There is no reason why the present system of education should be much changed in a coöperative commonwealth. In its nature it would remain very much the same and would only be extended in time; that is, all children who show themselves capable of profiting by education will have the opportunity of extending their education as far as their abilities justify. Education need by no means be confined to the state. There is no reason why the existing universities should not continue their work of education even though they be maintained by Rockefellers and Carnegies, and throw all their weight in support of the competitive system against thecoöperative. Socialism stands for light, and if at any period in its development it turns out that the community is not fitted for the phase of Socialism which it has attempted, it may be important to correct the perfunctoriness of official administration by a larger dose of private initiative; and in such case let privately endowed schools and universities be there to preach this doctrine.
Nor need there be any objection to sectarian schools. Once the human mind is freed from the shackles of economic servitude, it can be trusted to choose its religion, whether educated by sectarian schools or not.
The essential difference between the educational system in a coöperative commonwealth and under existing conditions will be that, inasmuch as child labor in competitive industries will be absolutely forbidden, no child will be deprived of education by economic conditions. Every child, therefore, will have an equal opportunity for mental development.
And the fact that the hours of work will be shorter will give to every human being leisure throughout his his entire life in which to develop talents of which no trace may be observable during attendance at school or university. The coöperative commonwealth, therefore, without changing the existing forms of education, will furnish to every man, woman, and child an opportunity for educational development during the whole of life instead of confining it as now to the very first few years of it.
It is important to note that, under this system, every industry will be free to work as few hours as it chooses, subject only to the condition of working long enough to pay taxes, to furnish the minimum required by the state, and to create a fund to provide for sickness, accident, and old age.
Citizens in this respect will divide themselves into different categories:
Some will want to work the least possible and devote the rest of their time to idleness or pleasure. Others will want to work at the particular industries in which they are engaged the least possible and devote the rest of their time to such things as will more interest them—to literature, art, music, or even to some other industry—even to industries competing with the state. Others, instead of working the short hours required in a coöperative commonwealth, will prefer to work long hours so as to have a longer vacation than that enjoyed by the majority; others, on the contrary, will prefer to work long hours at the industry to which they belong, not with a view to earning a longer vacation, but for the purpose of earning more wages applicable to the increase of their comforts, luxuries, and amusements.
It would not be difficult for every industry to take account of these various contingencies: A certain number of hours those engaged in a particular industry will have to work, but they will be far shorter than the hours of to-day. Those who volunteer to work longer hours will be allowed to work longer hours. The work of the factory will naturally be divided into two shifts: the one, a morning shift; and the other, an afternoon shift, so that one shift can put in all their work in the morning and the other in the afternoon. Who shall work in each shift will be determined primarily by choice and, wherever choice cannot be resorted to, by lot.
Such a condition of things as the foregoing would give to every industry the greatest opportunity for transfer from one industry to another. One who desired to exchange steel working for garment making, could work during the morning shift at the steel trade and during theafternoon shift at the garment trade; and when he had become proficient in the garment trade, he would be able to abandon the steel trade altogether and devote all his working hours to garment making.
Still more important, the system would give an opportunity to every man to develop his peculiar talents, however late in life. It is well known that men of genius often show no trace of their genius at school. It is impossible to calculate how much human ability is lost to the race by the fact that, not being observable in the few school years during which children are subject to observation, it is crushed out altogether in the competitive mill. The fact that the number of hours we have to work in a coöperative commonwealth would be small, would give to every man the rest of the day in which to develop his undeveloped talents.
There is no reason why churches should not be supported in a coöperative commonwealth under exactly the same conditions as to-day. It is probable, however, that there will be a tendency to modify public worship so as to render it less subject to obvious objections than to-day.
At the present time, children animated with a desire to preach are encouraged to join the ministry; and it sometimes happens that men of vast business and political experience are made by the convention of respectability to sit every Sabbath Day under a boy in the pulpit reading crude theological essays. Few men are equipped in a manner usefully to instruct or advise their fellow creatures in matters so intimate as those of religion until they have attained years which, while they unfit them forthe hard work of industrial life, do by accumulated experience peculiarly fit them for the work of the pulpit.
The divinity school and the divinity student will tend to diminish and our pulpits will be filled by men who have shown themselves during fifty or sixty years of active work in the community to be best fitted to fill them. And these men, having at that age earned a retiring pension, will not be at the expense of the community nor will they be required by economic conditions as at present, to preach doctrines as to the truth of which some are in doubt and others absolutely disbelieve.
