Philosophically this is the great contribution of Christianity and for fifteen centuries it was held implicitly by Christendom, yet it was rejected, either wholly or in part, by the Protestant organizations that came out of the Reformation, and it fell into such oblivion that outside the Catholic Church it was not so much ignored or rejected as totally forgotten. Recently a series of lectures were delivered at King's College, London, by various carefully chosen authorities, all specialists in their own fields, under the general title "Mediaeval Contributions to Modern Civilization," and neither the pious author of the address on "The Religious Contribution of the Middle Ages," nor the learned author of that on "Mediaeval Philosophy," gave evidence of ever having heard of sacramental philosophy. It may be that I do them an injustice, and that they would offer as excuse the incontestible fact that Mediaevalism contributed nothing to "modern civilization," either in religion or philosophy, that it was willing to accept.
The peril of all philosophies, outside that of Christianity as it was developed under the Catholic dispensation, is dualism, and many have fallen into this grave error. Now dualism is not only the reversal of truth, it is also the destroyer of righteousness.
Sacramentalism is the anthithesis of dualism. The sanctity of matter as the potential of spirit and its dwelling-place on earth; the humanizing of spirit through its condescension to man through the making of his body and all created things its earthly tabernacle, give, when carried out into logical development, a meaning to life, a glory to the world, an elucidation of otherwise unsolvable mysteries, and an impulse toward noble living no other system can afford. It is a real philosophy of life, a standard of values, a criterion of all possible postulates, and as its loss meant the world's peril, so its recovery may mean its salvation.
Now as the philosophy of Christianity is purely and essentially sacramental, so must be the operation of God through the Church. This "Body of Christ" on earth is indeed a fellowship, a veritable communion of the faithful, whether living or dead, but it is also a divine organism which lives, and in which each member lives, not by the preaching of the Word, not even by and through the fellowship in living and worship, but through the ordained channels of grace known as the Sacraments. In accordance with the sacramental system, every material thing is proclaimed as possessing in varying degree sacramental potentiality, while seven great Sacraments were instituted to be, each after its own fashion, a special channel for the inflowing of the power of the Divine Actuality. Each is a symbol, just as so many other created things are, or may become, symbols, but they are alsorealities,veritable media for the veritable communications of veritable divine grace. Here is the best definition I know, that of Hugh of St. Victor. "A sacrament is the corporeal or material element set out sensibly, representing from its similitude, signifying from its institution, and containing from its sanctification, some invisible and spiritual grace." This is the unvarying and invariable doctrine of historic Christianity, and the reason for the existence of the Church as a living and functioning organism. The whole sacramental system is in a sense an extension, in time, of the Redemption, just as one particular Sacrament, the Holy Eucharist, is also in a sense an extension of the Incarnation, as it is also an extension, in time, of the Atonement, the Sacrifice of Calvary.
The Incarnation and the Redemption are not accomplished facts, completed nineteen centuries ago; they are processes that still continue, and their term is fixed only by the total regeneration and perfecting of matter, while the Seven Sacraments are the chiefest amongst an infinity of sacramental processes which are the agencies of this eternal transfiguration.
God the Son became Incarnate, not only to accomplish the redemption of men as yet unborn, for endless ages, through the Sacrifice of Calvary, but also to initiate and forever maintain a new method whereby this result was to be more perfectly attained; that is to say, the Church, working through the specific sacramental agencies He had ordained, or was from time to time to ordain, through His everlasting presence in the Church He had brought into being at Pentecost. He did not come to establish in material form a Kingdom of Heaven on Earth, or to provide for its ultimate coming. He indeed established a Spiritual Kingdom, His Church, "in the world, not of it," which is a very different matter indeed, as the centuries have proved. His Kingdom is not of this world, nor will it be established here. There has been noabsoluteadvance in human development since the Incarnation. Nations rise and fall, epochs wax and wane, civilizations grow out of savagery, crest and sink back into savagery and oblivion. Redemption is for the individual, not for the race, nor yet for society as a whole. Then, and only then, and under that form, it is sure, however long may be the period of its accomplishment. "Time is the ratio of the resistance of matter to the interpenetration of spirit," and by this resistance is the duration of time determined. When it shall have been wholly overcome then "time shall be no more."
See therefore how perfect is the correspondence between the Sacraments and the method of life where they are the agents, and which they symbolically set forth. There is in each case the material form and the spiritual substance, or energy. Water, chrism, oil, the spoken word, the touch of hands, the sign of the cross, and finally and supremely the bread and wine of the Holy Eucharist. Each a material thing, but each representing, signifying and containing some gift of the Holy Spirit, real, absolute and potent. So matter and spirit are linked together in every operation of the Church, from the cradle to the grave, and man has ever before him the eternal revelation of this linked union of matter and spirit in his life, the eternal teaching of the honour of the material thing through its agency and through its existence as the subject for redemption. So also, through the material association, and the divine condescension to his earthly and fallible estate (limited by association with matter only to inadequate presentation) he makes the Spirit of God his own, to dwell therewith after the fashion of man.
And how much this explains and justifies: Man approaches, and must always approach, spiritual things not only through material forms but by means of material agencies. The highest and most beautiful things, those where the spirit seems to achieve its loftiest reaches, are frequently associated with the grossest and most unspiritual forms, yet the very splendour of the spiritual verity redeems and glorifies the material agency, while on the other hand the homeliness, and even animal quality, of the material thing, brings to man, with a poignancy and an appeal that are incalculable, the spiritual thing that, in its absolute essence, would be so far beyond his ken and his experience and his powers of assimilation that it would be inoperative.
This is the true Humanism; not the fictitious and hollow thing that was the offspring of neo-paganism and took to itself a title to which it had no claim. Held tacitly or consciously by the men of the Middle Ages, from the immortal philosopher to the immortal but nameless craftsman, it was the force that built up the noble social structure of the time and poised man himself in a sure equilibrium. Already it had of necessity developed the whole scheme of religious ceremonial and given art a new content and direction through its new service. By analogy and association all material things that could be so used were employed as figures and symbols, as well as agencies, through the Sacraments, and after a fashion that struck home to the soul through the organs of sense. Music, vestments, incense, flowers, poetry, dramatic action, were linked with the major arts of architecture, painting and sculpture, and all became not only ministers to the emotional faculties but direct appeals to the intellect through their function as poignant symbols. So art received its soul, and was almost a living creature until matter and spirit were again divorced in the death that severed them during the Reformation. Thereafter religion had entered upon a period of slow desiccation and sterilization wherever the symbol was cast away with the Sacraments and the faith and the philosophy that had made it live. The bitter hostility to the art and the liturgies and the ceremonial of the Catholic faith is due far less to ignorance of the meaning and function of art and to an inherited jealousy of its quality and its power, than it is to the conscious and determined rejection of the essential philosophy of Christianity, which is sacramentalism.
The whole system was of an almost sublime perfection and simplicity, and the formal Sacraments were both its goal and its type. If they had been of the same value and identical in nature they would have failed of perfect exposition, in the sense in which they were types and symbols. They were not this, for while six of the explicit seven were substantially of one mode, there was one where the conditions that held elsewhere were transcended, and where, in addition to the two functions it was instituted to perform it gave, through its similitude, the clear revelation of the most significant and poignant fact in the vast mystery of life. I mean, of course, the Holy Eucharist, commonly called the Mass.
