ON THE POSITION OF WOMEN
“Gentles, Let Us Rest!”
(A Paper in theNation, 1910.)
A man asked to define the essential characteristics of a gentleman—using the term in its widest sense—would presumably reply: The will to put himself in the place of others; the horror of forcing others into positions from which he himself would recoil; the power to do what seems to him right without fear of what others may say or think.
There is need just now of aid from these principles of gentility in a question of some importance—the future position of women.
The ground facts of difference between the sexes few are likely to deny:
Women are not, and in all probability never will be, physically, as strong as men.
Men are not, nor ever will be, mothers.
Women are not, and, perhaps, never should be, warriors.
To these ground facts of difference are commonly added, in argument, many others of more debatable character. But it is beside the purpose of this paper to inquire whether women have as much political sense or aptitude as men, whether a woman has ever produced a masterpiece of music, whether the brain of a woman ever weighed as much as the brain of Cuvier or Turgenev.
This paper designs to set forth one cardinal and overmastering consideration, in comparison with which all the other considerations affecting the question seem to this writer but as the little stars to the full moon.
In the lives of all nations there come moments when an idea, hitherto vaguely, almost unconsciously, held, assumes sculptured shape, and is manifestly felt to be of vital significance to a large, important, and steadily increasing section of the community. At such moments a spectre has begun to haunt the national house—a ghost which cannot be laid till it has received quietus.
Such a ghost now infests our home.
The full emancipation of women is an idea long vaguely held, but only in the last half-century formulated and pressed forward with real force and conviction, not only by women, but by men. Of this full emancipation of women, the political vote is assuredly not, as is rather commonly supposed in a land of party politics, the be-all and end-all; it is a symbol, whose practical importance—though considerable—is as nothing beside the fulfilment of the idea which it symbolizes.
The Will to Power and the Will to Love have been held up, in turn, as the animating principles of the Universe; but these are, rather, correlative half-truths, whose rivalry is surely stilled and reconciled in a yet higher principle, the Will to Harmony, to Balance, to Equity—a supreme adjustment, or harmonising power, present wherever a man turns; by which, in fact, he is conditioned, for he can with his mental apparatus no more conceive of a Universe without a Will to Equity holding it together than he can conceive the opposite of the axiom, “Ex nihilo nihil fit.” There is assuredly no thought so staggering as that, if a blade of grass or the energy contained within a single emotion were—not transmuted—butwithdrawn entirelyfrom the Universe, the balance would tip for ever and the Universe crumble in our imaginations to thin air.
Now social and political Equity emanates slowly, with infinite labour, from our dim consciousness of this serene and overlording principle of Equity. There would seem, for example, no fundamental reason why limits should ever have been put to autocracy, the open ballot destroyed, slavery abolished, save that these things came to be regarded as inequitable. In all such cases, before reaching the point of action the society of the day puts forward practical reasons, being, so to speak, unaware of its own sense of divinity. But, underneath all the seeming matter-of-factness of political and social movements, the spirit of Equity is guiding those movements, subtly, unconsciously, a compelling hand quietly pushing humanity onward, ever unseen save in the rare minutes when the spirits of men glow and light up and things are beheld for a moment as they are. The history of a nation’s spiritual development is but the tale of its wistful groping towards the provision of a machinery of State, which shall, as nearly as may be, accord with the demand of this spirit of Equity. Society, worthy of the name, is ever secretly shaping around it a temple, within which all the natural weaknesses and limitations of the dwellers shall be, not exploited and emphasized, but to the utmost levelled away and minimized. It is ever secretly providing for itself a roof under which there shall be the fullest and fairest play for all human energies, however unequal.
The destinies of mankind are seen to be guided, very slowly, by something more coherent than political opportunity; shaped steadily in a given direction towards the completion of that temple of Justice. There is no other way of explaining the growth of man from the cave-dweller to his present case. And this slow spiritual shaping towards Equity proceeds in spite of the workings of the twin bodily agents, force and expediency. Social and political growth is, in fact, a process of evolution, controlled, directed, spiritualized by the supreme principle of Equity.
This is to state no crazy creed, that because equality is mathematically admirable, equality should at all times and in all places forthwith obtain. Equality, balance, is a dream, the greatest of all visions, the beloved star—ever to be worshipped, never quite reached. And the long road towards it travels the illimitable land of compromise. It would have been futile, as it was in fact impossible, to liberate slaves, when the consciousness of the injustice of slavery was present only in a few abnormal minds, and incommunicable by them to the mind of the surrounding society of the time. The process is slow and steady. Equity well knows that there is a time for her, as for all other things. She is like the brain, saying to the limbs and senses: You are full of queer ways. It is for me to think out gradually the best rule of life, under which you must get on as you can, the Devil taking the hindmost; and from trying to devise this scheme of perfection I may not, nor ever shall, rest.