Let us see now whether we can come to some conclusion regarding the political construction of government under a coöperative commonwealth. The idea prevails that Socialism involves an extreme centralization of government. This, however, is quite contrary to modern notions of Socialism. Indeed, in one sense of the word, Socialism upon the plan already proposed would deprive the federal government of much of its power. Nor do I see any reason why our present federal form of government should be materially changed. For example, the present state governments would be maintained with practically all the rights they now enjoy, and the federal government would continue to operate with less than the enumerated powers given it by our present constitution. For example, instead of having as at present the right to regulate commerce, to coin money, and to make patent laws, these powers would be delegated to the industrial parliament subject only to the approval of Congress. And although the title of all such properties as railroads, mines, etc., would be vested in the United States, theeffectual control and administration of these properties would be left to the industrial parliament, so that real power as regards these matters would be exercised not by the federal government, but by the industrial parliament, elected not upon the geographical basis of Congress, but by the industries respectively wheresoever situated, as explained in the previous chapter.[197]
It would be well to give the right of appeal to Congress because the industrial parliament would consist of producers and each would have an interest in securing for his industry the largest price possible. It may be feared that a few powerful industries might, by the number of votes they control in the chamber elected proportionately to numbers, secure for itself privileges not fair to other industries. This power would be restrained by the fact that the other chamber, elected according to industries, not numbers, would exercise a wholesome check upon any such attempt, and an appeal to Congress may therefore not be necessary. Nevertheless, Congress would represent the whole mass of the nation and would be, as it were, the consumers' parliament in its relation to the industrial parliament. And it would seem proper to give to Congress the right to reconsider and discuss all new departures in connection with the business of the country, not only out of consideration of the rights of consumers, but also for the dignity of Congress.
What under these circumstances would be the special functions of Congress? Congress would continue to exercise the powers it now exercises as regards collecting taxes, establishing rules of naturalization, providing for the punishment of counterfeiting, establishing postoffices and postroads, organizing federal courts, punishing piracies and felonies committed on the high seas, and offencesagainst the law of nations, declaring war, and providing for and maintaining the army, navy, and militia.
The States would enjoy all the rights they now enjoy as regards the federal government; but the cities would enjoy much larger powers of government than they now do. There seems to be no reason why the question whether the city of New York should own its own subway should be referred to farmers sitting in Albany, who have no interest and little, if any, knowledge of the needs and resources of the city of New York. It is probable, therefore, that on the whole the effect of Socialism would be to decentralize rather than to centralize.
The parties in a coöperative commonwealth would probably be determined by the main issue between coöperation and competition, and we find here a reason for leaving to Congress the last word as regards the decisions of the industrial parliament. For the latter would be a parliament of coöperative industries and disposed, in protecting these industries, to perpetually invade the territory of competition. So long as humanity needs the stimulus of competition, it is essential that this element be fairly represented in the political organization of the state. All measures tending to restrain competition ought therefore to be subject to the approval of the whole nation represented in Congress.
One principal bourgeois objection to Socialism is that, under competitive conditions the men best fitted to run an enterprise are those to whom business enterprises are to-day confided upon the principle of the survival of the fittest; whereas under a coöperative commonwealth, the selection of those who are to manage industries must be left to the doubtful intrigues of politics. This objection cannot be seriously taken into consideration. There is probably nothing more difficult for the bourgeois tounderstand than the difference that would exist between the politics of a coöperative and those of a competitive commonwealth. In the latter, the field of politics is inevitably a cesspool of corruption, because every business man has something to lose or gain through politics. The tariff law just enacted presents one of the most recent illustrations of this. Not only so, but the men appointed to office and elected to Congress in our competitive commonwealth are selected by business interests, and not appointed because of special fitness for the task.
In a coöperative commonwealth this situation would be reversed. When all our comforts in life and the necessaries of existence are furnished by our municipalities and our guilds, the management of these municipalities and guilds will be of the utmost importance to every one of us. Our citizens, instead of being interested in bad government, will become interested in good government, in good management and in good administration. Here the public will benefit by the power of recall which, though it may work very imperfectly under competitive, ought to work well under coöperative conditions. For every man is interested in his municipal bakery furnishing good bread, his municipal gas plant furnishing good gas; and citizens will be so deeply interested in matters that touch them as nearly as this that they will not be influenced by political cabals to put in a bad man as superintendent of the municipal bakery, or to replace a good one by a bad one for purely political reasons.
One reason why our politics are bad to-day is that hardly any of us have time to give to making them good even if we wanted them good. The workingman who works ten or more hours in the factory and travels two or more hours to reach his work in the morning and return home when his work is done, can hardly have muchvitality left to attend to politics. Indeed, the complaint of the trade unions is that he has not vitality enough left to attend to matters so important to him as those of his own trade union. But when the workingman in the first place is thoroughly trained by an education that will last not less than eighteen years—when he is not called upon to work more than four or five hours a day, he will have the knowledge necessary to understand his political needs, and the leisure to organize political movements when necessary to remove a bad administrator and put a good administrator in his place.
Indeed, popular government is impossible under capitalism for the reasons just stated; those of us who want good government have not the time to secure it. Popular government is only possible when the people are sufficiently educated to understand their rights and have leisure enough to organize with a view to enforcing them.