If matter isper seforever inert, unchangeable, indestructible, then we fall into the dilemma of a materialistic monism on the one hand, Manichaean dualism on the other. Even under the most spiritual interpretation we could offer—that, shall we say, of those today who try to run with the hare of religion and hunt with the hounds of rationalistic materialism—matter and spirit unite in man as body and soul, and in the Sacraments as the vehicle and the essence, but temporally and temporarily; doomed always to ultimate severance by death in the one case, by the completion of the sacramental process in the other. If, on the other hand, the object of the universe and of time is the constant redemption and transformation of matter through its interpenetration by spirit in the power of God the Holy Ghost, then we escape the falsities of dualism, while in the miracle of the Mass we find the type and the showing forth of the constant process of life whereby every instant, matter itself is being changed and glorified and transferred from the plane of matter to the plane of spirit.
If this is so: if the Incarnation and the Redemption are not only fundamental facts but also types and symbols of the divine process forever going on here on earth, then, while the other Sacraments are in themselves not only instruments of grace but manifestations of that process whereby in all things matter is used as the vehicle of spirit, the Mass, transcending them all, is not only Communion, not only a Sacrifice acceptable before God, it is also the unique symbol of the redemption and transformation of matter; since, of all the Sacraments, it is the only one where the very physical qualities of the material vehicle are transformed, and while the accidents alone remain, the substance, finite and perishable, becomes, in an instant of time and by the operation of God, infinite and immortal.
It is to sacramentalism then that we must return, not only in religion and its practice, but in philosophy, if we are to establish a firm foundation for that newer society and civilization that are to help us to achieve the "Great Peace." Antecedent systems failed, and subsequent systems have failed; in this alone, the philosophy of Christianity, is there safety, for it alone is consonant with the revealed will of God.
Society, that is to say, the association in life of men, women and children, is the fundamental fact of life, and this is so whether the association is of the family, the school, the community, industry or government. Everything else is simply a series of forms, arrangements and devices by which society works, either for good or ill. Man makes or mars himself in and through society. He is responsible for his own soul, but if he sees only this and works directly for his soul's salvation, disregarding the society of which he is a part, he may lose it, whereas, if he is faithful to society and honourably plays his part as a social animal with a soul, he will very probably save it, even though he may for the time have quite ignored its existence. Man is a member of a family, a pupil under education, a worker and a citizen. In all these relationships he is a part of a social group; he is also a component part of the human race and linked in some measure to every other member thereof whether living or dead. Into every organization or institution in which he is involved during his lifetime—family, school, art or craft, trade union, state, church—enters the social equation. If society is ill organized either in theory or in practice, in any or all of its manifestations, then the engines or devices by which it operates will be impotent for good. Defective society cannot produce either a good fundamental law, a good philosophy, a good art, or any other thing. Conversely, these, when brought forth under an wholesome society, will decay and perish when society degenerates.
In its large estate, that is, comprehending all the minor groups, as a nation, a people or an era, society is always in a state of unstable equilibrium, tending either toward better or worse. It may indeed be of the very essence of human life, but it is a plant of tender growth and needs delicate nurture and jealous care; a small thing may work it irreparable injury. It may reach very great heights of perfection and spread over a continent, as during the European Middle Ages; it may sink to low depths with an equal dominion, as in the second dark ages of the nineteenth century. Sometimes little enclaves of high value hide themselves in the midst of degradation, as Venice and Ireland in the Dark Ages. Always, by the grace of God, the primary social unit, the family may, and frequently does, achieve and maintain both purity and beauty when the world without riots in ruin and profligacy.
I have taken the problem of the organization of society as the first to be considered, for it is fundamental. If society is of the wrong shape it does not matter in the least how intelligent and admirable may be the devices we construct for the operation of government or industry or education; they may be masterly products of human intelligence but they will not work, whereas on the other hand a sane, wholesome and decent society can so interpret and administer clumsy and defective instruments that they will function to admiration. A perfect society would need no such engines at all, but a perfect society implies perfect individuals, and I think we are now persuaded that a society of this nature is a purely academic proposition both now and in the calculable future. What we have to do is to take mankind as it is; made up of infinitely varied personalities ranging from the idiot to the "super-man"; cruel and compassionate, covetous and self-sacrificing, silly and erudite, cynical and emotional, vulgar and cultured, brutal and fastidious, shameful in their degradation and splendid in their honour and chivalry, and by the franchise of liberty and the binding of law, facilitate in every way the process whereby they themselves work out their own salvation. You cannot impose morality by statute or guarantee either character or intelligence by the perfection of the machine. Every institution, good or bad, is the result of growth from many human impulses, not the creation of autocratic fiat. But growth may be impeded, hastened, or suspended, and the most that can be done is to offer incentives to action, remove the obstacles to development, and establish conditions and influences that make more easy the finding of the right way.
Now it seems to me that the two greatest obstacles to the development of a right society have been first, the enormous scale in which everything of late has been cast, and second, that element in modern democracy which denies essential differences in human character, capacity and potential, and so logically prohibits social distinctions, and refuses them formal sanction or their recognition through conferred honours. In questioning the validity and the value of these two factors, imperialism and social democracy, and in suggesting substitutes, I am, I suppose, attacking precisely the two institutions which are today—or at all events have been until very recently—held in most conspicuous honour by the majority of people, but the question is at least debateable, and for my own part I have no alternative but to assert their mistaken nature, and to offer the best I can in the way of substitutes.
The question of imperialism, of a gross and unhuman and therefore absolutely wrong scale, is one that will enter into almost all of the matters with which I propose to deal, certainly with industrialism, with politics, with education, with religion, as well as with the immediate problem of the social organism, for not only has it destroyed the human scale in human life, and therefore brought it into the danger of immediate destruction, but it has also been a factor in establishing the quantitative standard in all things, in place of the qualitative standard, and this, in itself, is simply the antecedent of well-merited catastrophe. In considering the social organism, therefore, we must have in mind that this is intimately affected by every organic institution which man has developed and into which he enters in common with others of his kind.
The situation as it confronts us today is one in which man by his very energy and the stimulus of those cosmic energies he has so astonishingly mastered, has got far beyond his depth. I say man has mastered these energies; yes, but this was true only of a brief period in the immediate past. They now have mastered him. It is the old story of the Frankenstein monster over again. Man is not omnipotent, he is not God. There are limits beyond which he cannot go without coming in peril of death. An isolated individual here and there may become super-man, perhaps, though at grievous peril to his own soul, and it is conceivable that to such an one it might be possible to live beyond the human scale, though hardly. If one could envisage so awful a thing as a community made up entirely of super-men, one might concede that here also the human scale might be exceeded without danger of catastrophe. With society as it is, and always will be, a welter of defectives and geniuses in small numbers and a vast majority of just plain men, with all that that implies, the breaking through into the imperial scale is simply a letting in the jungle; walls and palings and stockades, the delicate fabrics of architecture, the clever institutions of law, the thin red line of the army, all melt, crumble, are overcome by the onrush of primordial things, and where once was the white man's city is now the eternal jungle, and the vines and thrusting roots and rank herbage blot out the very memory of a futile civilization, while the monkey and the jackal and the python come again into their heritage.