Social and political justice, then, advances by fits and starts, through ideas—children of the one great idea of Harmony—which are suggested now by one, now by another, section or phase of national life. The process is like the construction and shaping of a work of art. For an artist is ever receiving vague impressions from people unconsciously observed, from feelings unconsciously experienced, till in good time he discovers that he has an idea. This idea is but a generalization or harmonious conception derived subconsciously from these vague impressions. Being moved to embody that idea, he at once begins groping back to, and gathering in, those very types and experiences from which he derived this general notion in order adequately to shape the vehicle—his picture, his poem, his novel—which shall carry his idea forth to the world.
So in social and political progress. The exigencies and inequalities of existing social life produce a crop of impressions on certain receptive minds, which suddenly burst into flower in the form of ideas. The minds in which these abstractions or ideas have flowered seek then to burgeon them forth, and their method of doing so is to bring to public notice those exigencies and inequalities which were the original fuel of their ideas. In this way is the seed of an idea spread amongst a community. But wherever the seed of an idea falls it has to struggle up through layers of prejudice, to overcome the rule of force and expediency; and if this idea, this generalization from social exigencies or inequalities, be petty, retrograde, or distorted, it withers and dies during the struggle. If, on the other hand, it be large, consonant with the future, and of true promise, it holds fast and spreads.
Now, one may very justly say that this is all a platitudinal explanation of the crude process of social and political development. In taking a given idea, such as the full emancipation of women, the fight only begins to rage round the question whether that idea is in fact holding fast and spreading, and, if so, whether the community is, or is not, yet sufficiently permeated with the idea to be safely entrusted with its fulfilment. None the less must it be borne in mind that if this idea can be proved to be surely spreading, it must be an idea emanating from the root divinity in things, from the overmastering principle of Equity, and sure of ultimate fulfilment; and the only question will then be, exactly how long the rule of expediency and force may advisably postpone its fulfilment.
Now, in order to discover whether the idea of the full emanicipation of women is in accord with the great principle of Equity, it will be necessary, first, to show the present inferiority of woman’s political and social position; secondly, to consider the essential reason of that inferiority; and, thirdly, to see whether the facts and figures of the movement towards the removal of that inferiority clearly prove that the idea has long been holding fast and spreading.
To show, however, that the present political and social position of women is not equal to that of men, it will certainly suffice to state two admitted facts. Women have not the political vote. Women, who can be divorced for one offence, must, before they obtain divorce, prove two kinds of offence against their husbands.
And to ascertain the essential reason of this present inferiority we need hardly go beyond the ground facts of difference between men and women already mentioned:
Women are not physically as strong as men.
Men are never mothers.
Women are not warriors.
From these ground facts, readily admitted by all, the reason for the present inferiority of women’s position emerges clear and unmistakable. Women are weaker than men. They are weaker because they are not in general built so strongly; because they have to bear and to rear children; because they are unarmed. There is no getting away from it, they are weaker; and one cannot doubt for a moment that their inferior position is due to this weakness. But—so runs an immemorial argument—however equal their opportunities might be, women will never be as strong as men! Why then, for sentimental reasons, disturb the present order of things, why equalize those opportunities? This is the plea which was used before married women were allowed separate property, before the decision in “ReginaversusJackson,” which forbade a husband to hold his wife prisoner. The argument, in fact, of expediency and force.
Now there are no finer statements of the case for the full emancipation of women than Mill’s “Subjection of Women,” and Miss Jane Harrison’s essay entitled “Homo Sum.” The reasonings in the former work are too well-known, but to the main thesis of “Homo Sum” allusion must here be made. The most common, perhaps most telling, plea against raising the social and political status of women to a level with that of men is this: Men and womenare already equal, but in separate spheres of activity. The difference between their physical conformation and functions underlies everything in the lives of both. The province and supremacy of women are in the home; the province and supremacy of men in the State. Why seek to alter what Nature has ordained? A plea, in fact, which glorifies sexquasex.
But the writer of “Homo Sum” is at pains to show that “the splendid and vital instinct of sex,” with all its “singular power of interpenetrating and reinforcing other energies,” is in essence egoistic, exclusive, anti-social; and that, besides and beyond being men and women, we are all human beings. “The whole women’s movement,” the writer says, “is just the learning of that lesson. It is not an attempt to arrogate man’s prerogative of manhood; it is not even an attempt to assert and emphasize woman’s privilege of womanhood; it is simply the demand that in the life of woman, as in the life of man, space and liberty shall be found for a thing bigger than either manhood or womanhood—for humanity.”