In the foregoing two chapters entitled, respectively, The Economic Construction of the Coöperative Commonwealth, and The Political Aspect of Socialism, I have endeavored to draw a picture of a coöperative commonwealth in which capitalism is eliminated from the production and distribution of all the necessaries and many of the comforts of life; leaving, however, full play to the existing competitive system as regards the luxuries, some of its comforts, and even as regards necessaries wherever the coöperative commonwealth fails to do its work up to the standard of taste of the community.
This picture has been drawn not because it is possible at this time to forecast exactly what this economic and political construction will be, but because many persons find it impossible to form to themselves any idea how things can be produced and distributed without the help of capitalism. No more is claimed for these chaptersthan that they do present a scheme by means of which necessaries and many comforts can be produced and distributed without the evils of capitalism, of unemployment, of pauperism, of prostitution, and of economic crime.
Obviously, the two foregoing chapters suggest a thousand questions to an inquiring mind, but I hope that the missing details cannot be classed amongst those details which Gladstone characterized as organic. In other words, I hope that they present a picture giving sufficient details to make it clear that Socialism, as regards the production and distribution of the necessaries and most of the comforts of life, is not only beneficial, but practical and economical; that, in a word, it puts an end to the waste and the anarchy which jointly characterize the capitalistic system of to-day.
[196]Book III, Chapter II.
[196]Book III, Chapter II.
[197]Book III, Chapter II.
[197]Book III, Chapter II.
Herbert Spencer has contributed more than any other modern writer to emphasize the effect of environment upon life, whether vegetable, animal, or human; yet, singularly enough, in applying his scientific conclusions to sociology, he entirely failed to take account of the essential difference which exists between natural environment and human environment; between the effect of evolution upon life prior to the advent of man, and its effect upon life subsequent to the advent of man. He applied to human development the laws of evolution which he found working prior to man, though man has reversed the natural process of development so that evolution, under the environment created by man, is taking and must continue to take a direction entirely opposite to that which it took under the dominion of Nature alone. Into what errors Mr. Spencer was led by his failure to recognize the difference between human and animal evolution may be gathered from the fact that he denounced governmental effort to prevent disease as "sanitary dictation";[198]he denounced also municipal ownership of gas and water, the building by the state of houses for the poor, free libraries, free local museums, free education, and generally all that he includes in the expression "coercive philanthropy."[199]
He assumed that the predatory system which he saw prevailing in the domain of Nature must prevail also in the domain of Man; and thus became an apostle oflaissez faireand of the competitive system. As such he advocated the utmost limitation of state interference and opposed the Socialistic trend of modern legislation on the ground that man is, as it were, doomed to perfection by the principles of evolution, and that any effort of his to modify evolution can only result in retarding it. He was led by the analogy between society and organism into the theory that human institutions must be allowed to grow as organismsgrow, and that efforts on the part of man to construct his own institutions produce more evil than good.
Mr. Huxley demolished the whole sociological structure which Herbert Spencer built up on these errors in three essays, to which the reader is referred.[200]The subject is also fully treated in the first volume of "Government or Human Evolution."[201]The effort will be made here to condense the argument and conclusions therein drawn by a short study of environment—natural and human—with a view to demonstrating the control which man has acquired over his environment and thereby over his ultimate destiny. This leads to a study of the effect of the competitive and coöperative systems on type respectively, how far society is a growth and how far a construction, and how far human nature can be modified by the conscious, deliberate purpose of Man; all this to demonstrate that human happiness can be best attained by substituting coöperation for competition to the extent necessary to put an end to the evils resulting from the competition of to-day,without for that reason eliminating wholesome competition altogether.
There are two kinds of environment: the environment we find in Nature, and the environment made by Man.
We shall study first the environment of Nature, and begin by distinguishing therein two systems: the competitive, or so-called struggle for life; and the coöperative or community system; confining ourselves to facts observed in Nature prior to or outside of the intervention of Man.
Beasts of the field are necessary products of their environment.
The study of the crust of the earth reveals that upon the central mass there have been laid layer upon layer of sand, clay, and limestone by successive seas, which have successively rested on now buried continents. Nearly every layer contains fragments of shell, scale, or bone belonging to the beasts that have succeeded to one another upon the earth during millions of years.
These layers of sand, clay, and limestone are the leaves of a gigantic book, the earliest of which are burned by fire, the next scarred by it, and the most recent illustrated by pictures so vivid that we can read the story there of the development of Man from the lowest of all forms of life.
The rocks are charts painted by the hand of Nature herself.
In these charts we read the story of Evolution. We learn the geography of the world millions of years beforethe age of history; we know that this land upon which we live has not only once, but often been sunk beneath a deep sea; that during the earliest period of which there is any record unburned, there was no living thing more highly organized than a crab; not a fish nor any animal possessing the backbone that distinguishes the vertebrates to which Man belongs from the invertebrates to which belong the lowest kinds of living thing. We know that later the whole face of the world was changed, and then followed a warm period called Carboniferous, and that just before and during this Carboniferous period there slowly developed fish possessing the backbone that marks one of the great strides in animal development. But at this time we see no trace of the four-footed mammalia which immediately preceded Man.