Alexander and Caesar, Charles V and Louis XIV and Napoleon and Disraeli and William III could function for a few brief years beyond the limits of the human scale, though even they had an end, but you cannot link imperialism and democracy without the certainty of an earlier and a more ignominious fall.
I have already spoken of the malignant and pathological quality of the quantitative standard. It is indeed not only the nemesis of culture but even of civilization itself. Out of this same gross scale of things come many other evils; great states subsisting on the subjugation and exploitation of small and alien peoples; great cities which when they exceed more than 100,000 in population are a menace, when they exceed 1,000,000 are a crime; division of labour and specialization which degrade men to the level of machines; concentration and segregation of industries, the factory system, high finance and international finance, capitalism, trades-unionism and the International, standardized education, "metropolitan" newspapers, pragmatic philosophy, and churches "run on business methods" and recruited by advertising and "publicity agents."
Greater than all, however, is the social poison that effects society with pernicious anaemia through cutting man off from his natural social group and making of him an undistinguishable particle in a sliding stream of grain. Man belongs to his family, his neighbourhood, his local trade or craft guild and to his parish church: the essence of wholesome association is that a man should work with, through and by those whom he knows personally—and preferably so well that he calls them all by their first names.
As a matter of fact, today he works with, through and by the individuals whom he probably has never seen, and frequently would, as a matter of personal taste, hesitate to recognize if he did see them. He belongs to the "local" of a union which is a part of a labour organization which covers the entire United States and is controlled in all essential matters from a point from one hundred to two thousand miles away. He votes for mayor with a group of men, less than one per cent of whom he knows personally (unless he is a professional politician), with another group for state officers, and with the whole voting population of the United States, for President. If he goes to church in a city he finds himself amongst people drawn from every ward and outlying district, if he mixes in "society" he associates with those from everywhere, perhaps, except his own neighbourhood. Only when he is in college, in his club or in his secret society lodge or the quarters of his ward boss does he find himself in intimate social relations with human beings of like mind and a similar social status. He is a cog in a wheel, a thing, a point of potential, a lonely and numerical unit, instead of a gregarious human animal rejoicing in his friends and companions, and working, playing and quarreling with them, as God made him and meant him to be and to do.
Of course the result of this is that men are forced into unnatural associations, many of which are purely artificial and all of which are unsound. It is true that the trade union, the professional society, the club are natural and wholesome expressions of common and intimate interests, but they acquire a false value when they are not balanced and regulated by a prior and more compelling association which cuts, not vertically but horizontally through society, that is to say, the neighbourhood or community group. The harsh and perilous division into classes and castes which is now universal, with its development of "class consciousness," is the direct and inevitable result of this imperial scale in life which has annihilated the social unit of human scale and brought in the gigantic aggregations of peoples, money, manufacture and labourers, where man can no longer function either as a human unit or an essential factor in a workable society.
It is hard to see just how we are to re-fashion this impossible society in terms even nearly approaching the normal and the human. It is universal, and it is accepted by everyone as very splendid and quite the greatest achievement of man. It is practically impossible for any one today to conceive of a world where great empires, populous cities, mills and factories and iron-works in their thousands, and employing their millions through their billions of capitalization, where the stock exchange and the great banking houses and the insurance companies and the department stores, the nation-wide trade unions and professional associations and educational foundations and religious corporations, do not play their predominant part. Nevertheless they are an aggregation of false values, their influence is anti-social, and their inherent weakness was so obviously revealed through the War and the Peace that it has generally escaped notice.
There seem but two ways in which the true scale of life can be restored; either these institutions will continue, growing greater and more unwieldy with increasing speed until they burst in anarchy and chaos, and after ruin and long rest we begin all over again (as once before after the bursting of Roman imperialism), or we shall repeat history (as we always do) only after another fashion and, learning as we always can from the annals of monasticism, build our small communities of the right shape and scale in the very midst of the imperial states themselves, so becoming perhaps the leavening of the lump. This of course is what the monasteries of St. Benedict did in the sixth century and those of the Cluniacs and the Cistercians in the eleventh, and it is what the Franciscans and Dominicans tried to do in the fourteenth century, and failed because the fall of the cultural and historic wave had already begun.
The trouble today with nearly all schemes of reform and regeneration is that they are infected with the very imperialism in scale that has produced the conditions they would redeem. Socialism is now as completely materialistic as the old capitalism, and as international in its scope and methods. Anarchy is becoming imperial and magnificent in its operations. Secular reformers must organize vast committees with intricate ramifications and elaborate systems supported by "drives" for money which must run into at least seven figures, and by vast and efficient bureaus for propaganda, before they can begin operations, and then the chief reliance for success is frequently placed on legislation enacted by the highest lawmaking bodies in the land. Even religion has now surrendered to the same obsession of magnitude and efficiency, and nothing goes (or tries to, it doesn't always succeed) unless it is conceived in gigantic "nation-wide" terms and is "put across" by efficiency experts, highly paid organizers, elaborate "teams" of propagandists and solicitors, and plenty of impressive advertising. A good deal can be bought this way, but it will not "stay bought," for no reform of any sort can be established after any such fashion, since reform begins in and with the individual, and if it succeeds at all it will be by the cumulative process.
I shall speak of this element of scale in every succeeding lecture, for it vitiates every institution we have. Here, where I am dealing with society in itself, I can only say that I believe the sane and wholesome society of the future will eliminate great cities and great corporations of every sort. It will reverse the whole system of specialization and the segregation and unification of industries and the division of labour. It will build upward from the primary unit of the family, through the neighbourhood, to the small, and closely knit, and self-supporting community, and so to the state and the final unifying force which links together a federation of states. In general it will be a return in principle, though not in form, to the social organization of a Mediaeval Europe before the extinction of feudalism on the Continent, and the suppression of the monasteries and the enclosure of the common lands in England.
The grave perils of this false scale in human society have been recognized by many individuals ever since the thing itself became operative, and every Utopia conceived by man during the last two centuries, whether it was theoretical or actually put into ephemeral practice, has been couched in terms of revolt away from imperialism and towards the unit of human scale. In every case however, the introduction of some form of communism has been the ruin of those projects actually materialized, for this in itself is imperialistic in its nature. Communism implies the standard of the gross aggregate, the denial of human differentiation and the quantitative standard, as well as the elimination of private property and the negation of sacred individuality. Its institution implies an almost immediate descent into anarchy with a sequent dictatorship and autocracy, for it is the reversal of the foundation laws of life. Such reversals cannot last, nothing can last that is inimical to flourishing life; it may triumph for a day but life itself sloughs it off as a sound body rids itself of some foreign substance through the sore that festers, bursts and, the septic conditions done away with, heals itself and returns to normal.