In fact the splendid instinct of sex—for all its universality, for all that through and by it life is perpetuated, for all its power of bringing delight, and of revealing the heights and depths of human emotion—is still essentially an agent of the rule of force. We cannot but perceive that there is in both men and women something more exalted and impersonal, akin to the supreme principle of Equity, to the divinity in things; and that this something keeps men and women together, as strongly, as inevitably, as sex keeps them apart. What is all the effort of civilization but the gradual fortifying of that higher part of us—the exaltation of the principle of Justice, the chaining of the principle of Force? The full emancipation of women would be one more step in the march of our civilization—a sign that this nation was still serving humanity, still trying to be gentle and just. For if it has ceased to serve humanity, we must surely pray that the waters may rise over this island, and that she may go down all standing!
If, then, women’s position is inferior to men’s, if the essential reason of this inferiority is her weakness, or, in other words, the still unchecked dominance of force, to what extent do the facts and figures of the movement towards removing the inferiority of women’s position prove that the idea of the full emancipation of women is, not petty and false, withering and dying, but large and true, holding fast and spreading?
In 1866, a petition for the vote, signed by 1,499 women, was presented to Parliament by John Stuart Mill.
In 1873, petitions for the suffrage from 11,000 women were presented to Gladstone and Disraeli.
In 1896, an appeal was made to members of Parliament by 257,000 women of all classes and parties.
In 1897, 1,285 petitions in favour of a Women’s Suffrage Bill were presented to Parliament, being 800 more petitions than those presented in favour of any other Bill.
In 1867, Mill’s amendment to substitute “person” for “man” in the Representation of the People Act was rejected by a majority of 121.
In 1908, Stanger’s Bill to enable women to vote on the same terms as men passed its second reading by a majority of 179.
In 1893, 1894, and 1895, the franchise was granted to women in New Zealand, Colorado, South Australia, and Utah.
In 1900, 1902, 1903, 1905, 1908, and 1910, the franchise was granted to women in Western Australia, New South Wales, Tasmania, Finland, Norway, Victoria, and the State of Washington.
In 1902, a petition was signed by 750 women graduates.
In 1906, a petition was signed by 1,530 women graduates.
In 1910, the membership of the various Women’s Suffrage Societies, and of bodies of men and women who have declared in favour of the idea of women’s suffrage, is estimated by some at over half a million—a figure subject, no doubt, to great deduction; but certainly also to very great addition for sympathisers who belong to no such societies or bodies.
These, briefly, are the main facts and figures. From them but one conclusion can be drawn. The idea of the full emancipation of women having fulfilled the requirements of steady growth over a long space of years, and giving every promise of further steady growth, is in accord with the principle of Equity; intrinsically just. How long will it remain possible in the service of expediency and force to refuse to this idea its complete fruition; how long will it be wise? For when the limit of wisdom is reached, expediency has obviously become inexpedient and force unworthy.
When out of 670 members of a House of Commons 400 have given pledges to support women’s suffrage; when a measure for the enfranchisement of women on the same terms as men has passed its second reading by a majority of 179, and in face of this declaration of sentiment Government has refused to afford facilities for carrying it into law, there must obviously be some definite hostile factor in the political equation. In a country governed as ours is, it is but natural that those who are, so to speak, trustees for its policy, should not look with favour on any measure which may in their opinion definitely set back that policy, or affect it in some way which they cannot with sufficient clearness foresee. The cause of women, in fact, is a lost dog owned by neither party, distrusted by both. While there is yet danger of being bitten, each watches that dog carefully, holding out a more or less friendly hand. But when the door of the house is safely closed, she may howl her heart out in the cold. The Press, too, with few exceptions is committed to one or other of these parties. To the Press, also, then, the cause of women is a homeless wanderer to whom it is proper to give casual alms, but who can hardly be brought in to the fire, lest she take up the room of the children of the house. And so out of the despair caused by this lost drifting in a vicious circle, out of a position created by party expediency, the inevitable has come to pass. Militant suffragism has arisen—ironically, and, to my thinking, regrettably, since the real spiritual significance and true national benefit of the full emancipation of women will lie in the victory of justice over force; and to employwhat must needs be inferior forceto achieve the victory of justice over force is not only futile, but so befogging to the whole matter that the essential issue of Equity is more than ever hidden from the mind of the public. Militancy may have served certain purposes, but it has added one more element of fixity to animpassealready existing, for the woman of action is saying, “Until you give me the vote I shall act like this,” and the man of action is answering her, “So long as you act like that I shall not give you the vote. To yield to you would be to admit the efficacy of threats and establish a bad precedent.”
