Census estimate (1890).Insane1,697Feeble-minded1,526Deaf and Dumb659Blind805Prisoners1,315Juvenile delinquents237Almshouse paupers1,166————7,405Outdoor Criminals (five times the number of inmates)7,760Tramps (McCook, 1895, New Haven Conference of Charities and Correction, 85,768)1,308Drunkards (Crothers, 1893, Chicago Conference, 1,200,000, equal to about 10 per cent of voting population)19,000Prostitutes (weighted average of Levasseur’s estimate for rural (600) and urban (11,200 to 17,200) France, in “La Population Française,” vol. ii, p. 434)5,000Outdoor Paupers (weighted average of report at Nashville Conference, 1894, 46 per cent in Penna. to 2.2 per cent in N. Y.)15,000—————55,473
This estimate would make the maximum number of all degenerates 5.54 per cent of the population. From these must be deducted those who are not congenital. We can estimate the congenitals by three methods: by statistics ofatavism, orconsanguinity, and byexperiment.
In the statistics of atavism we add together the physical abnormalities of the individual, assuming that a criminal type is found when these abnormalities reach the number of three or more. The statistical method always suffers the limitation that it indicates not identity, but probability. Yet it has an important value, provided it discovers ratios of probability which concur. This is not the case in the method by atavism. Sixty to seventy per cent of criminals do not belong to the assumed criminal type; and sixteen per cent of normal males are classed as criminals, whereas the actual number is less than three per cent of the males of criminal age. (See Lombroso, “The Female Offender,” pp. 104, 105.)
While atavism itself is unquestioned, this method seizes upon rigid physical characters to measure educable qualities. And where the latter are themselves abnormal the causes may lie with education and not heredity.
The method by consanguinity seeks not the abnormalities of the patient himself, but the signs of disease and degeneracy in his blood relatives. It therefore greatly increases the apparent weight of heredity, for it collects symptoms from several individuals instead of one. The medical authorities ascribe fifty to eighty per cent of inebriety to heredity. This method fails as does the other, for, as seen in the Jukes or the drunkard, the child gets both its heredity and its education from the same degraded parents, and the method provides no measure for separating the two.
In sociology the method of experiment has but limited employment. The modern sociologist cannot mate the parents nor vivisect the soul, after the methods of the biologist.He can only move the child from one education to another, and his experiment is incidental to the larger purpose of saving the child. His results, too, can appear only as a ratio of probability; but this ratio measures the mental and moral qualities themselves directly and not by inference. Elmira Reformatory and others cure eighty per cent of their charges. Model placing-out institutions and free kindergartens save nearly all. And these are taken from the most vicious and criminal parentage in the land. Our five and one-half per cent of degenerates must therefore be greatly reduced in order to find the residuum of congenitals. I have made the following deductions:
Estimated Defectives Not Congenital, Per Million Population.
Criminals (80 per cent of total)7,369Prostitutes (80 per cent of total)4,000Outdoor Paupers (80 per cent of total)16,000Tramps (80 per cent of total)1,046Drunkards (50 per cent of total)9,500———37,915Which deducted from55,473leaves congenital defectives17,558
equal to 1.75 per cent of the population. Overlappings would diminish this ratio; greater infant mortality and the omitted youthful defectives would increase it.
If less than two per cent of the births are below the normal Aryan brain level, on the other hand possibly two per cent are above the average, and should be classed as the geniuses who could achieve eminence regardless of surroundings. The remaining ninety per cent or more are born with ordinary equipment; they are hereditarily neither good nor bad, criminal nor virtuous, brilliant nor stupid. With these masses of the people the first fifteen years of infancy and youth are decisive.
We may now classify the selective forces of society. Social selection is partly natural and partly artificial. It originates artificially in the self-consciousness of dominant individuals. Struggle and conflict ensue, out of which private property survives in its various forms as an intended control over others. This control is then transmitted as the various social institutions to succeeding generations and becomes for them naturaland unintended. These social institutions then constitute a coercive environment, not over wholly unwilling subjects, but over those whose wills are shaped by education and social pressure to coöperate with the very institutions that suppress them.
Gradually, as subordinate classes become self-conscious, innovations are made which aim to check the unbridled despotism of private property; new conflicts thereupon take place and certain innovations survive, which, at first artificial, become natural for the next generations.
As society becomes more definite, reflective, and humane, as it acquires fixed laws and government, it increases the range of artificial selection; it supplants custom by statute, and remodels its inherited institutions.