Now the inhuman scale has produced one set of septic conditions in society while what is commonly called "democratization" has produced another. We have a bloated society, but also we have one in which a false theory has grown up and been put in practice, in accordance with which an uniformity of human kind has been assumed which never has existed and does not now, and in the effort to enforce this false theory the achievement of distinction has been impeded, leadership discouraged and leaders largely eliminated, the process of leveling downward carried to a very dangerous point, the sane and vital organization of society brought near to an end and a peculiarly vicious scale and standard of social values established. I have urged the return to human scale in human associations, but this does not imply any admixture of communism, which is its very antithesis, still less does it permit the retention of the theoretical uniformity and the unescapable leveling process of so-called democracy.
Before the law all men are equal, that is, they are entitled to even-handed justice. Before God all men are equal, that is, they are granted charity and mercy which transcends the law, also they possess immortal souls of equal value. Here their equality stops. In every other respect they vary in character, capacity, intelligence and potentiality for development along any or all these lines, almost beyond the limits of computation. A sane society will recognize this, it will organize itself accordingly, it will deny to one what it will concede to another, it will foster emulation and reward accomplishment, and it will add another category to those in which all men are equal, that is, the freest scope for advancement, and the greatest facility for passing from one social group into another, the sole test being demonstrated merit.
I am prepared at this point to use the word "aristocracy" for we have the thing even now, only in its worst possible form. The word itself means two things: a government by the best and most able citizens and, to quote a standard dictionary "Persons noted for superiority in any character or quality, taken collectively." There is no harm here, but the harm comes, and the odium also, and justly, when an aristocratic government degenerates into an oligarchy of privilege without responsibility, and when socially it is not "superiority in character or quality" but political cunning, opulence and sycophancy that are the touchstones to recognition and acceptance. The latter are the antithesis of Christianity and common sense, the former is consonant with both and, paradoxical as it may seem, it is also the fulfilling of the ideals of a real democracy, since its honours and distinctions imply service, its relations with those in other estates are reciprocal, it is not a closed caste but the prize of meritorious achievement, and it is therefore equality of opportunity, utilization of ability and the abolition of privilege without responsibility.
Men are forever and gloriously struggling onward towards better things, but there is always the gravitational pull of original sin which scientists denominate "reversion to type." The saving grace in the individual is the divine gift of faith, hope and charity implanted in every soul. These every man must guard and cherish for they are the way of advancement in character. But society is man in association with men, in a sense a new and complex personality, and the same qualities are as necessary here as in the individual. Society, like man, may be said to possess body, soul and spirit, and it must function vitally along all these lines if it is to maintain a normal and wholesome existence. Somewhere there must be something that achieves high ideals of honour, chivalry, courtesy; that maintains right standards of comparative value, and that guards the social organism as a whole from the danger of surrender to false and debased standards, to plausible demagogues, and to mob-psychology.
The greater the prevalence of democratic methods, the greater is the danger of this surrender to propaganda of a thousand sorts and to the dominance of the demagogue, and the existence of an estate fortified by the inheritance of high tradition, measurably free from the necessity of engaging too strenuously in the "struggle for life," guaranteed security of status so long as it does not betray the ideals of its order, but open to accessions from other estates on the basis of conspicuous merit alone, such a force operating in society has proved, and will prove, the best guardian of civilization as a whole and of the interests and liberties of those who may rank in what are known as lower social scales.
But, it may be objected, such an institution as this has never existed. Every political or social aristocracy in history has been mixed and adulterated with bad characters and recreant representatives. There never has been and never will be a perfect aristocracy. Quite true; neither has there ever been a perfect democracy, or a perfect monarchy for that matter. As men we work with imperfections, but we live by faith, and our sole duty is to establish the highest ideals, and to compass them, in so far as we may, with unfailing courage, patience and steadfastness. Theidealof democracy is a great ideal, but theworkingof democracy has been a failure because, amongst other things, it has tried to carry on without the aid of true aristocracy. If the two can be united, first in ideal and in theory, then in operation, our present failure may be changed into victory.
What, after all, does this imply, so far as the social organism is concerned? It seems to me, something like this. First of all, recognition of the fact that there are differences in individuals, in strains of blood, in races, that cannot be overcome by any power of education and environment, and can only be changed through very long periods of time, and that these differences must work corresponding differences in position, function and status in the social organism. Second, that since society automatically develops an aristocracy of some sort or other, and apparently cannot be stopped from doing this, it must be protected from the sort of thing it has produced of late, which is based on money, political expediency and the unscrupulous cleverness of the demagogue, and given a more rational substitute in the shape of a permanent group representing high character and the traditions of honour, chivalry and courtesy. Third, that character and service should be fostered and rewarded by that formal and august recognition, that secure and unquestioned status, and those added opportunities for service that will form a real and significant distinction. Finally, that this order or estate must be able to purge itself of unworthy material, and also must be freely open to constant accessions from without, whatever the source, and for proved character and service.
I fear I must argue this case of the inequality in individual potential, that inequality that does not yield to complex education or favourable environment, for it is fundamental. If it does not exist, then my argument for the organization of society along lines that recognize and regularize diversity of social status and functions, falls to the ground. I affirm that, the doctrine of evolution and modern democratic theory to the contrary, it does exist and that the mitigating influence of education, environment and inherited acquired characters, is small at best.
Let us take the most obvious concrete examples. There are certain ethnic units or races which for periods ranging from five hundred to two thousand years have producedcharacter, and through character the great contributions that have been made to human culture and have been expressed through men of distinction, dynamic force, and vivid personality. Such, amongst many, are the Greeks, the Jews, the Romans, the Normans, the Franks, the "Anglo-Saxons," and the Celts. There are others that in all history have produced nothing. There are certain family names which are a guarantee of distinction, dynamic force, and vivid personality. There are thousands of these names, and they are to be found amongst all the races that have contributed towards the development of culture and civilization. On the other hand, there are far more that have produced nothing distinctive, and possibly never will.
What is the reason for this? Is it the result of blind chance, of accidents that have left certain races and families isolated in stagnant eddies from which some sudden current of a whimsical tide might sweep them out into the full flood of progress, until they then overtook and passed their hitherto successful rivals, who, in their turn, would drift off into progressive incompetence and degeneracy? Biology does not look with enthusiasm on the methods of chance and accident. The choice and transmission of the forty-eight chromosomes that give to each individual his character-potential are probably in accordance with some obscure biological law through which the unfathomable divine will operates. Now these chromosomes may be selected and combined after a fashion, and with a persistence of continuity, that would guarantee character-potential, for good or for ill, through many generations, or they might be so varied in their combinations that no distinct traits would be carried over from one generation to another. As a matter of experience all these three processes take place and are recorded in families of distinct quality, good, bad and indifferent. If the character-potential is predetermined, then manifestly education and environment can play only the subordinate part of fostering its development or retarding it.
In the same way the character and career of the various races of men are determined by the potential inherent in the individuals and families that compose them, and like them the races themselves are for long periods marked by power and capacity or weakness and lack of distinction. There are certain races, such as the Hottentot, the Malay, the American Indian, and mixed bloods, as the Mexican peons and Mongol-Slavs of a portion of the southeastern Europe, that, so far as recorded history is concerned, are either static or retrogressive. There are family units, poverty-stricken and incompetent, in Naples, Canton, East Side New York; or opulent and aggressive in West Side New York, in Birmingham, Westphalia, Pittsburgh, that are no more subject to the cultural and character-creating influences of education and environment—beyond a certain definite point—than are the amphibians of Africa or the rampant weeds of my garden.