None the less, human nature being what it is, militancy was inevitable, and the wise will look at the situation, not as it was, or might be, but as it is. We must consider what effect that situation is having on the national character. Every little outrage committed on men by women is met by a little outrage committed on women by men; and each time one of these mutual outrages takes place, tens of thousands of minds in this country are blunted in that most sensitive quality, gentleness. It is idle to pretend that women have not stood, and do not still stand, to men as the chief reason for being gentle; that men have not, and do not still stand to women, in the same capacity. By every little mutual outrage, then, the beneficence of sex is being weakened, its maleficence awakened throughout the land. And the harm which is thus being done is so impalpable, so subtle, as to be beyond the power of most to notice at all, and surely beyond the power of statesmen to assess. That is the mischief. The scent is stealing away out of the flower of our urbanity. It will be long before the gardeners discover how odourless and arid that flower has become.
For it is not so much the action of the militant women themselves, nor that of those who are suppressing them, which is doing this subtle harm. It is the effect of this scrimmage on the spectators; the coarsening, and hardening, and general embitterment; the secret glorification of the worst side of the sex instinct; the constant exaltation of the rule of force; the rapid growth of a rankling sense of injustice amongst tens of thousands of women. To say that hundreds of thousands of women are opposed, or indifferent, to the full emancipation of their sex is not, in truth, to say very much. No civilizing movement was ever brought to fruition save in the face of the indifference or opposition of the majority. What proportion of agricultural labourers were actively concerned to win for themselves the vote? How small a fraction of the people actively demanded free education! But when these privileges were won, what number of those for whom they were won would have been willing to resign them? If women were fully emancipated to-morrow, many would certainly resent what they would deem a blow at the influence and power already wielded by them in virtue of their sex. But in two years’ time how many would be willing to surrender their freedom? As certainly, not ten in a hundred! To compare the disapproval of women raised against their wills to a state of emancipation in which they can remain inactive if they like with the bitter resentment spreading like slow poison in the veins of those who fruitlessly demand emancipation is to compare the energy of vanishing winter snow with that of the spring sun which melts it.
In an age when spirituality has ever a more desperate struggle to maintain hold at all against the inroads of materialism, any increase of bitterness in the national life, any loss of gentleness, aspiration, and mutual trust between the sexes, however silent, secret, and unmeasurable, is, surely, a serious thing. Justice, neglected, works her own insidious revenge. Every month, every year, the germs of bitterness and brutality will be spreading. If any think that this people has gentleness to spare, and can afford to tamper with the health of its spirit, they are mistaken. If any think that repression can put an end to this aspiration—again they are mistaken. The idea of the full emancipation of women is so rooted that nothing can now uproot it.
But, apart from the politicalimpasse, there are those who, satisfied that women have not the political aptitude of men, are chiefly opposed to the granting of the vote for fear that it will come to mean the return of women to Parliament. Now, if their conviction regarding the inferiority of women’s political capacity be sound—as I for one, speaking generally, am inclined to believe—there is no danger of women being returned to Parliament save in such small numbers as to make no matter. If it be unsound—if the political capacity of woman be equal to man’s—it is time Parliament were reinforced by women’s presence. New waters soon find their level. Nor are such as distrust the political capacities of women qualified to prophesy a flood. To debar women for fear of their competition is a policy of little spirit, and not one that the men of this country will consciously adopt, unless we have indeed lost the fire of our fathers. There are many, too, who believe that the granting of the vote to women will increase the emotional element in an electorate whose emotional side they already distrust, and thereby endanger our relations with foreign Powers. But it has yet to be proved that women are, in a wide sense of the word, more emotional than men; and, even conceding that they are, why forget that they will bring to the consideration of international matters the solid reinforcement of two qualities—the first, a practical domestic sense lacking to men, and likely to foster national reluctance to plunge into wild-cat wars, the second, a greater faculty for self-sacrifice, tending to fortify national determination to persist in a war once undertaken. It is well known that during the American Civil War the women of the Southern States displayed a spirit of resistance even more heroic than that of their men folk. But, in any case, to retain women in their present state of social and political inferiority for reasons which are so debatable savours, surely, somewhat of the sultanic. We have, in fact, yet to imbibe the spirit of Mill’s wisest saying: “Amongst all the lessons which men require for carrying on the struggle against the evident imperfections of their lot on earth, there is no lesson which they more need than not to add to the evils which Nature inflicts, by their jealous and prejudiced restrictions on one another.”
In fine, out of the practical perplexities brooding over this whole matter there is no way save by resort to the first principles of gentility. It has been uncontrovertibly established that there is in this country a great and ever-increasing body of women suffering from a bitter sense of injustice. What course then, compatible with true gentility, is left open to us men? Our whole social life is in essence but a long, slow, striving for the victory of justice over force; and this demand of our women for full emancipation is but a sign of that striving. Are we not bound in honour to admit this simple fact? Shall we not at last give fulfilment to this idea—with the due caution that should mark all political experiment? Has not, in truth, the time come for us to say: From this resistance to the claims of Equity; from this bitter and ungracious conflict with those weaker than ourselves; from this slow poisoning of the well-springs of our national courtesy, and kindliness, and sense of fair play: “Gentles, let us rest!”