In the marshes in which forests grew and died during the Carboniferous period, there were piled, one upon another, layers of vegetation that hardened into coal; this coal sank slowly beneath a deepening sea. In this so-called cretaceous sea were deposited, in its deepest parts, huge masses of chalk accumulated from countless shells; and upon its shores crept four-footed things resembling fish, as the seal and the sea-lion resemble them to-day, closely allied to them and clearly developed from them, as if fish stranded upon the shallows had used their fins for motion upon the banks, and out of fins made legs. And from the gigantic lizards of the cretaceous period we find in the overlying tertiary beds the infinite variety of four-legged animals which people our continents to-day.
All this knowledge, full of profound interest to the student of Man, comes from a study of the earth—Geology.
And next comes Zoölogy, telling how this amazingdevelopment of life from lower to higher forms proceeded. For centuries Man studied the living things on the earth, and added fact to fact till at last, a few years ago, Darwin, Wallace, and others demonstrated the law according to which this development takes place, the law of Evolution.
Briefly it is this:
All living things prior to the advent of Man tended to adapt themselves to their environment by the process known as the survival of the fit. Only those animals fit to survive, survived; all the rest perished. When there was a change of environment, as, for example, of climate, only those individuals survived that were capable of adapting themselves to this change.
The process by which animals adapt themselves to changes of environment is as follows:
There is in every new generation of animals an infinite variety; some differ enough from the rest to be called "sports." These differences are transmitted to future generations by heredity. Men have used these differences to create types of animals suited to their purpose. Thus by putting stallions built for speed to mares similarly built, Man has produced the race-horse. On the contrary, by putting stallions built for drawing loads to mares similarly built, Man has produced the cart-horse.
Before the advent of man this selection of types was made by the environment or by Nature, as the environment used to be called. Hence the expression, natural selection, is used to describe the process by which Nature or environment selects certain types for survival at the expense of the rest; the process by which animals that live in the desert gradually adapt themselves to endure great heat; and those that live near the Poles gradually adapt themselves to endure great cold.
The environment or Nature uses in this process ofselection a very cruel but effectual device: A great many more living things are born into the world than the world can support. In the lower forms of life Nature is wastefully fertile; thousands of herrings' eggs are laid for one herring that grows to maturity. This amazing fertility of Nature results in a struggle for life which condemns the enormous majority of living things born into the world to an early death, but has the singular advantage of allowing only the types most fitted to the environment to survive. And this process of natural selection acting in an environment favorable to development from a lower to a higher type has gradually caused the lowest forms of life, which consist of a mere sac of so-called protoplasm, to develop organs especially adapted to accomplish specific things: a mouth to take in food; a stomach to digest it; bowels to assimilate it; a system of circulation—arms and legs; a nervous system; a brain; ears; a nose; eyes; until at last, in the order of creation as demonstrated in the great Book of the Rocks, and as confirmed by zoölogy and other sciences, Man has evolved out of the original protoplasmic sac.
Who created the first protoplasmic sac; why this cruel system was invented by which life was ordered to pass through millions of sacrificed and suffering bodies before it could emerge into the least imperfect form; why Man to-day must suffer still in the progress which he is destined to make from his present to a still higher form—these are queries which it is not given us yet to answer. But that this process has taken place at the cost of great agony and during millions of years, is a fact which no man who has studied the face of Nature can deny.
If we want to learn the art of happiness—for in spite of the process just described there is nevertheless an artof happiness—we must understand the processes of Nature. It is only by understanding the processes of Nature that we can ever hope to modify them.
And it is here that we come to the first great lesson we have to learn from a study of Evolution:
Man has already modified the processes of Nature in the past, and he can doubtless still further modify them in the time to come.
But before we undertake to study how far Man has modified, and may still modify, the cruel process of natural selection, there is another process observable in Nature to which we must direct our most earnest attention.
It is a common error to suppose that because Man has developed from a lower form of life through a process of struggle for survival that favors a few types at the expense of millions of other forms condemned by this struggle to suffering and death, therefore it is only by this same struggle that Man can hope to attain a higher form of development. This is the error that approves the competitive system and the resulting classification of men into a few rich and many poor. It is because the question as to the merits and demerits of the competitive system rests upon the principles of evolution, that it is indispensable for all who want to understand the competitive system also to understand the principles of evolution. For those who deny the force of competition altogether are as wrong as the millionaires who base their argument in favor of the competitive system upon the law of evolution.