This is a hard saying and a provocative. The entire course of democratic theory, of humanitarian thought and of the popular type of scientific speculation stands against it, and the Christian religion as well, unless the statement itself is guarded by exact definitions. If the contention of the scientific materialist were correct, and the thing that makes man, and that Christians call the immortal soul, were but the result of physical processes of growth and differentiation, then slavery would be justifiable, and exploitation a reasonable and inevitable process. Since, however, this assumption of materialism is untenable, and since all men are possessed of immortal souls between which is no distinction in the sight of God, the situation, regrettable if you like, is one which at the same time calls for the exercise of a higher humanitarianism than that so popular during the last generation, and as well for a very drastic revision of contemporary political and social and educational methods.
The soul of the man is the localization of divinity; in a sense each man is a manifestation of the Incarnation. Black or white, conspicuous or obscure, intelligent or stupid, offspring of a creative race or bound by the limitations of one that is static or in process of decay, there is no difference in the universal claim to justice, charity, and opportunity. The soul of a Cantonese river-man, of a Congo slave, of an East Side Jew, is in itself as essentially precious and worth saving as the soul of a bishop, of a descendant of a Norman viking or an Irish king, or that of a volunteer soldier in the late armies of France or Great Britain or the United States.
Here lies absolute and final equality, and the State, the Law, the Church are bound to guard this equality in the one case and the other with equal force; indeed, those of the lower racial and family types claim even more faithful guardianship than those of the higher, for they can accomplish less for themselves and by themselves. But the fundamental and inescapable inequality, in intellect, in character, and in capacity, which I insist is one of the conditioning factors in life, is vociferously denied, but ruthlessly enforced, by the people that will be the first to denounce any restatement of what is after all no more than a patent fact.
A little less enthusiasm for shibboleths, and a little more intelligent regard for history and palpable conditions, will show that the assumed equality between men "on the strength of their manhood alone," the sufficiency of education for correcting the accidental differences that show themselves, and the scheme of life that is worked out along democratic lines on the basis of this essential (or potential) equality, are "fond things vainly imagined" which must be radically modified before the world can begin a sane and wholesome building-up after the great purgation of war.
That equality between men which exists by virtue of the presence in each of an immortal soul, involves an even distribution of justice and the protection of law, without distinction of persons, and an even measure of charity and compassion, but it does not involve the admission of a claim to equality of action or the denial of varied status, since race-values, both of blood and of thegensenter in to establish differences in character, in intelligence and in capacity which cannot be changed by education, environment or heredity within periods which are practical considerations with society. If we could still hold the old Darwinian dogmas of the origin of species through the struggle for existence and the survival of the fittest, and if the equally august and authoritative dogma of the transmission by inheritance of acquired characteristics were longer tenable, then perhaps we might invoke faith, hope and patience and continue our generous method of imperilling present society while we fixed our eyes on the vision of that to come when environment, education and heredity had accomplished their perfect work. Unfortunately—or perhaps fortunately—science is rapidly reconsidering its earlier and somewhat hasty conclusions, and the consensus of the most authoritative opinion seems to be that we must believe these things no longer. Failing these premises, on which we have laboured so long and so honestly and so sincerely, we are again thrown back on the testimony of history and our own observation, and with this reversal we also are bound to reconsider both our premises and the constitution of those systems and institutions we have erected on them as a foundation.
The existence of a general law does not exclude exceptions. The fact that in the case of human beings we have to take into consideration a powerful factor that does not come into play in the domain of zoölogy and botany—the immortal soul—makes impossible the drawing of exact deductions from precedents therein established. This determining touch of the divine, which is no result of biological processes, but stands outside the limitations of heredity and environment and education, may manifest itself quite as well in one class as in another, for "God is no respecter of persons." As has been said before, there is no difference in degree as between immortal souls. The point is, however, that each is linked to a specific congeries of tendencies, limitations, effective or defective agencies, that are what they have been made by the parents of the race. These may be such as enable the soul to triumph in its earthly experience and in its bodily housing; they may be such as will bring about failure and defeat. It is not that the soul builds itself "more stately mansions"; it is that these are provided for it by the physical processes of life, and it is almost the first duty of man to see that they are well built.
Again, the soul is single and personal; as it is not a plexus of inherited tendencies, so it is not heritable, and a great soul showing suddenly in the dusk of a dull race contributes nothing of its essential quality to the issue of the body it has made its house. The stews of a mill town may suddenly be illuminated by the radiance of a divine soul, to the amazement of profligate parents and the confusion of eugenists; but unless the unsolvable mystery of life has determined on a new species, and so by a sudden influx of theélan vitalcuts off the line of physical succession and establishes one that is wholly new, then the brightness dies away with the passing of the splendid soul, and the established tendencies resume their sway.
The bearing of this theory on the actions of society is immediate. Through the complete disregard of race-values that has obtained during the last two or three centuries, and the emergence and complete supremacy in all categories of life of human groups of low potential, civilization has been brought down to a level where it is threatened with disaster. If recovery is to be effected and a second era of "dark ages" avoided, there must be an entirely new evaluation of things, a new estimate of the principles and methods that obtained under Modernism, and a fearless adventure into fields that may prove not to be so unfamiliar as might at first appear.
Specifically, we must revise our attitude as to immigration, excluding whole classes, and even races, that we have hitherto welcomed with open hands from the disinterested offices of steamship companies: we must control and in some cases prohibit, the mating of various racial stocks; finally we must altogether disallow the practice of changing, by law, one race-name for another. This process is one for which no excuse exists and unless it can be brought to an end then, apart from certain physical differentiations on which nature wisely insists, we have no guaranty against the adulteration that has gone so far towards substituting the mongrel for the pure racial type, while society is bound to suffer still further deception and continued danger along the lines that have recently been indicated by the transformation of Treibitsch into "Lincoln," Braunstein into "Trotsky" and Samuels into "Montague."
For its fulfillment, then, and its regeneration, the real democracy demands and must achieve the creation and cooperation of a real aristocracy, not an aristocracy of material force either military or civil, nor one of land owners or money-getters, nor one of artificial caste. All these substitutes have been tried from time to time, in Rome, China, Great Britain, the United States, and all have failed in the end, for all have ignored the one essential point ofcharacter, without which we shall continue to reproduce what we have at present; a thing as insolent, offensive and tyrannical as the old aristocracies at their worst, with none of the constructive and beneficent qualities of the old aristocracies at their best.
That race-values have much to do with this development of character I believe to be true, but of far greater efficiency, indeed the actual motive force, is the Christian religion, working directly on and through the individual and using race as only one of its material means of operation. Democracy has accomplished its present failure, not only because it could not function without the cooperation of aristocracy, but chiefly because, in its modernist form, it has become in fact isolated from Christianity. All in it of good it derives from that Catholic Christianity of the Middle Ages which first put it into practice, all in it of evil it owes to a falling back on paganism and a denial of its own parentage and rejection of its control. I shall deal with this later in more detail; I speak of it now just for the purpose of entering a caveat against any deduction from what I have said that any natural force, of race or evolution or anything else, or any formal institution devised by man, ever has, or ever can, serve in itself as a way of social redemption. I am anxious not to overemphasize these things on which the development of my argument forces me to lay particular stress.