It is now animated by a new motive, the development of moral character in all the people. With reference to this new motive social selection is either direct or indirect. Direct selection is highly artificial, but it is only negative. It consists in segregating the degenerates to prevent propagation. Society cannot, of course, directly interfere with the marriage choice of normal persons, for that would be to choke the purest expression of personality. But it can isolate the two per cent who will never rise to moral responsibility. This would doubtless increase the wards of the state, but it is needed both for the reason already given and, more especially, to clarify the public mind on the causes of delinquency and dependency. As long as these evils can be charged to heredity the public is blinded to the share that springs from social injustice.
The increase and classification of the custodial population here contemplated is a problem for administrative charity. Possibly the colony system would make that population mutually self-supporting and also remove the current sentimentalism against long isolation of the incurables.
With the ground cleared of the true degenerates, the operations of indirect social selection can be seen. This also is artificial, but in a less mechanical way. It consists in so adjusting the political, industrial, and social environment as to affect personality, either to suppress or develop it. The two instruments are legal rights and education. For example, the tenement-house congestion, with its significant educational environment,is the product of laws of property and taxation which favor owners and speculators instead of tenants, and of private property in rapid transit which puts a tax on exit to the suburbs. It cannot be said of this and other selective factors, such as the profit-making saloon, long hours of work, low pay, irregular employment, that they permit natural selection to operate. They suppress personality, which preëminently is the natural fact in the human being. Social selection is therefore tending to become less and less arbitrary, but is making room for a higher natural selection—a natural selection where not brute force and cunning are the fittest to survive, but where, with freedom, security, and equal opportunity, the human personality will work out its own survival. Man alone of all the animals can rise to the angels, but he alone can fall below the brutes. This is the glory and the penalty of personality. It becomes a unique selective agency whose standard is raised with the advance of civilization. The Australian cannibal, without opium, tobacco, alcohol, or syphilis, may survive with a low morality. The American exposed to these destroyers must be a better man or perish. Personality, thus becoming a keen selective principle, is based not necessarily on overpopulation and competition, but on that self-destruction which comes from vice, disease, and drunkenness. Its degraded offspring will perish or feed the ranks of the hereditary degenerates to be properly segregated and ended.
But with education and opportunity the higher forms of human character will naturally increase and survive. With the independence and education of women sexual selection becomes a refined and powerful agent of progress. With the right to work guaranteed, the tramp and indiscriminate charity have no excuse, and the honest workman becomes secure in the training and survival of his family.
We hear much of scientific charity. There is also a scientific justice. The aim of the former is to educate true character and self-reliance. The aim of the latter is to open the opportunities for the free expression of character. Education and justice are the methods of social selection. By their coöperation is shaped the moral environment where alone can survive that natural yet supernatural product, human personality.
BY CORA L. V. RICHMOND.
Frombetween ten and eleven years of age I have been endowed with gifts and favored with experiences that, I am well assured, are very exceptional, and that, until quite recently, have not been admitted to the realm of psychical investigation, philosophical discussion, or even human credence. Lately, however, there have been found a sufficient number of well authenticated facts in similar lines of experience to warrant the investigation and classification of them (if possible) under a modern name, “Psychic Research,” and under a well established and not so recent one, Spiritualism.
I am not intending to discuss these subjects,per se, nor to endeavor to classify or explain the experiences I am about to relate. They areexperiences, as real as any of those in my human or mundane existence; indeed, if I were called upon to decide that one is real and the other illusion, I should say without hesitation that these, and similar ones throughout my lifetime, are the real, and the ordinary mundane experiences unreal.
At the age above referred to I was, without any seeking, and without any surrounding circumstances to “suggest” such a state, taken possession of (entranced) by intelligences, distinct personalities in thought, word, and action, who spoke through my organism, unfolded and educated my mind, in fact became my mental and spiritual instructors. The public discourses and teachings given under these conditions are well known to many of the readers ofThe Arena, as these labors are the work of a lifetime.
It is not of this public work that I am constrained to write; but I may as well say here that I have had no other teachers, no other instructors, and have pursued no course of study or reading of human books; those whom I call my guides and guardians have been my teachers. During the time that these outside intelligences are controlling and speaking through my organism I am wholly unconscious of what is passing in humanlife and wholly unaware of that which is being uttered through my lips. I am also unaware of the lapse of time.
It may be best for me to here declare that I am not, in the usual sense, peculiar, nor was I different in my childhood from other children, save as each differs from the other. I was very diffident, and—not using the word in the psychical sense—sensitive. I was not given to morbid states or to the “dreaming of dreams.” Perhaps I was imaginative; most children are; and I loved fairy tales, but not unduly. This is simply to show that there was no abnormal condition of mind or body to produce the supernormal results that I have referred to.