We cannot neglect the argument drawn from the struggle for life involved in natural selection. Until we have shown that there is something better than this struggle that can be put in its place, we have left to themillionaires the vantage-ground, from which they can quiet the conscience of the world. Thousands of our fellow-creatures who are separated from us by the accident of wealth would come to our side were they not sincerely convinced that poverty, pauperism, and crime are necessary evils, belonging to the cosmic principles of evolution through which Man has attained his existing dominion, and through which he may hope, though not without infinite patience and agony, ultimately to reach a still higher station.
This error must be removed, and it can only be removed by sober argument. Temper will not do it; nor indignation; nor vituperation; nor hate. The plain facts, if properly marshalled, are sufficient to prove the error of the notion that competition is a necessary evil, and that society cannot exist without unlimited competition, and the poverty, pauperism, and crime that result therefrom. The first of these facts is that by the side of the competitive system just described, there is in Nature also a coöperative system almost as highly developed as the competitive system and destined eventually almost to take its place.
We have seen that the struggle for life has had for effect to permit only those forms of life to survive that adapted themselves to the environment, and that when the environment was favorable to development, this tendency of the fit to survive at the expense of the less fit caused an evolution from lower to higher forms of life. The effect of this tendency in the higher forms of life has been to create two opposite types—the carnivores, who became more skilful in tracking game, and morepowerful in destroying it; and the herbivores, the natural prey of the carnivores, who became more swift in escaping their pursuers. Now the herbivores, conscious of their weakness, early developed the instinct to herd for the purpose of common defence. The fierce carnivore, on the contrary, is prevented by his natural ferocity from herding. He tends to become solitary. Lions and tigers are solitary animals; whereas sheep, goats, horses, and cattle herd. This tendency to herd tends to develop in proportion as an animal is weak; so that it is in insects that we find the herding instinct most perfectly developed, and certain colonies of ants and bees present a picture of coöperation to which the attention of millionaires cannot be too strenuously directed.
Let it be said at the outset that these colonies are not offered as models for us to imitate. On the contrary there are many features in these colonies which we ought diligently to avoid. But just as there are features in the competitive system that are good and some that are atrociously bad, so there are features in the colony system that are bad and some that are altogether good. It will later on appear thatthe essential privilege of Man is to be able to choose the good of both and eschew the bad.
A beehive is a city of bees built by the entire community for its common use. This community consists for the most part of barren females who do all the hard work, and are therefore commonly called the workers; they build the comb, and add to it as the community enlarges; they attend on the queen bee—the only fertile female allowed to survive; they feed her, and act the part of midwife to her when she lays her eggs; they see to the hatching of the eggs, and by crowding about them provide them with the necessary temperature; when the eggs are hatched, the workers feed the young onesdifferently so as to produce a few fertile females to play the rôle of queen should the throne become vacant, a large number of males to be utilized when the nuptial hour arrives, and a larger number still of barren females to continue the work of the community; the workers collect honey from the flowers in the summer and store it away for common use during the cold season; they determine which of the fertile females is to be impregnated and become their queen; she is liberated on her wedding-day, and in a summer flight, pursued by the males, conceives. Then she returns to the comb, and is let loose upon the other fertile females in the comb, and watched as she stings her possible rivals to death one by one. Few males return from the nuptial flight; one only of them weds, and he perishes in the act; the others perish without wedding, or if they have strength to return to the comb, are despatched by the workers watching at the entrance to perform the execution.
It is impossible to conceive a more complete system of coöperation or communism than this, or one which so little conforms to our notions of justice or welfare. Indeed, it is probable that from a human point of view the tiger in the jungle attains a greater measure of happiness than any member of a bee community; for the workers seem to labor without reward; of the males only one weds, and he perishes in the act; and the queen herself is kept a close prisoner during her entire existence, save only during the brief ecstasy of the nuptial flight.
The lesson to be learned from insect communities seems then to be, not that coöperation in a natural environment results in the maximum of happiness, but merely that coöperation is as much a part of Nature's plan as competition, and that therefore the coöperative system is as available to man as the competitive. Theproblem before man is how to take the best of both systems, and eliminate the bad.
But there is a further lesson to be drawn from the singular customs that prevail in the hive and in the ants' nest:
In both, the entire energies of all seem concentrated upon two problems—the support of the community, and its perpetuation; and as these two problems are identically the same as those by which men are confronted, the systems adopted to solve them cannot but be of absorbing interest to Man.
Nature or environment follows two diverging lines in animal development. Along one line she seeks the perfection of the individual; along the other the perfection of the community. But the ideal of perfection presented by Nature is not Justice or Morality; it isperpetuation, for perpetuation is the prize offered to the most fit types in the struggle for survival. And there are obviously two ways in which types can succeed in this struggle—one by individual excellence, and another by sexual jealousy. And this sexual jealousy must be eliminated from a community if its members are to live in permanent harmony together. The scheme adopted by Nature in the beehive to eliminate sexual jealousy is radical and cruel, but effectual.