For those who can go with me so far, the question will arise: How then are we so to reorganize society that we may gain the end in view? It is a question not easy of solution. Granted the fact of social differentiation and the necessity of its recognition, how are we to break down the wholly wrong system that now obtains and substitute another in its place? It would be simple enough if within the period allowed us by safety (apparently not any too extended at the present moment) a working majority of men could achieve, in the old and exact phraseology, that change of heart, that spiritual conversion, that would bring back into permanent authority the supernatural virtues of faith, hope, and charity, and that sense of right values in life, which together make almost indifferent the nature of the formal devices man creates for the organization of society. Certainly this is possible; greater miracles have happened in history but, failing this, what?
One turns of course by instinct to old models, but in this is the danger of an attempt at an archaeological restoration, a futile effort at reviving dead forms that have had their day. In principle, and in the working as well, the old orders of chivalry or knighthood strongly commend themselves, for here there was, in principle, both the maintenance of high ideals of honour courtesy andnoblesse oblige,and the rendering of chivalrous service. Chesterton has put it well in the phrase "the giving things which cannot be demanded, the avoiding things which cannot be punished." Moreover, admission to the orders of knighthood was free to all provided there were that cause which came from personal character alone. Knighthood was the crown of knightly service and it was forfeited for recreancy. Is there not in this some suggestion of what may again be established as an incentive and a reward, and as well, as a vital agency for the reorganization of society?
Knighthood is personal, and is for the lifetime of the recipient. Is there any value in an estate where status is heritable? If there is any validity in the theory of varying and persistent race-values, it would seem so, yet the idea of recognizing this excellence of certain families and the reasonable probability of their maintaining the established standard unimpaired, and so giving them a formal status, would no doubt be repugnant to the vast majority of men in the United States. I think this aversion is based on prejudice, natural but ill-founded. We resent the idea of privilege without responsibility, as we should, but this, while it was the condition of those aristocracies which were operative at the time of the founding of the Republic, was opposed to the Mediaeval, or true idea, which linked responsibility with privilege. The old privilege is gone and cannot be restored, but already we have a new privilege which is being claimed and enforced by proletarian groups, and the legislative representatives of the whole people stand in such terror of massed votes that they not only fail to check this astonishing and topsy-turvy movement, but actually further its pretensions. The "dictatorship of the proletariat" actually means the restoration of privilege in a form far more tyrannical and monstrous than any ever exercised by the old aristocracies of Italy, France, Germany and England. Much recent legislation in Washington exempting certain industrial and agricultural classes from the operation of laws which bear heavily on other classes, and some of the claims and pretensions of unionized labor, tend in precisely the same direction.
It is not restoration of privilege I have in mind but rather in a sense the prevention of this through the existence of a class or estate that has a fixed status dependent first on character and service and then on an assured position that is not contingent on political favour, the bulk of votes, or the acquisition of an inordinate amount of money. Surety of position works towards independence of thought and action and towards strong leadership. It establishes and maintains certain high ideals of honour, chivalry, and service as well as of courtesy and manners. If the things for which the gentlemen, the knighthood and the nobility of Europe during the Christian dispensation were responsible were stricken from the record there would be comparatively little left of the history of European culture and civilization.
After all, is it merely sentimentalism and a sense of the picturesque that leads us to look backward with some wistfulness to the days of which the record is still left us in legends and fairy-tales and old romance, when ignorance and vulgarity did not sit in high places even if arrogance and pride and tyranny sometimes did, and when the profiteer and the oriental financier and the successful politician did not represent the distinction and the chivalry and the courtesy and the honour of the social organism man builds for his own habitation? The idea of knighthood still stirs us and the deeds of chivalry and the courtesy and the honour of the social Knights of the Round Table, Crusaders and knights errant, the quest of the Holy Grail, rescue and adventure, the fighting with paynims and powers of evil, still stir our blood and arouse in our minds strange contrasts and antinomies. Princes and fair chatelaines in their wide domains with castle and chase and delicate pleasaunce, liege-men bound to them by more than the feudal ties of service. All the varied honours of nobility, vitalized by significant ritual and symbolized by splendid and beautiful costumes. Courts of Love and troubadours and trouvères, kings who were kings indeed, with the splendour and courtesy and beneficence of their courts—Louis the Saint and Frederic II, Edward III and King Charles—above all the simple rank and high honour of the "gentleman," the representative of a long line of honourable tradition, no casual and purse-proud upstart, but of proud race and unquestioned status, proud because it stood for certain high ideals of honour and chivalry and loyalty, of courtesy and breeding and compassion. All these old things of long ago still rouse in us answering humours, and there are a few of us who can hardly see just why they are inconsistent with liberty and opportunity, justice, righteousness and mercy.
Somehow the last two generations, and especially the last ten years, have revealed many things hitherto hidden, and as we envisage society as it has come to be, estimating it by new-found standards and establishing new comparisons through a recovery of a more just historical sense, the question comes whether it is indeed more wholesome, more beautiful, more normal to man as he is, than the older society that in varying forms but always the same principle, had held throughout all history until the new model came in, now hardly a century ago.
I do not think this wistful and bewildered looking backward is particularly due to a new desire for beauty, that comeliness of condition that existed then and has now given place to gross ugliness and ill-conditioned manners and ways. Rather it seems to me it is due to a sense of irrationality and fundamental injustice in the present order, coupled with a new terror of the proximate issue as this already is revealing itself amongst many peoples. We resent the high estate, purchasable and purchased, of the cynical intriguer and the vulgar profiteer, of the tradesman in "big business," the cheap prophet and the pathetic progeny of "successful men" fast reverting to type. We know our city councils and our state legislatures and our houses of congress, we know our newspapers, their standards and the motive powers behind them, and what they record of the character and the doings of what they call "society men and women." Above all we know that under the ancient regime, in spite of manifold failures, shortcomings and disloyalty, there was such a thing as a standard of honour, a principle of chivalry, an impulse to unselfish service, a criterion of courtesy and good manners; we look for these things now in vain, except amongst those little enclaves of oblivion where the old character and old breeding still maintain a fading existence, and as we consider what we have become we sometimes wonder if the price we have paid for "democracy" was not too extortionate.
Above all, we are tempted to this query when we think of our vanishing standards of right and wrong, of our progressive reversal of values, of our diminishing stock of social character. We tore down in indignant revolt the rotten fabric of a bad social system when it had so far declined from its ideal and its former estate that it could no longer be endured, and we made a new thing, full as we were with the fire of desire for a new righteousness and a new system that would compass it. Perhaps we did well, at least we hardly could have done anything else; but now we are again in the position of our forefathers who saw things as they were and acted with force and decision. There are as many counts against our society of plutocrats, politicians and proletarians, mingled in complete and ineffective confusion, as there were against the aristocracies, so called, of the eighteenth century. Perhaps there are more, at least many of them are different, but the indictment is no less sweeping.