I ought also to say that I never made the slightest preparation for the discourses and poems given through my lips, many of which, as the reader may know, were listened to by able and thoughtful minds, and from them received the highest praise. I tell this, not boastingly, but with humble gratitude that I have been made the instrument of giving the message of immortality to the world.
My own experiences during this period of entrancement, or while in the supernormal state, may be of peculiar interest to the reader, since they seem to be almost unique. While passing into this state I experience no physical sensations that are describable; a sense of being set free, of passing into a larger realm,—not of being transported or going anywhere,—is all that I can ever recall as sensation. Before I have time or opportunity to think how I feel, I am in the other state. Then I see, but I now know it is perception more than sight; I sometimes experience that which we call hearing in the human state, but I am fully aware; perception supersedes the senses.
Those whom I meet are individualities; many are friends known to me in the form before they passed from the mortal state; many are those who were unknown to me personally, only known by name and fame; and many I have never known until they revealed themselves to me in this “inner,” “higher,” other realm. When returning to outward consciousness, I often see, or remember as sight, such visions of surpassing loveliness that no language, no gift of art, even with genius-portraiture, could describe or picture them. These scenes and visions are associated with individuals who exist in that state, and, apparently,are objective; yet I am fully aware that they illustrate or depict the states and tastes of the individuals with whom they are seen, and are not organic physical forms, but psychic projections of the individual spirits. These forms and scenes readily pass and change according to the state of the one seeing them, or according to the state of the individual with whom they are associated. The “sphere” of a spirit, or of spirits, is the state or condition, not the environment.
In early life, before my mind had thought on the “objective” and “subjective” meanings of thoughts and things, I thought these scenes were “objective” in the human, mundane sense. I am now perfectly aware that every sensuous faculty—seeing, hearing, etc.—is superseded by this “perception” to which I have before referred; in fact, that the bodily senses as well as the mental faculties—brain expression—are but the different avenues of perceiving and conveying the intelligence of the individual spirit while associated with material form, this perception, or awareness, being the one supreme state of the spirit.
Still I have been shown series after series of beautiful scenes,—gardens, landscapes, visions of art, transcendent pictures of tint, form, and tone that no language can portray; and I am sure these abide for all who wish for or have need of them, and are the illustrations of the spiritual states of those with whom one comes in spiritual contact—rapport. Yet the greater the degree of perception, the less important become these illustrations of states; we not only see “face to face,” but perceive soul to soul. I became ashamed, almost, of the state of mind requiring these illustrations or any similar presentations. I found knowledge, however, in all the methods employed by my teachers, for they knew my needs.
Conversation in that state is not by means of speech or even language; sometimes before the thought is formulated the answer comes. Such is the rare sympathy existing between teacher and pupil in this state that the guide knows before the question is formed. Still, there must be the conscious desire for knowledge, or no knowledge can be received; reminding one of the “Seek, and ye shall find” of the ancient Truth-Teller.
When in that state I readily pass to a knowledge of what intimate friends in earth-life are doing and thinking. I evenenter into suchrapportas to be aware of their material surroundings, their states of mind, and their bodily health, obtaining all this from their minds, not from physical consciousness or sensation. Many times they have been also conscious of my presence, and we have afterward verified these experiences by outward correspondence, mostly to satisfy our friends. One or two instances will suffice to illustrate this class of experiences.
When I was yet a child, twelve years of age, my father accompanied me on one of my pilgrimages of spiritual work to western New York, our former home. During that visit or tour a circle for investigation and experiment was formed in Dunkirk, N. Y. After we returned to our then home in Wisconsin, I was one evening entranced,—as was usual,—and while in that state was distinctly conscious of being in Dunkirk, of seeing every member of the circle, with all of whom I was acquainted except one lady. She proved to be the seer of the evening. She saw me and described me so accurately that everyone in the circle recognized me, and, of course, thought I was dead. This so disturbed her mental or psychic state that I could not impress upon her mind that my body was entranced and that this was but one of my usual spiritual pilgrimages. On returning to my mundane state I narrated what I had experienced, and asked my father to write at once to the circle in Dunkirk and relieve their minds. He did so, but, as naturally would occur, they had also written, the letters crossing each other on the way, and their letter confirmed what I had told in every particular.