Appeal to the Press
(A Letter to theDaily News, 1911.)
I write as a supporter of woman’s suffrage, but not of militant suffragism. Whenever I have remonstrated with a militant Suffragist I have received this answer:
“We could not keep the movement before the eyes of the public without militant tactics, because the papers, with two or three exceptions, would not report peaceful work. For this reason we adopted our methods, and the event has justified us. We have advanced the cause—simply by forcing it on people’s attention in the only way open to us—more in the last three years than those who pursued peaceful methods had done in the last forty.”
“We could not keep the movement before the eyes of the public without militant tactics, because the papers, with two or three exceptions, would not report peaceful work. For this reason we adopted our methods, and the event has justified us. We have advanced the cause—simply by forcing it on people’s attention in the only way open to us—more in the last three years than those who pursued peaceful methods had done in the last forty.”
Whatever may now be the feelings and intentions of the militant Suffragists, this answer did undoubtedly set forth the true reason for the inception of militant tactics.
All political and social movements in this country depend for vitality on catching the eye and the thought of the community. And we may draw one of two alternative morals from that prolonged silence of the Press towards woman’s suffrage which originally brought about the campaign of violence: Either, that men having possession of the organs of public opinion, deliberately kept them closed to the discussion of the political rights of women—a supposition, I should prefer not to entertain. Or, that reports of violence and sensationalism are more sought after than tales of reason and sobriety! Whichever the moral drawn, it is very discreditable to public feeling in this country.
Is it too late for those who are responsible for the Press to take the lead in removing that stigma? It is lugubrious that, in our England of free speech and fair play, in this nation hitherto supposed to excel in political sense, women should have found it necessary to advocate and advertise by mere sensationalism a political and social movement of more wide-reaching and universal nature than any now before the public; a movement of such epoch-making character that few people have at present grasped its real significance. Surely it is important that the people of this country should be educated in the reason and the rights of a question such as this. But in order that they may be so educated it is necessary that they should read, not the account of how “So-and-so’s windows were broken,” or of how “Such an one was arrested,” but arguments presented in speech and writing for and against suffrage.
The extent to which the formation of public opinion on any political measure depends on the publication in the Press of reason,proandcon., can be seen from the growth of the Tariff Reform Party, which a few years ago was a negligible faction. The imminence and gravity of this issue of woman’s suffrage can no longer be denied. It has to be faced. It will have to be decided. Does the Press of this country wish it to be decided by an electorate utterly unversed in its merits and demerits? Would the Press of this country wish any big political or social measure to be so decided? Is it just, generous, or politic that, when women try by peaceful and constitutional means to promulgate their cause, there should be silence? If there had not been this silence, militant suffragism would never have been born. By the removal of this silence militant suffragism may still be helped towards a natural death.
I appeal to all editors (whether friends or enemies of the movement), who have already shown themselves alive to what is rapidly becoming the desperate importance of this issue, to combine and advocate an alteration of the general Press policy—to advocate the throwing open of all journals to fair and full report, not of the sensational, but of the reasonable, sides, for and against, of woman’s suffrage. For, whether consciously or unconsciously, the general Press policy has hitherto been most unfortunate, and is fast contributing to the growth of a bitter feeling between the sexes, in the last degree noxious to the national life.
ON SOCIAL UNREST
(A Paper in theDaily Mail, 1912.)
“This is a psychological question, a matter of mental states” (H. G. Wells). It is. And in examining these mental states there are two, out of many factors, on which I do not think too much emphasis can be laid, not only because they are in themselves vital to the evil, but because they both arise from the same prime underlying deficiency in our national life.
The first is the influence on society at large produced by the great and rapid growth of the fiduciary element in the conduct of commercial enterprise and landed estates. The agent, the director, the manager, the trustee, have almost entirely displaced the old-time owner, merchant, and manufacturer, who did business by and for themselves.
A class has been created who, already in a state of professional altruism, are impervious, and on the face of it rightly impervious, to altruism of any other kind.
What large business nowadays is not conducted as a limited company by a board of directors appointed and paid by the shareholders as trustees to produce for them a maximum of profit? What large estate is not managed by a paid agent on the same principle? And, however generous our aspirations, which of us does not know the deflecting power of trusteeship, rigidified, as it is, by law and by the sense that we are paid for the performance of a job inimical to generosity? True—the rates of wages and of rent come not under rules but under the broad heading of policy; and, in deep reality, I suspect it to be equally true that the maximum of generosity ministersin the long runto the maximum of stability and profit; nevertheless there can be no doubt whatever that the trustee system not only befogs and deadens the human relationship between employer and employed, but affords an overwhelming support to our natural instinct to take the immediate view and line of least resistance.