Our plan, so generous, so liberal, so high-minded in many ways, has failed to produce the results we desired, while it has worked itself out to the point of menace. It is for us to see these facts clearly, and so to act, and so promptly, that we may not have to await the destroying force of cataclysm for the correction of our errors.
The solution of the industrial and economic problem that now confronts the entire world with an insistence that is not to be denied, is contingent on the restoration, first of all, of the holiness and the joy of work. Labour is not a curse, it is rather one of the greatest of the earthly blessings of man, provided its sanctity is recognized and its performance is accomplished with satisfaction to the labourer. In work man creates, whether the product is a bushel of potatoes from a space of once arid ground, or whether it is the Taj Mahal, Westminster Abbey or the Constitution of the United States, and so working he partakes something of the divine power of creation.
When work is subject to slavery, all sense of its holiness is lost, both by master and bondman; when it is subject to the factory system all the joy in labour is lost. Ingenuity may devise one clever panacea after another for the salving work and for lifting the working classes from the intolerable conditions that have prevailed for more than a century; they will be ephemeral in their existence and futile in their results unless sense of holiness is restored, and the joy in production and creation given back to those who have been defrauded.
Before Christianity prevailed slavery was universal in civilized communities, labour, as conducted under that regime, was a curse, and this at length came home to roost on the gaunt wreckage of imperialism. Thereafter came slowly increasing liberty under the feudal system with its small social units and its system of production for use not profits, monasticism with its doctrine and practice of the sanctity of work, and the Church with its progressive emancipation of the spiritual part of man. Work was not easy, on the contrary it was very hard throughout the Dark Ages and Mediaevalism, but there is no particular merit in easy work. It was virtually free except for the labour and contributions in kind exacted by the over-lord (less in proportion than taxes in money have been at several times since) from the workers on the soil, and in the crafts of every kind redeemed from undue arduousness by the joy that comes from doing a thing well and producing something of beauty, originality and technical perfection.
The period during which work possessed the most honourable status and the joy in work was the greatest, extends from the beginnings of the twelfth century well into the sixteenth. In some centuries, and along certain lines of activity, it continued much longer, notably in England and the United States, but social and industrial conditions were rapidly changing, the old aristocracy was becoming perverted, Lutheranisms, Calvinism and Puritanism were breaking down the old communal sense of brotherhood so arduously built up during the Middle Ages, capitalism was ousting the trade and craft guilds of free labour and political absolutism was crushing ever lower and lower a proletariat that was fast losing the last vestiges of old liberty. The fact of slavery without the name was gradually imposed on the agricultural classes, and after the suppression of the monasteries in England work as work lost its sacred character and fell under contempt. With the outbreak of industrialism in the last quarter of the eighteenth century through the institution and introduction of "labour-saving" machinery and the consequent division of labour, the factory system, the joint-stock company and capitalism, this new slavery was extended to industrial workers, and with its establishment disappeared the element of joy in labour.
For fifty years, about the blackest half-century civilization has had to record, this condition of industrial slavery continued with little amendment. Very slowly, however, the workers themselves, championed by certain aristocrats like the seventh Earl of Shaftsbury against professional Liberals like Cobden, Bright, and Gladstone in England, began to loosen the shackles that bound them to infamous conditions, and after the abrogation of laws that made any association of workingmen a penal offense, the labour unions began to ameliorate certain of the servile conditions under which for two generations the workman had suffered. Since then the process of abolishing wage-slavery went slowly forward until at last the war came not only to threaten its destruction altogether but also to place the emancipated workers in a position where they could dictate terms and conditions to capital, to employers, to government and to the general public; while even now in many parts of Europe and America, besides Russia, overt attempts are being made to bring back the old slavery, only with the former bondsmen in supreme dictatorship, the former employers and the "bourgeoisie" in the new serfage.
The old slavery is gone, but the joy in work has not been restored; instead, those who have achieved triumphant emancipation turn from labour itself with the same distaste, yes, with greater aversion than that which obtained under the old régime. With every added liberty and exemption, with every shortening of hours and increase of pay, production per hour falls off and the quality of the output declines. What is the reason for this? Is it due to the viciousness of the worker, to his natural selfishness, greed and cruelty? I do not think so, but rather that the explanation is to be found in the fact that the industrial system of modernism has resulted in a condition where the joy has been altogether cut out of labour, and that until this state of things has been reversed and the sense of the holiness of work and the joy of working have been restored, it is useless to look for workable solutions of the labour problem. Thefactof industrial slavery has been done away with but the sense of the servile condition that attaches to work has been retained, therefore the idea of the dignity and holiness of labour has not come back any more than the old joy and satisfaction. Failing this recovery, no reorganization of industrial relations, neither profit-sharing nor shop committees, neither nationalization nor state socialism, neither the abolition of capital, nor Soviets nor syndicalism nor the dictatorship of the proletariat will get us anywhere. It is all a waste of time, and, through its ultimate failure and disappointments, an intensification of an industrial disease.
Why is it that this is so? For an answer I must probe deep and, it may seem, cut wildly. I believe it is because we have built up a system that goes far outside the limits of human scale, transcends human capacity, is forbidden by the laws and conditions of life, and must be abrogated if it is not to destroy itself and civilization in the process.
What, precisely has taken place? Late in the eighteenth century two things happened; the discovery of the potential inherent in coal and its derivative, steam, with electricity yet unexploited but ready to hand, and the application of this to industrial purposes, together with the initiating of a long and astounding series of discoveries and inventions all applicable to industrial purposes. With a sort of vertiginous rapidity the whole industrial process was transformed from what it had been during the period of recorded history; steam and machinery took the place of brain and hand power directly applied, and a revolution greater than any other was effected.
The new devices were hailed as "labour-saving" but they vastly increased labour both in hours of work and in hands employed. Bulk production through the factory system was inevitable, the result being an enormous surplus over the normal and local demand. To organize and conduct these processes of bulk-production required money greater in amount than individuals could furnish; so grew up capitalism, the joint-stock company, credit and cosmopolitan finance. To produce profits and dividends markets must be found for the huge surplus product. This was accomplished by stimulating the covetousness of people for things they had not thought of, under normal conditions would not, in many cases, need, and very likely would be happier without, and in "dumping" on supposedly barbarous peoples in remote parts of the world, articles alien to their traditions and their mode of life and generally pestiferous in their influence and results. So came advertising in all its branches, direct and indirect, from the newspaper and the bill-board to the drummer, the diplomatic representative and the commercial missionary.
Every year saw some new invention that increased the product per man, the development of some new advertising device, the conquest of some new territory or the delimitation of some new "sphere of influence," and the revelation of some new possibility in the covetousness of man. Profits rose to new heights and accumulating dividends clamoured for new opportunities for investment. Competition tended to cut down returns, therefore labour was more and more sustained through diminished wages and laws that savagely prevented any concerted effort towards self-defense. Improvements in agricultural processes and the application of machinery and steam power, together with bulk-production and scientific localization of crops, threw great quantities of farm-labourers out of work and drove them into the industrial towns, while advances in medical science and in sanitation raised the proportion of births to deaths and soon provided a surplus of potential labour so that the operation of the "law of supply and demand," extolled by a new philosophy and enforced by the new "representative" or democratic and parliamentary government, resulted in an unfailing supply of cheap labour paid wages just beyond the limit of starvation.