Later in life I had a lady friend whom I repeatedly visited and comforted, for she was in great sorrow. One time I made her see my body, or its apparition, so plainly that she saw the dress in which it was clothed—precisely what I had wished, as it was the color she most liked to see me wear. Another friend in California became so susceptible to my presence that she wrote long letters from me—automatically—which I, in this state, dictated to her, thus rendering correspondence between us almost superfluous except for verification to our outward senses. My own mother was aware of my presence almost daily; and it was a curious fact that my telltale spirit would go to her and reveal the very things I wished to keep from her,—any little surprises or presents, or the time of myarrival home on a visit. However late the hour, I always found her ready with a warm supper to receive me. When arriving after the journey home she would say: “You came to me last night in spirit and told me you were coming in body.” All important things connected with my welfare she knew in a similar way.
Two friends, Mr. and Mrs. B——, were extensive travellers. At one time they were absent three years, taking a tour of the Orient. We did not keep up a regular correspondence, as mutually our time was too much taken up with our respective duties or pleasures, but I could always locate them while I was in this “inner” state. At one time I saw them surrounded by what seemed more like a scene in the spirit state than in earth-life. They were on an island, surrounded by water-lilies; the skies were full of golden light, and they were amid pavilions, grottos, and altars of quaint and unique design. I could not place them, but on returning to my mundane state I related to my family what I had seen, and I wrote down the date. In about three or four weeks I had a letter from them dated at Tokio, giving a description of this very island I had seen; they were there on that very day when I saw them, and the island was as I had seen it. It proved to be one of the sacred islands in Japan.
This consciousness of visiting earth friends is, however, only the smallest part of these inner experiences; and usually occurs when I am passing into or out of the deeper or more spiritual states. Although I could fill volumes with these interesting experiences,—verified by being shared with others in human life,—I feel it due to the reader that I narrate my more inner experiences; at least in sufficient degree that they may be recorded, and that there may be some perception, however inadequately expressed, of what is possible in this surpassing realm.
I cannot pass from this subject of my visits to human friends, however, without here recording one other phase of this many-threaded line of experiences. While in this realm of spirit I often meet and converse freely, or commune, with friends that are yet in human forms, but who appear as spirits and seem to possess all the activities of the spiritual state. They meet and mingle freely with those who have “died” to human life, yet Iam perfectly sure they recall nothing of this when in their human state. Why I should remember or take with me these experiences that the others whom I saw within this realm could not recall, I could not divine until it was explained by my guide.
The explanation is this: “In sleep mortals pass into this realm for spiritual rest and change, as it is the normal realm of the spirit; but they do not pass through the spiritual awakening of the faculties as those do who are endowed with ‘spiritual gifts,’ therefore the experiences cannot be recalledas experiences; still, they sometimes have vague reminiscences or glimpses of ‘unremembered dreams’ that aid them throughout the whole day, often for days; and thus the outward life is sustained and fed from this realm. By and by the race will have spiritual growth to know and remember the experiences of the spirit as they now do of the human life.” I have frequently met those in that state who were strangers to me here, and who were still in human life; and in after years I have met them face to face in outward form, often wondering if they thought they had seen me before, as I was certain I had seen them. When the whole of this other side of human experience is made known, how many things now veiled will stand revealed! By far the greater number of volumes could be filled with those transcendent experiences referred to earlier in these pages, with friends in spirit states, with teachers and guides in their own realm.
My mother, always intuitive, sympathetic, religious, and caring much for the sick and ailing while in earth life, I was accustomed to see in a sphere or state of her own near the “Healing Sphere” of one of my teachers. She was surrounded with her own favorite flowers—old-fashioned hollyhocks, sweet-williams, and fragrant healing herbs. My guide explained that inher thought, or spiritual, state she requires these things to aid her in healing or ministering to those on earth. Whenever I visited her state it seemed to be in the midst of scenery such as she loved on earth, and under a morning-glory-covered lattice, where she sat in a low chair like one I had seen her use in earth life. Though not limited to that state, she always revealed herself thus to me; and I would return to my earth state with a sense of homesickness, and with the odor of thyme and rosemary clinging to mypsychic olfactories.
My father was interested in all the reforms of the day; he was a truly practical Christian, though not a professing one. He was looking for that ideal social state which we all hope is sometime coming, of “peace on earth and love to all.” His spirit state was revealed to me as among those arisen workers and reformers, whose work for humanity he loved and shared on earth, and learning of the wise ones,—a vast and wonderful sphere of individualities, who are still laboring for the good of humanity. I wished to know of my father, who passed out from the mortal form when I was thirteen years of age, and who was often my spirit teacher in my early life, why, after my mother had passed on, he was not always with her as in earth life. He replied, with a rare smile: “We are together; our work is different, but when we need each other we cannot be apart.”