Broadly speaking, where there is trusteeship, as trusteeship is now understood, there is no wide view of the relation of Capital to Labour in the light of the good of Society as a whole; there is only a faithful, cold-blooded, purblind service for the benefit of acestui que trust, who is himself freed from a sense of personal responsibility and from all apparent need for a wide and human outlook. The trustee system, if not already, will soon be universal, and I see no means of counteracting its secret, dangerous, and irritating effect on the mind of Labour, save by such process of education as shall soak the spirit of the prosperous classes with an altogether larger and saner feeling of the fundamental unity and interdependence of Society, with a good-will so vastly increased that the shareholder andcestui que trustshall no longer require the director or trustee to consider them and them alone, but bid him instead consider equally the interests of the employed. Such a mood of altruism is now, roughly speaking, absent from the minds of the prosperous classes; and to attain to it is a consummation that I fear will never come about under our present system of education.
The second influence on which I would lay great emphasis is the state of mind produced by our system of education in the young of the prosperous classes at our private and public schools, and, to a less extent, at our universities. Before dwelling on this let me suggest two truths. In life, where a fortunate person is brought into contact with one less fortunate, the first step towards cordial relationship must obviously come from the fortunate. For human nature is happily so constituted that the less fortunate feels ashamed to make advances which, liable to misconstruction, are not compatible with self-respect. Every man of any worth can test, indeed is testing, this truth continually in his own life; it cannot indeed be doubted. Again, where advances are made by the fortunate from sheer friendliness and without ulterior motive, they most certainly evoke response in the same friendly spirit from all save exceptional churls.
Now, since these primary truths concerning human nature underlie the whole question of Labour Unrest, it becomes of the first importance to consider how far the young of the prosperous classes are made actively familiar with them. How far are the legions at our private and public schools (those legions from whom the ranks of Capital are, in the main, recruited) made to understand, and—more than understand—tofeelthat they are fortunate, that Labour is less fortunate, that they will have to live their lives in interdependence with Labour, and that if they do not make—out of a free and fine heart make—the first advances to good-fellowship with less fortunate Labour, those advances can—by a law, and a good law, of human nature—never be made? How far are they at present brought up to see this? I would go so far as to say—hardly at all. In my day at a public school—and I have no reason at all to hope that, whatever be the exceptions, the general rule has greatly changed—the Universe was divided into ourselves and “outsiders,” “bounders,” “chaws,” “cads,” or whatever more or less offensive name best seemed to us to characterise those less fortunate than ourselves. It is true that we applied the name mainly to the lower ranks of Capital rather than to actual Labour, but this was only because we lived so far away from industrial workers that we never even thought of them. Such working folk as we actually came into personal contact with we never dreamed of associating with any such offensive thought in our minds or speech on our tongues; but, generally, the working man did not exist for us except as a person outside, remote, and almost inimical. From our homes, touched already by this class feeling, caught up from political talk by chance overheard, we went to private schools, where the teaching of manners, mainly under clerical supervision, effectually barred us from any contaminating influence; so that if by chance we encountered the “lower class” boy we burned to go for him and correct his “cheek.” Thence we were passed into the great “caste” factory, a public school, where the feeling became, by mere process of being left to itself, as set and hard as iron. It is true that a levelling process went on among the boys themselves, so that a duke’s son was no more accounted of than a stockbroker’s, but nevertheless all learned to consider themselves “the elect.” Of ten public schoolboys, seven have come from “caste-”infected homes and private schools, and have active prejudice already. The remaining three may still be open-minded or indifferent; of these, two will infallibly follow the sway of the herd instinct; one may perhaps develop a line of his own, or adhere to the influence of a home inimical to “caste,” and become a “smug” or Radical. In result, failing definite sustained effort to break up a narrow “caste” feeling, the public school presents a practically solid phalanx of the fortunate, insulated against real knowledge of, or sympathy with, the less fortunate. This phalanx marches out into the professions, into business, into the universities, where, it is true, some awaken to a sense of wider values—but not too many. From the point of view of any one who tries to see things as they are, and see them as a whole, there is something terrific about this automatic “caste” moulding of the young. And in the present condition of our country it is folly, and dangerous folly, to blink it.[6]
For all my love of my old school, for all my realization of the fact that her training equips her children with certain qualities invaluable to public life and public service, I do feel that she and all her sisters are disserving the national welfare by refraining from really active and resolute attempt to destroy the bad side of “caste” feeling. They let it grow of its own momentum through the herd instinct till it blinds the eyes and blunts the feelings of those who, being fortunate, must by the laws of human nature make the first advances toward friendship with the less fortunate, if those advances are to be made at all; and must make them not because to neglect them is dangerous, but out of brotherly feeling and a real hearty wish to give all the help they can to such as are not so lucky as themselves. I do not mean that our public schools and universities are consciously refraining. They are not, and their very unconsciousness in the matter is half the danger. And I do not say that there are no masters, or dons, conscious of the danger and trying their best to remove it, but I do say there are not nearly enough. A few swallows do not make a summer.