Obviously, the community system proceeds with reckless disregard of the individual; the destruction of all the fertile females save the single queen and of all the male sex; the singular fact that the sting cannot be used save at the cost of the life of the individual using it; the enforced chastity of the workers—all prove that Nature's plan for securing the welfare of the community is to sacrifice thereto the happiness and the lives of the individuals that constitute it.
Obviously, Man must find some better solution of this problem than ants and bees. How Man has at various periods attempted to solve it we shall study later. But before leaving natural environment, we have a lesson to learn from the moral qualities which the two lines of divergence have respectively developed—the qualities of the solitary carnivore and those of the communistic bee.
We may be helped by observing the habits of herding animals that are neither so fierce as the lion nor so servile as the ant. For although it has of late been the fashion to justify our existing capitalistic system by exaggerating the extent to which competition exists in Nature, careful study reveals that though competition does prevail between different species, it is the exception rather than the rule between individuals of the same species. Nature has proceeded along two lines of development: one of mutual struggle, and another of mutual aid. Thus we find even carnivora, such as the hyena and the wolf, herding for the purpose of the chase; even foxes and bears have been seen to herd; eagles, kites, and pelicans notoriously associate to this end. Practically all herbivora herd more or less permanently, the permanence of the herd depending apparently upon the mildness or the ferocity of the sexual instinct. In the case of the elk, the stag, the bull, and the horse, that fight for the female, and prevent the weak from perpetuating the race, the herd breaks up into groups during the rutting season; whereas, in the case of apes and monkeys that herd, the herd remains permanent.
Too little is known about the sexual relations of such animals as herd permanently for any certain conclusions to be drawn from them, but it can be said without fear of contradiction that Nature has succeeded best through the combination of strength, selfishness, and ferocity onthe one hand, and that of intelligence, altruism,[202]and servility on the other; for it is the lion and the tiger that dominate the jungles of Asia; in Africa and South America it is the white ant.
These considerations lead us to conclusions of great importance, for they enable us to trace the development of certain habits or instincts, which, when we find them developed in Man, become lifted into virtues or vices according to their nature and intensity. Thus solitude imposes upon solitary animals habits of selfishness and self-reliance; the tiger has no one to look to but himself for the satisfaction of the two great animal needs—food and self-perpetuation; he is the Ishmaelite of the animal kingdom; his hand is against everyone and everyone's hand is against him. Whereas, community life imposes upon the ant habits of docility and altruism; she works not for herself, but for her neighbors; she is a natural slave, but a slave to a useful end—the common weal of all.
To sum up: Natural environment has operated on animal life through the principle of evolution or survival of the fittest in such a manner as to develop physical organs and instinctive habits, both of which seem to be necessary results. These physical organs and instinctive habits depend for their nature and excellence upon two parallel systems:
According to one, the struggle for life has taken placenot only between one species and another, but also between individuals of the same species; this has resulted in individual excellence, as in the case of the lion and the tiger; and has developed habits of selfishness, self-reliance and ferocity. According to the other, the struggle for life has taken place mainly between one group and another, and hardly at all between individuals of the same group, but both the lives and the happiness of the individual are recklessly sacrificed to it; this has resulted in collective excellence at the expense of the individual; and has developed habits of docility and altruism.
In the former, or competitive system, there is the greatest individual freedom of action and the greatest individual satisfaction of animal propensities, but there is the greatest individual risk, the few survive at the expense of the many, and there is little or no social satisfaction.
In the latter, or coöperative system, there is less individual freedom, less satisfaction of animal propensities (indeed, sexual appetite is left unsatisfied for all except one individual of each sex, and at the expense of personal liberty for the female and for the male of life itself), but there is least individual risk for the workers, and most social satisfaction.
Intermediate systems partake of both the competitive and coöperative plan, none of the intermediate systems, however, leading to supremacy, and some of them resulting in degeneracy.
Such are the results of the unconscious action of natural environment on living things.
We are now in a position to study the actual and possible results of the conscious action of an artificial environment on Man.
Before studying the possible effects upon Man of an artificial environment, consciously and deliberately created by him with the definite purpose of attaining the maximum of human perfection and happiness, we must be clear as to the actual effects upon man of the artificial environment in which he finds himself. And first we must give its full value to the fact that the environment in which we live is in great part artificial, that it is the product not of Nature only, but also of Art.
We have seen that the lower animals, prior to the advent of Man, were the necessary product of the natural environment. We have now to study how Man has modified the face of the world, as regards them and himself, by the application thereto of Art.
The most obvious and striking change effected by Art on human life is in relation to climate.