Singly or in groups, or as my needs seemed to require, I was aware of every relative and friend who had passed from mortal life, whom our mutual wish or need attracted toward me. I am sure there may be those related by ties of consanguinity whom I have not seen, and many related only by spiritual sympathy and kinship whom I have met and loved in that state.
My babe, now a beautiful young woman in the spirit state, is my almost constant companion in those visitations and experiences. I have “seen her grow,” to use our mortal speech; have noted her spiritual unfoldment, and have many times been her pupil,—so wise are these “little ones” in the love of the angels, so sweet and simple is she in her teaching.
How few know the real meaning of “nearness” as applied to those they love! One thinks of the friend whose bodily presence is removed by mountains, rivers, and oceans as being far away; yet London, China, and India are as near in thought as the chair beside one, and doubly near the one whose body may be sojourning there. This very nearness of sympathy debars any separation. If people would turn to the real indications,—sympathy, intuition,—whenever desired the friend is near. Doubly true is this of those who have passed the barrier of death and are revealed to the heart of love. They have not died, they have not gone; they are so near as not to be seen or felt by the grosser sense that governs the physical state of recognition; so very near that even the thoughts of the friend stillimmured in the earthly form are shared by them, the very innermost longings responded to. Yet people unaccustomed to seek them in the inner instead of outer realm of existence, cannot find them, and say, “They are gone.” With space and time annihilated, what shall prevent the loved from being ever near?
Teachers and guides bear a nearer relationship than those in human states, and teach by the magic law of adaptation and love. I cannot name, in earthly language, the tie that binds me to those who have led me through these many realms, who have taught by vision, illustration, and thought, until the awakenedperceptionknew, thea prioriknowledge came.
I have often been conscious of visiting at desire a realm of music that led through the world of tone, through the spheres of matchless harmony in which the great masters of music abide,—Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Mozart, and to the divine realm of Wagner.
The realm of art, leading through color and form to the images of perfect life, until form and tint and tone are merged in the supreme soul of beauty, and sculptured image or architectural grandeur is lost in the eternal, all-forming, all-changing changelessness of the Soul of Art.
The realm of nature (the material universe), seen from the inverse side, appears to be the effect of causes that are in that realm of consciousness; laws that are the operation of the Supreme Will, the Logos. There science is reconstructed and made plain, and made secure by the knowledge of these fundamental principles.
The realm of philosophy, traced to its primal sources, reveals the truths concerning universal knowledge, often perceived by the great teachers, but dimly stated by minds enshrouded by the environments of earth.
The realm of religion,—the ineffable meaning of the All-Love and Wisdom; the nearness, the perfectness, the absoluteness of the Divine; the kinship of souls, the fraternity of spirits,—never in all this realm was there a thought, or teaching of thought, separate from a conscious individual entity.
I find that there is no Time or Space in this inner realm; the entity is not governed by the limitations of the person, so the terms and usages of earthly existence must fall into desuetude.One is not hampered by an ox-team while flying across the plains in a palace coach impelled by steam, and one does not need winter garments and furs in the tropics. The state of spirit needs no earthly day and night; all these are but incident to the physical earth and physical existence. The spirit is free from these limitations—time, space, and sensuous environment.
It will be interesting for the reader to know that my physical health does not suffer from these experiences, nor from the active duties incident to my spiritual work in human life.
I enter this spirit realm as naturally and easily as one enters the realm of sleep; yet it is not sleep. The body and brain are actively employed by another intelligence, loaned as an instrument might be, while the individual consciousness, theegoof the human being, is set free to visit these illimitable realms or states of the “inner,” the vaster, life.
When the mundane consciousness returns, it is instantaneous; but the mental and physical sensations vary according to whether the experiences have been “near or far” from the human state, with reference not to distance, but to resemblance or similarity in quality. When the experiences have been furthest removed from those usual in human consciousness, many minutes, and sometimes hours, are required to adjust myself to the conditions. This inner state is far more intense, but not unlike that experienced when one has been wholly wrapped and folded from the outer world in perusing a favorite author—living with and experiencing the scenes depicted; or when one has listened for hours to the all-absorbing strains of music in the grand operatic creations of Wagner. On returning to the mundane state my food has often tasted like chips or straw; the fabric of my dress would feel coarse to the touch, as though woven of cords or ropes; and every sound seemed harsh or far too loud. Gradually these supersensitive conditions would depart, leaving the usual state of mind and body.