Since, in relation to the foregoing, four objections, at all events, are bound to be made, let me make them myself, and answer them too. First: It is not the public school and ’varsity man who is lacking in sympathy and good-will towards Labour; it is the self-made capitalist, or the grammar school man. The truth is that, with exceptions, they all are lacking. But the defect is more dangerous and insidious within “the caste” than without; for not only is “the caste” homogeneous, and far more influential in every way, but it veils its lack of sympathy in this very pretension of having sympathy. Next it will be said: “You accuse us of lack of sympathy! But we would gladly be sympathetic, if they would only let us!” Now this in the main is a perfectly genuine belief in members of “the caste” when they have once gone out into life and rubbed off the rawness of youthful hostility and prejudice. But it is the genuine belief of people only passively inclined to friendship; in other words, the belief of the fortunate not imbued with a spirit sufficiently high and generous to take, from the best motives,activesteps towards friendship with the less fortunate.
Further it will be said: “But Labour is not really less fortunate than ourselves—it has freedom from cares, responsibilities, and expenses, such as we can never know; in fact, we are not sure that it is not really the more fortunate class.” Well! Apart from the fact that not one in ten thousand of “the caste” would change places with an industrial worker, there is this answer: “On your hypothesis, evolution, which is ‘caste’s’ main justification, is absurd and our system is standing on its head. If, indeed, you require Labour to consider itself at least as fortunate as yourselves, you must set to work at once and revalue everything, alter every present ideal in your social life, and annul the importance of property. Are you prepared to do this?” Finally it will be objected: “It may be as you say, but the evil is implicit and inevitable, for everything possible is already done by our educational authorities to counteract a narrow ‘caste’ spirit and imbue the children of the fortunate with a brotherly feeling towards the less fortunate.” The answer to this is simply: “Has everything been done? Has anything like everything been done? For example, is the danger of this narrow ‘caste’ spirit ever taken into account in the appointment of these same educational authorities?”
Besides being “snobs” in the best sense of that word, boys are high-spirited, generous, and malleable creatures. Let any fair-minded man of “the caste” ask himself: “What sustained and really ‘felt’ effort did he encounter from his own teachers in school and college days to turn that high spirit, and generosity, and malleability of his into a state of mind that regarded his good fortune as a thing to be held in trust to share to the full with the less fortunate?” A few will answer truly: “Yes, I have met with such effort.” But how few!
Again, then, I am brought to the point of saying: There is a general absence of active and sustained effort to produce in the young of the prosperous classes this “good-will” state of mind; to change such general absence of effort into a general presence of effort is a consummation that will never, I think, be reached under our present system of education.
Both these influences, then, contributing to Social Unrest—the one produced by the increasing presence of the fiduciary element, and the other by the unchecked growth of a narrow “caste” spirit—lead us to the same prime underlying deficiency in our national life, the lack of right purpose in our education. They happen to be both incident to Capital, but it is probable that influences incident to Labour, of which I hesitate to speak, since I cannot from personal experience and feeling, may also in measure be traced to the same underlying deficiency in our education.
No national improvement can come from outside. It must come from within, from gradually improved feeling in the body politic. To hope for growth without this improvement is to hope that a man shall raise himself from the ground by the hair of his own head. But improved feeling has no chance of spreading throughout the body politic without that machinery of infection which we know by the name of education. Therefore education is the most sacred concern, indeed the only hope, of a nation.
How do we now treat our education—this sacred thing, this only hope? In regard to the classes, its direction and control are left entirely to the haphazard beck and call of each separate school or college, without conformity to or guidance from any professed national aim, principle, or ideal. In regard to the masses, it is the concern of a Department of State, just as are Trade, the Post Office, or the Navy, and is treated, not as a spiritual matter underlying all else, but as a material affair. The spiritual side of education is supposed to be the concern of the religious bodies; but if we are quite honest we have to confess that the religious bodies have no longer sufficient hold on classes or masses to inspire in either such wide mutual good-will and sense of service as will forward any real improvement in the relations between Capital and Labour, between the fortunate and less fortunate classes. The religious bodies, let us say, have tried their best, but, since our last state is worse than our first, they must be considered to have failed. Their influence, indeed, is too incoherent and dispersed, pervasive here and there, but without either the centrality or force to promote in us a great national change towards that essence of Christianity—mutual good-will and sense of service. There is no longer, I am afraid, hope in that direction.
Deep down, we know all this, but we have not yet bestirred ourselves to find out what it is that we are trying to do with our civilization, or indeed whether we are trying to do anything except just keep our heads above water from hour to hour.