There is geologic evidence that the forefathers of Man in what is called the Miocene Period, while not so intellectual as Man, were of a far higher type than any living ape; the head, for example, indicates a superior structure.[203]Now, the Miocene Period was exceptionally warm. The bones of the so-called troglodytes are found in the caves of the Dordogne with other vegetable and animal remains that indicate a tropical temperature. This was followed by the glacial epoch, which substituted for tropical conditions those now existing in the Arctic zone. The troglodyte had to choose between the alternatives; he had to flee to the tropics before the cold wave from the North, or to resist the cold by recourse to Art.It is probable that he did both; some did the one, and the rest the other; some fled to the tropics and degenerated there into the existing anthropoid apes; the rest invented weapons with which to slay fur-bearing animals, to strip them of their skins, and convert the skins into clothing; used the shelter furnished by natural caves, and eventually discovered the way to produce a flame. This last Promethean gift was probably the first of the great human inventions. When Man discovered how to produce and utilize fire he became superior to climate.
This discovery produced an amazing consequence; for it seems certain that our race made its first strides towards civilization in tropical countries; but that progress in the Arts, by enabling Man to inhabit colder and more bracing climates, permitted an increase in his power to resist not only climate, but all the other natural conditions hostile to his improvement; and so we find the Northern races gradually subduing those of the South, and demonstrating the great rulethat man's progress is secured, not by yielding to natural environment, but by resisting it.
The key to human progress in the past, and the probable key to human progress in the future, is the faculty of Man to resist Nature; and this faculty is twofold. Intelligence is the more obvious of the two elements. But intelligence is not sufficient of itself. Intelligence must be coupled with the power of self-restraint. For although intelligence is the light which can guide men toward perfection, it is useless unless accompanied by the willingness and power to follow the light.
What avails it to the millionaire to know that he can by the intelligent use of his millions alleviate the misery of the poor, if he lacks the willingness and power to apply this knowledge?
What avails it to us to know that by substitutingcoöperation for competition in the production of the necessaries of life, poverty can be annihilated, if we have not the willingness and the power to effect the substitution?
What avails it to a drunkard to know that drink is the cause of his misery, if he has not the power to refuse it?
In man's struggle with climate, intelligence seems to play the principal rôle, but there is also a spirit of resistance, in strong contrast with submission that characterizes the lower animals. In other arenas the power of self-control plays a still more conspicuous part. There is probably no institution in which man differs more from the lower animals than in that of marriage; and none more characterized by self-control. If we compare the promiscuous intercourse that prevails between the sexes in troops of apes, with the fidelity that characterizes the highest types of marriage in our most highly civilized communities, we cannot but be struck, not only with the enormous gap between the two, but with the dominant rôle played in development from the lower to the higher type by the power of self-control. The passionate propensity that condemns the fiercer carnivora to solitude, and reduces even the docile bee to a wholesale massacre of one of the two sexes, has been so controlled in our civilization that we find men and women not only living in the closest proximity without violating the marriage vow, but even consecrating themselves to life-long chastity out of respect for a religious scruple.
Man has attained this result through the training of children by parents in the family, of youth by masters in schools, and of adults each by himself in the world at large.
Perhaps the most precious result of the institution ofmarriage is the education furnished by the family which results from marriage. In Greek life this education was the kernel of Greek religion. Every family worshipped its own gods, and these gods were the shades of its ancestors. Almost every duty in life resolved itself into a duty to these shades; the duty to marry was but to ensure offspring who would continue to minister to the deceased; the duty of chastity, and indeed of morality in general, resolved itself into a duty to keep inviolable the sacred flame upon the hearth.
The two virtues peculiarly stimulated by Greek religion were courage in man and chastity in woman; these singularly correspond to the qualities that characterize solitary carnivora—ferocity in the male and compulsory fidelity in the female. They are the virtues that attend individualism, and individualism so impregnated Greek civilization that it prevented the Greek cities from ever combining into a Greek nation, and ultimately left them a prey to the invader. And those two individualistic virtues—courage and chastity—became still more emphasized under the Roman rule in the soldier and the vestal.
Christianity introduced a new element into civilized life; Christ deprecated exhibitions of courage by inculcating humility; He tempered the fierce demand for fidelity by bidding "him who was without sin cast the first stone at her." The virtue He taught above all was the virtue of Love; not love in the sense of natural affection, but love in the sense of sacrifice; not love confined to the family, but love extended from the family to the neighbor: "Love your neighbor as yourself." And so under the dispensation of Christ all men, being the children of a common Father, became as brothers one to another; the early Christians carrying out this theoryinto practical life, abandoned the acquisition of private wealth and brought all their earnings into a common stock, giving to everyone according to his need.
Unfortunately, the prosperity of the Church under Constantine converted it into a political machine as unconscionable in its methods, and as effectual in results, as the so-called rings which govern many cities to-day. The Church forgot the virtues which it was instituted to teach; and our Western civilization has ever since been distracting us by encouraging the fighting virtues of the Roman soldier on the one hand, and the altogether inconsistent humility of the Christian saint on the other.
But men and women cannot live close to one another for centuries, without having social virtues forced upon them; and while the competitive system which prevails in our industrial and international relations has stimulated the fighting qualities in us, the teaching of Christ has preserved in our hearts ideas of happiness which have more or less unconsciously created a tendency to replace competition by coöperation wherever possible.