I have said it is easy to pass into that state; not so easy is the returning to the human environment; yet onemustreturn. Like the child bidden to the task, reluctant to leave the garden of flowers and the freedom of the outer world, yet, constrained by love and duty, one consents to return. I suspect that these sensations I experience, of return to the human state, are somethinglike those of resuscitation after one has been nearly drowned. The drowning is easy, because one is going into life; the restoration is painful, because one returns, if not to death, to mere existence. The work, the duty, the loved who are embodied here must win one to the form which has been loaned; but the spirit seems reluctant sometimes to leave that freedom and knowledge for the narrow walls of clay, the prison-house of sense. The only true way is to bring that realm with one into daily life. One learns after a time to do this: to clothe the earthly scenes with the inner brightness, and the human tasks with the spiritual aura of love and wisdom.
I cannot judge whether the scenes of earth seem lovelier to me than to most mortals; whether there is more ravishing sweetness in the springtime, more glory in summer, more richness and beauty in the autumn, more rest and whiteness in the winter, more transcendent splendor in the sunset sky and glory in the starlit heavens. But it is certain that in being admitted to this inner realm the writer has not lost any blessing of earth,—of love, of home, of friends, of practical knowledge and interest in the daily duties and work of life; nor, I believe, can one be barred from any needed experience, however bitter. These teachings, visions, and experiences of soul-life have given to earth an exquisite beauty; to life’s work a meaning and impetus; to trials a lesson and interpretation; to the change called death a glory and radiance; to spirit states a nearness, and to soul a reality. Nor do these experiences rob one of one’s individuality; the pettypersonalityto which mortals cling is, happily, forgotten or cast aside, but theindividualitycannot be lost, merged in another, or governed, except for its good. When thepersonalis cast aside, one is grateful for the impersonality of theindividual.
Trailing clouds of glory accompany me across and into the barriers of time and sense, and when the sharp contrast is over—which the guide ever prevents from being too sudden—I realize the great sweetness of the gardens of paradise by the fragrance that is filling the earthly dwelling, and I know that being aware of the visitations of angels, and of somewhat of the light which is theirs, does not hinder, but helps human endeavor and accomplishment.
BY HENRY RANDALL WAITE, PH. D.
Thestandard represented by popular institutions will seldom be higher, and as time goes on may become lower, than that set for themselves by the majority of the people who established and are intrusted with the duty of maintaining them. They may represent noble aims and point to high ideals, but the extent of their duration and salutary influence must always be dependent upon a sufficient manifestation of the spirit which called them into being.
Institutions and laws, however perfect in other respects, cannot, therefore, safely omit from their functions provisions for the fostering and developing of the spirit which gave them birth. This spirit, it is to be remembered, may, and too often does, without extinguishment, actually become a thing so much apart from the machinery which it has established, as to have little appreciable influence in controlling its operation.
The institutions and laws of the United States, in their inception, represented the spirit of a people who were actuated by the highest concepts of human duty, and who sought to establish a political system which should realize the highest ideals. The possibilities of the system have been demonstrated by the experience of more than a hundred years. Functionally considered this experience has made painfully evident the failures which have attended the system in its operation. It is evident to every intelligent student of American history that these failures have been chiefly due to the fact that the spirit which gave life to the American Republic has too often and too far been supplanted in the control of its affairs by a spirit utterly hostile to that which it was intended to be, and which, if the partial or complete failure of the system is to be averted, must, everywhere and always, be dominant. It is undoubtedly true that citizens whose character and ability fit them for the service necessary for the proper control of political affairs, constitute a sufficient number in the voting population to assure the ascendencyof right ideas if their efforts can be united for the purpose. The fact that intelligent and controlling convictions of duty are absent, and that they do not thus unite, however explained, clearly accounts for the subversion of the spirit which founded our institutions, and the ascendency of a spirit of chicanery, greed, and corruption.
It is also evident that the political evils which challenge our attention are primarily due, not to faults in our institutions themselves, but to failures in the assertion of the spirit of true Americanism by which they are intended to be controlled. How to secure ascendency for this spirit and thus to restore, in every part of the republic, the sovereignty of highest manhood, is the most pressing problem which can engage the attention of patriotic and intelligent American citizens.