And we have not yet bestirred ourselves, partly because we are still breathless and uncertain after that long and tremendous struggle within us between Science and Orthodox Religion, which has torn the wings off both, and partly because we are paralysed by the word Democracy. We dare not move for fear of endowing education with too much authority. There may, of course, be another and far more deadly reason why we have not bestirred ourselves. We may be too far gone to devise any improved standard or machinery of education, too flaccid to impart, or even to desire to impart, to our education that spiritual quality, that devotion to an ideal, which is our only hope. If so, we must resign ourselves to a desperate Class struggle, as to some bitter, poisonous tonic, from which we may perhaps gain strength to deal with our disease, but of which we may take too much and die. Personally—being, as they say, a pessimist—I prefer to think that all is not yet lost; that we are still capable of expressing in the form of a faith the aspiration towards Perfection that does, that must, lie inarticulate within us; still capable of finding machinery, and men to work it, that shall drive this faith into the very heart of all classes.
At all events, I refuse to believe that we cannot do a good deal more with education as a solvent of our troubles than we have done hitherto. The main and obvious difficulty—one might say the only real difficulty—in education, as in all the affairs of life, is to find the men; and to find the men we can only make use of machinery which is acceptable to a democratic age. Yes, we cannot now go outside Democracy, and that is something to be profoundly grateful for. The only trouble with Democracy is that it is slow and inarticulate. And I do not feel that the democratic principle—in which I believe as much as any man—will ever do itself justice until it discovers some quicker way than it yet has of shaping out of itself its spiritual essence, some swifter way of extracting from itself and utilizing for its own service the highest aspiration and finest feeling within it. It has succeeded on the whole fairly well in discovering and making use of its best business and administrative minds; but so far it has regarded spirituality as completely outside its province and deliberately left it to religious bodies that have no longer, nationally speaking, a real hold on us, and are professedly autocratic. In fact, Democracy at present—and not only here but in America—offers the spectacle of a man running down a road followed at a more and more respectful distance by his own soul.
Can our education any longer be safely treated in this casual way, be safely left to Churches from whose hand it has too far slipped; be safely left as to the Classes to chance and to vested interests; as to the Masses to mere business management?
Should we not rather trust it coherently and as a whole to the finest spirits and broadest minds in the country; to spirits that can be relied on to hold, and to minds that can be relied on to apply, a really high ideal; relied on, too,to select and train the best men available for the propagation of that Ideal? If by some democratic process we could sift out these minds from among us, and endow them with wholesale powers of selection, appointment, and training of teachers, we should have established a sort of endless band on which might travel a perpetual vitalizing current of the best feeling within us. To find these finest spirits and broadest minds we might conceivably use the existing representative machinery of Parliament, or some reformed representative system; or we might institute a special straining and sifting process, by means of plebiscite within plebiscite, till we were reasonably sure of arriving at the men best fitted to be entrusted with a high, coherent plan of education. We have, then, to found and place under their guidance a great training college, wherein the higher leaders of education may be imbued with the new spirit, trained in the new standards, and pass out, as posts fall vacant, to the headship of schools and colleges. And if it be objected, as it certainly will, that this is to constitute a too rigid spiritual bureaucracy, the answer is two-fold: This is the plan on which you order all your political, your material life, without regarding it as in the least dangerous or undemocratic. And, secondly, you have at present exactly the same bureaucratic methods of appointment in education, only they are exercised in a hole-and-corner manner, quite incoherently, andwithout any democratic check at all.
There is no revolution in this idea, and it will certainly prove no immediate or quack remedy. It is, in few words, a suggestion that we should adopt for spiritual things, for states of mind, the method that, roughly speaking, we have found works best in material matters. Democracy will never really flourish till it has taken charge, and that right heartily, of its own spirituality.
Life itself is the best education in spirituality a nation gets. But the plea here is only for better machinery to express and direct the experience and latent good-will which is implicit within the nation, and is not now brought out into the light for the nation’s service. We are living in a parched field under which there is plenty of water, but we have sunk no well, put up no pumping gear, with which to make our pasture green. Is the notion that we can still do this a preposterous dream, a mere presumptuous counsel of perfection?
We have at present an air charged with trouble; if we are not to shut our eyes, fold our hands, and drift, all that we do must be in the direction of improving our state of mind. But there is no way of improving a state of mind save by fertilizing it with the faith and good-will of a higher mind. Our machinery for doing this has failed us. Indeed, nationally speaking, we no longer have any such machinery. What more useful efforts, then, can we make than efforts in the direction of discovering a new machinery? And the finer the spirits, the broader the minds, we place in charge thereof, the greater power we give them, always subject to the safeguard of election, the more we may hope to emerge gradually from our sinister situation.