The joint effect of Roman and Christian rules of conduct has been to substitute for the qualities that we observe in Nature—the lust and ferocity of the carnivore and the servility of the ant—new qualities altogether different, and in some respects almost opposite. For lust has been replaced by a conception of the conjugal relation which converts marriage into a sacrament; ferocity has yielded to the courage of the medieval knight and the modern gentleman; servility tends to disappear and be replaced by respect for laws; and fear has been lifted by religion into reverence—"The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom."
The fact that these virtues are held up to us as desirable and that we are trained to conform thereto, is ofdominating importance in considering the character of human environment; and were there nothing in human institutions to render the universal practice of these virtues impossible, we should assuredly enjoy the happiness that must result therefrom.
Unfortunately there are two reasons why we cannot practice these virtues though we would:
We are divided into nations, each striving against all the rest to secure for its citizens the largest possible share of the good things of this world. Every nation is composed of individuals or families, each engaged in a similar strife.
The first, the international conflict, gives rise to a peculiar virtue called patriotism, which, in so far as it teaches a man to love the country to which he belongs, and the people amongst whom he lives, is altogether good, but in so far as it teaches him to hate and occasionally slay those of other nations is altogether bad.
The second, the intranational conflict, gives rise to a quality which, though not recognized as a virtue, should, if measured by the rewards it receives, be assuredly regarded as the greatest of all—acquisitiveness; for the fortunate few who possess this quality gather unto themselves all the good things in the world at the expense of all the rest.
Let us briefly study each of these formidable obstacles to virtue and happiness:
As regards the international conflict, the world is so large, and is peopled by races of men so different, that it would be quite impossible to include them all under the same government. The Red Indian is incapable of adopting our civilization; he would rather die. The Chinese has a conception of government so different from ours that he has no word in his language forpatriotism. The Oriental, who has occupied the Danubian provinces for five centuries, is still so foreign to us that he cannot live amongst Christians except either as a conqueror in Turkey or a subject in Hindoostan.
So long as these differences exist, there must be separate nations; and the smoke of international conflict must occasionally burst into a flame.
Nevertheless, even to-day human effort can do much to diminish occasions for war; witness the Tribunal of The Hague and the daily multiplying treaties of arbitration; witness, too, the gradual extension of solidarity between workingmen beyond national frontiers and the growing disposition to organize regardless of them.
As regards the intranational conflict—between individuals belonging to the same country—there is much more to be said, for although the total elimination of occasions of conflict between citizens of the same nation may still be far off, there is serious reason to believe that a partial elimination of them is immediately possible, and may constitute the most practical of all political programs, and the most vital of all religious faiths. Indeed, a thorough understanding of the problem presented by this intranational conflict is so indispensable to its prosperous solution, that upon this understanding may be said to depend the question whether our civilization is to degenerate.
The intranational conflict is mainly concerned with the acquisition of wealth; and because this conflict has so far inordinately enriched a few and impoverished the mass, it is the fashion for us to rail against wealth.
But wealth is the necessary product of civilization, and like manure, it is a benefaction when lightly distributed over the right place, though a pest when heavily concentrated in the wrong. The wealthier a community isthe happier it ought to be. It is not wealth itself which constitutes our grievance, but the method of its distribution.
Now the unequal distribution of wealth is mainly due to the system of private property under which the few who have the gift of money-making acquire large fortunes, while the many are left in comparative poverty and even want.
Under this system, every man, instead of working for all, is working only for himself, and he who has most acquisitiveness becomes master of those who have less, society being by this single quality divided into a series of classes or castes, at the top of which are a few millionaires, and at the bottom the large contingent that after a life of misery end their lives in the almshouse, the prison, or the lunatic asylum—a contingent that has been determined by carefully prepared statistics to constitute one-fifth of the entire population in the richest country in the world.[204]
Private property has played an essential rôle in the slow enfranchisement of the people. But just as the cocoon serves an essential purpose in protecting the worm during its slow development, but becomes a prison which the butterfly discards when it attains its final freedom, so private property may turn out to have already served its purpose if we can demonstrate ourselves so far developed as to be fit to cast it aside.
Let us recall what rôle private property plays in our human environment to-day:
It is the great stimulus which sets each one of us to work for himself, and by working for himself toaccumulate wealth that contributes to the maintenance of all the rest. It furnishes (in theory) a method under which the man who works most effectually gets the highest reward.
Now, as it is essential in every community that every man should contribute to the maintenance of all, and as justice seems to demand that the workers should be rewarded according to results, it is claimed that private property solves the problem of production in a manner both effectual and just.
The competitive system, however, and the false notion of property to which the competitive system gives rise by setting every man to work for himself regardless of all the rest, prevents men from proceeding upon the far more economical plan of coöperation.