For more than fifteen years this question has been a matter of profound interest to the writer. The fact that ordinary uprisings against political evils fail to accomplish permanent results, seemed to him to afford convincing evidence that attention must be given to the roots and not confined to the branches; and that this foundation work must represent patient, persistent, and unselfish efforts for the promotion everywhere of the basic virtues of true patriotism, intelligence, integrity, and fidelity in citizenship relations. Believing that this work could be best accomplished through a permanent national institution which should invite and command the coöperation of good citizens everywhere, regardless of party, creed, sex, or class, he sought the advice and coöperation of a few distinguished men in the preparation of plans for such an institution. The assistance sought was willingly extended by such citizens as Morrison R. Waite, William Strong, and S. F. Miller, then respectively Chief Justice and Justices of the United States Supreme Court; by Theodore Woolsey, Noah Porter, F. A. P. Barnard, Mark Hopkins, Julius H. Seeley, and Theodore W. Dwight, among educators; and by such other eminent Americans as U. S. Grant, William Fitzhugh Lee, Robert C. Winthrop, Hugh McCulloch, John J. Knox, Orlando B. Potter, A. H. Colquitt, George Bancroft, Hannibal Hamlin, John Jay, Right Reverend William I. Kip, David Swing, and Phillips Brooks.
The result of conferences and correspondence with these and other citizens of like character led to the founding, in 1885, of the American Institute of Civics, which was subsequently chartered under the laws of Congress, and was dedicated to the service of promoting the qualities in citizenship which Washington sought to promote by his latest labors and final bequests, and which he, in common with Jefferson, Hamilton, and Madison, believed to be necessary “to the security of a free constitution,” and to the welfare of the government and people of the United States. Its distinctive purposes are succinctly set forth in its charter as follows:
1. To promote on the part of youths and adults generally, without reference to the inculcation of special theories or partisan views, a patient and conscientious study of the most essential facts relating to affairs of government and citizenship, to the end that every citizen may be qualified to act the part of an intelligent and upright juror in all affairs submitted to the decision of the ballot.2. To promote, in the same spirit, such special attention to the study of Civics[7]in higher institutions of learning, and otherwise, as shall have a tendency to secure wise, impartial, and patriotic action on the part of those who shall occupy positions of trust and responsibility, as executive or legislative officers, and as leaders of public opinion.
1. To promote on the part of youths and adults generally, without reference to the inculcation of special theories or partisan views, a patient and conscientious study of the most essential facts relating to affairs of government and citizenship, to the end that every citizen may be qualified to act the part of an intelligent and upright juror in all affairs submitted to the decision of the ballot.
2. To promote, in the same spirit, such special attention to the study of Civics[7]in higher institutions of learning, and otherwise, as shall have a tendency to secure wise, impartial, and patriotic action on the part of those who shall occupy positions of trust and responsibility, as executive or legislative officers, and as leaders of public opinion.
Organized under such auspices and with such purposes it represents the only practical and sustained effort which has been made by the people of the United States for the realization of the aims above outlined; and with persistency of purpose and increasing usefulness it has for more than twelve years prosecuted its mission for the safeguarding of American institutions.
Political conditions past and present clearly justify the views of Washington and his contemporaries, and the opinions of the Institute’s founders, as to the need of a central source of salutary influences in the form of a national institution wholly devoted to a propaganda of the principles and ideas comprehensively described in Washington’s words as “the fundamental maxims of true liberty.”
The sole object of this national, non-partisan, non-sectarian, popular, and permanent institution, is to voice these maxims, to inspire the spirit and give force to the principles which shouldhave supreme control in affairs of government, citizenship, and social order.
What the national military establishments at West Point and Annapolis are intended to accomplish in the way of preparing a few citizens for useful service in times of war, it is the purpose of this popular civil institution, with patriotic insistency and through all available efficiencies, to aid in accomplishing through provisions for properly preparing all citizens for the highest service of their country at all times.
In the accomplishment of its objects, it directs its endeavors not so much to the creation of new agencies as to the giving of inspiration and energy to those already existing; and in pursuing this wise policy it has been a most useful factor in establishing the solidarity and increasing the power of the influences which represent civic virtue and true patriotism.
Its efficiencies include, beside its National Board of Trustees, composed of thirty-three members, and its advisory faculty, composed of twelve members, the following departments:
1. Department for the extension of information and activities promotive of good citizenship, through which provisions are made for home studies, and for lectures, discussions, studies, etc., in connection with schools, lyceums, civic associations, labor organizations, and institute clubs; this work being carried on with the coöperation and under the supervision of councillors in the communities where they reside, and with the aid of a corps of lecturers now numbering more than two hundred.
2. Department of Educational Institutions conducted in coöperation with State and local officers of public instruction, teachers in elementary and high schools, and members of faculties in nearly two hundred and fifty higher institutions of learning.