At last there came evidences that the limit had been reached; the whole world had been opened up and pre-empted, labour was beginning to demand and even get more adequate wages, competition, once hailed as "the life of trade" was becoming so fierce that dividends were dwindling. Something had to be done and in self-defense industries began to coalesce in enormous "trusts" and "combines" and monopolies. Capitalization of millions now ran into billions, finance became international in its scope and gargantuan in its proportions and ominousness, advertising grew from its original simplicity and naïveté into a vast industry based on all that the most ingenious professors could tell of applied psychology, subsidizing artists, poets, men of letters, employing armies of men along a hundred different lines, expending millions annually in its operations, making the modern newspaper possible, and ultimately developing the whole system of propaganda which has now become the one great determining factor in the making of public opinion.
When the twentieth century opened, that industrialism which had begun just a century before, had, with its various collateral developments, financial, educational, journalistic, etc., become not only the greatest force in society, but as well a thing operating on the largest scale that man had ever essayed: beside it the Roman Empire was parochial.
The result of this institution, conceived on such imperial lines, was, in the field we are now considering, the total destruction of the sense of the holiness of labour and of joy in work. It extended far beyond the limits of pure industrialism; it moulded and controlled society in all its forms, destroying ideals old as history, reversing values, confusing issues and wrecking man's powers of judgment. Until the war it seemed irresistible, now its weakness and the fallacy of its assumptions are revealed, but it has become so absolutely a part of our life, indeed of our nature, that we are unable to estimate it by any sound standards of judgment, and even when we approximate this we cannot think in other terms when we try to devise our schemes of redemption. Even the socialist and the Bolshevik think in imperial terms when they try to compass the ending of imperialism.
Under this supreme system, as I see it, the two essential things I have spoken of cannot be restored, nor could they maintain themselves if, by some miracle, they were once re-established. The indictment cannot be closed here. The actual condition that has developed from industrialism presents certain factors that are not consonant with sane, wholesome and Christian living. Not only has the unit of human scale in human society been done away with, not only have the sense of the nobility of work and joy in the doing been exterminated, but, as well, certain absolutely false principles and methods have been adopted which are not susceptible of reform but only of abolition.
Of some of these I have spoken already; the alarming drift towards cities, until now in the United States more than one-half the population is urban; the segregation of industries in certain cities and regions; the minute division of labour and intensive specialization; the abnormal growth of a true proletariat or non-land-holding class; the flooding of the country by cheap labour drawn from the most backward communities and from peoples of low race-value. Out of this has arisen a bitter class conflict and the ominous beginnings of a perilous class consciousness, with actual warfare joined in several countries, and threatened in all others where industrial civilization is prevalent. With this has grown up an artificially stimulated covetousness for a thousand futile luxuries, and a standard of living that presupposes a thousand non-essentials as basic necessities. Production for profit, not use, excess production due to machinery, efficient organization, and surplus of labour, together with the necessity for marketing the product at a profit, have produced a state of things where at least one-half the available labour in the country is engaged in the production and sale of articles which are not necessary to physical, intellectual or spiritual life, while of the remainder, hardly more than a half is employed in production, the others are devoting themselves to distribution and to the war of competition through advertising and the capturing of trade by ingenious and capable salesmen. It is a significant fact that two of the greatest industries in the United States are the making of automobiles and moving pictures.
It is probably true to say that of the potential labour in the United States, about one-fourth is producing those things which are physically, intellectually and spiritually necessary; the remaining three-fourths are essentially non-producers: they must, however, be housed, fed, clothed, and amused, and the cost of this support is added to the cost of the necessities of life. The reason for the present high cost of living lies possibly here.
Lest I be misunderstood, let me say here that under the head of necessities of life I do not mean a new model automobile each year, moving pictures, mechanical substitutes for music or any other art, and the thousand catch-trade devices that appear each year for the purpose of filching business from another or establishing a new desire in the already over-crowded imaginations of an over-stimulated populace. Particularly do I not mean advertising in any sense in which it is now understood and practised. If, as I believe to be the case, production for profit, rather than for use, the reversal of the ancient doctrine that the demand must produce the supply, in favour of the doctrine that the supply must foster the demand, is the foundation of our economic error and our industrial ills, then it follows that advertising as it is now carried on by billboards, circulars and newspapers, by drummers, solicitors and consular agents, falls in the same condemnation, for except by its offices the system could not have succeeded or continue to function. It is bad in itself as the support and strength of a bad institution, but its guilt does not stop here. So plausible is it, so essential to the very existence of the contemporary régime, so knit up with all the commonest affairs of life, so powerful in its organization and broad in its operations, it has poisoned, and continues to poison, the minds of men so that the headlong process of losing all sense of comparative values is accelerated, while every instinctive effort at recovery and readjustment is nullified. How far this process has gone may be illustrated by two instances. It is only a few months ago that a most respected clergyman publicly declared that missionaries were the greatest and most efficient asset to trade because they were unofficial commercial agents who opened up new and savage countries to Western commerce through advertising commodities of which the natives had never heard, and arousing in them a sense of acquisitiveness that meant more wealth and business for trade and manufacture, which should support foreign missions on this ground at least. More recently the head of an advertising concern in New York is reported to have said: "It is principally through advertising that we have arrived at the high degree of civilization which this age enjoys, for advertising has taught us the use of books and how to furnish our homes with the thousand and one comforts that add so materially to our physical and intellectual well-being. The future of the world depends on advertising. Advertising is the salvation of civilization, for civilization cannot outlive advertising a century."
It is tempting to linger over such a delectable morsel as this, for even if it is only the absurd and irresponsible output of one poor, foolish man, it does express more or less what industrial civilization holds to be true, though few would avow their faith so whole-heartedly. The statement was made as propaganda, and propaganda is merely advertising in its most insidious and dangerous form. The thing revealed its possibilities during the war, but the black discredit that was then very justly attached to it could not prevail against its manifest potency, and it is now universally used after the most comprehensive and frequently unscrupulous fashion, with results that can only be perilous in the extreme. The type and calibre of mind that has now been released from long bondage, and by weight of numbers is now fast taking over the direction of affairs, is curiously subservient to the written word, and lacking a true sense of comparative values, without effective leadership either secular or religious, is easily swayed by every wind of doctrine. The forces of evil that are ever in conflict with the forces of right are notoriously ingenious in making the worse appear the better cause, and with every desire for illumination and for following the right way, the multitude, whether educated or illiterate, fall into the falsehoods of others' imaginings. Money, efficiency, an acquired knowledge of mob psychology, the printing press and the mail service acting in alliance, and directed by fanatical or cynical energy, form a force of enormous potency that is now being used effectively throughout society. It is irresponsible, anonymous and pervasive. Through its operation the last barriers are broken down between the leadership of character and the leadership of craft, while all formal distinctions between the valuable and the valueless are swept away.