and greater evils. Forgetting this, and looking only on the one side of the question on which their sympathy has especially been excited, reformers are sometimes guilty of choosing the greater evil in order that a lesser good may come. It is, therefore, not sufficient to brand capital punishment "a relic of barbarism," in order to prove that it should be abolished.
The problem of prevention of murder includes various elements: it includes the question of the possible repetition of the crime by the individual on trial, the question of his influence by precept and example, and that of his possible propagation of offspring who may inherit his evil propensities; and it also includes the question of the check of fear in other would-be murderers.
It has been claimed that imprisonment for life would act as an effectual preventive in all these respects. There may be, however, various objections to this penalty. In the first place, an unconditional life-sentence without hope of pardon is difficult to establish, especially in democratic countries; and its justice is doubtful, in case it were possible. Even if sentences of this sort were to be passed, pity would be likely to interfere later with their execution. And then the momentous question arises as to whether it would always be well-directed pity. The men in whom the right of pardon is vested are not always wise in their use of it, and in democraticcountries they are guided to a considerable extent by the will of importunate portions of society which is often still less wise. The sentimentality which now vents itself in loading down violent criminals with flowers, fruit, gifts of all sorts, letters, photographs, commiserations for their "misfortune," and even offers of marriage, is likely to stand in the way of the safety of society in case the murderer lives. This sentimentality, which in many countries exalts the criminal into a hero, and in France turns the police court into a fashionable place of amusement, were it not to be followed by the dread ending which the sterner members of society exact, and were the hope of pardon still open, might invest arrest with even some attractions to the murderer, who is frequently a hero in his own eyes. The prominence of a desire for notoriety is evident in criminals of the Jack-the-Ripper and other types. The sentimentality which is unable to distinguish between a legitimate mercy, and the mercy to the individual which amounts to the worst of cruelty to many others, is, indeed, a continual danger to society and a hindrance to useful reforms.