3. Publication Department, through which the equivalent of nearly twenty million pages of octavo matter has been issued under its auspices.
4. Department of Legislation, in connection with which councillors and citizens generally have efficiently aided in securing needed reforms in the administration of public affairs, the protection and elevation of the suffrage, and the conservation of the highest interests of citizens and the state in other respects.
5. Department of Applied Ethics, in connection with which efforts are made to properly and efficiently enlist the great body of citizens, including youths as well as adults, who profess to be governed by the highest concepts of duty, in practical labors for the establishment of wise, just, and salutary civic and social conditions.
It is obvious that an institution of this character cannot depend for its maintenance upon citizens of merely negative virtue, nor can it expect the sympathy of scheming politicians to whose plans and power it is in direct opposition. Its dependence must be solely upon the willing services and financial support of those members of the body politic who are animated by the spirit of Washington, and who believe that in matters affecting the highest interests of our free institutions, such as civic virtue and civic fidelity, formation is better than re-formation, and that to constantly maintain salutary political conditions is infinitely preferable to frequent and disappointing struggles with corruptible elements, which through neglect of civic duty have been permitted to secure controlling power; in other words, that it is better to safely guard our inheritance of freedom than to battle for its rescue from unworthy hands.
The Institute admits to membership in its National Body of Councillors all citizens who are commended to its Board of Trustees, by those already members, or by other citizens of known high character, as worthy of such membership by reason of their ability to contribute in some degree to the accomplishment of its purposes. It does not solicit the membership of citizens whose political affiliations are such as to rank them among those who are contributing to the evils which it seeks to correct. Its councillors are asked to share in an undertaking which tests the character of their citizenship by offering no rewards for their coöperation. It has employed no paid officers and no paid agents for the solicitation of funds. The united activities of its members have enabled it, and it is believed will continue to enable it, to present in itself an eloquent object-lesson in patriotism and a potent appeal to the spirit in citizenship—the true Americanism—which it seeks to foster. Its contributing councillors are asked for annual remittances of sums of from $2.00 upward, in accordance with their financial abilityand the degree of their interest in its work. Those contributing $3.00 or more annually are entitled to receive all of its own publications, and alsoThe Arena, whose aims are largely identical with its own, and through which its official announcements will hereafter be published.
It will be seen that the degree of responsibility resting upon its councillors financially and otherwise is a matter for their own determination, and one which will be decided in accordance with the disposition of each to recognize the truth, that the patriotic and unselfish labors of those who have gone before us, and of which we enjoy the priceless benefits, have laid upon us a sacred obligation which we can discharge only by the performance of similar labors.
The foregoing statements, however encouraging, are chiefly significant as indicative of what may be, rather than of what has been, accomplished. Gratifying as the results of the Institute’s work have been, they represent but a tithe of what it might have accomplished with a larger degree of moral and pecuniary support. The extent of its field and the magnitude of the labors necessary in order to make it widely and effectively useful, when compared with the resources at its command, have constantly presented difficulties which would have discouraged its officers but for their abiding confidence in the ultimate willingness of the American people to give to it the measure of support warranted by the importance of the objects to which it is devoted. It has been not inaptly compared to a noble piece of enginery, whose highest possibilities in the way of efficiency and usefulness cannot be realized because the fuel furnished is insufficient for the supply of motive power. Its highest possibilities are, in truth, little more than dreams, the fulfilment of which may not be realized in the lives of those who are now giving it such unselfish service as they find possible in the midst of other pressing occupations.
The time must soon come when it will be necessary to make arrangements for the permanent establishment of its central efficiencies, with adequate provision for its maintenance, at some suitable point yet to be selected. The suggestion has been made by some of the most distinguished of its councillors, that the descendants of American patriots cannot more worthilyhonor the memory of their sires, or more effectively promote the safety and perpetuity of the institutions for which they battled, than by making it their mission to maintain the American Institute of Civics. The fact that it was conceived, established, and has been conducted in the spirit of truest patriotism, and the results which it has already accomplished through services rendered wholly in the spirit of the words upon its corporate seal, “Ducit Amor Patriæ,” would seem to prove its title to the confidence and support of all who are proud of the fact that their forbears have been among the founders and defenders of our American institutions. It may not be a vain hope that this thought will, in some manner and at some time, take definite shape, perhaps in the form of a national memorial building at the capital, devoted to the collection and preservation of material illustrative of the nation’s history and progress, and to memorials of its illustrious dead. As has been said elsewhere,