SYNOPSIS
The world has a purpose.... That purpose aims not at man as an end, but works through him to greater issues.—H. G. Wells.
Man has already furthered evolution very considerably, half unconsciously and for his own personal advantage, but he has not yet risen to the conviction that it is his religious duty to do so deliberately and systematically.—Francis Galton.
More than a century has elapsed since Pope’s line was written: “The proper study of mankind is man,” yet it is only of recent years that physiology has entered upon the proper method of that study. Discoveries made in the last century have thrown fresh light on individual human nature. The marvellous potency of thought has been demonstrated, and the momentous fact of diverse states of basic consciousness made apparent—the fact, namely, that the mind of individual man is not functionally limited to his physical consciousness.
Again, that every human being should have freedom to be happy was realized by many at an earlier epoch; but what the essential nature might be of a happiness that could satisfy the conflicting desires of humanity differentiated in all its units—seemed an insoluble problem. Psychology, however, indicates the solution of that problem, for it shows that individual happiness is intimately bound up with, and dependent upon, general happiness. The “subliminal or unconscious mind,” otherwise termed the super-physical consciousness that is common to all mankind knows no settled peace and comfort while the areas of physically conscious life are scenes of perpetual conflict. Man to be truly happy must be so collectively and not merely individually or sectionally.
Now the scheme of social reform I advocate points the way to a unification of thought that working itself out through the diverse channels of visible life will eject the causes of evil, bring order where chaos has reigned, and slowly but surely establish the foundations of universal peace. As Richard Harte has well said: “Human beings at present are like a number of little magnets thrown promiscuously into a heap, with their poles pointing in every direction, and wasting their strength in opposing each other. These little magnets have to point in the same direction that they may become bound together into one great magnet, all powerful to attract good, all powerful to repel evil.”
The new system of action bases its thought on the complexity of human nature. It recognizes that the component cells of the physical body are lives which must suffer if the laws of their well-being are not subserved, and the suffering translates itself into pain or into sub-conscious distressful melancholy. It perceives that the social instincts of man hitherto thrust back and crushed are: “the various needs of universal attraction all tending towards unity, striving to meet and mingle in final harmony” (Zola). And further it apprehends that a lofty aspiration—a divine impulse—hovers on the threshold of consciousness waiting to enter as brutal passions and vicious propensities are conquered and dispossessed.
The evils that infest and corrupt our social life and that man must deliberately uproot and eliminate before general happiness becomes possible are—poverty, i.e. a life-long struggle to obtain food, shelter, clothing; the birth of individuals weak and unfit; disease, premature death; enforced celibacy; late marriage; drunkenness; disorganization of family life; prostitution; war; and industrial competition; social injustice and inequality; individual tyranny; crime; barbarous treatment of criminals; disrespect of natural function and consequent injury to health; conventional folly; social repression of innocent enjoyment; religious bigotry; the feebleness of religious guidance and confusion of religious thought.
Partial views of society as well as of individual human nature have hitherto prevailed and given birth to specifics of all kinds for the cure of the diseases of society, and these in the growing tenderness of humanity, have been eagerly adopted and applied, to prove disappointing in the main. The new system deals with society as a whole and throughout all its parts. It requires a full comprehension of each and all the groups or classes of social phenomena and their inter-relations.
Viewing society as a whole, we realize that there are no remedial specifics in the case, that general happiness will be obtained only by a process of evolution, and that the process is one of continual readjustment of multitudinous relations, or unceasing adaptation of individual human life to a social environment, and of social environment to individual human life. The evolution of social environment proceeds towards the highest ethical state which implies a system of society based upon justice and equality. But the realization of this state requires a perfected humanity, hence the path of progress is also in the gradual improvement of individuals—the creation of a superior race whose spontaneous impulses will construct and support a perfected social system.
Unconscious evolution has carried us forward from savagery through many transitions to a state of civilization which, though grossly imperfect, contains within it a new element of advance. Here and there throughout society the power of love and reason combined has become strong, and aided by a scientific knowledge of man and the conditions of his life, it is capable of design, and of intensifying the action of evolutionary forces and immensely increasing their momentum. Reason, however, must invent an effective policy of meliorism which so unites the practical methods of reform as that each will add strength to all, and the result prove a powerful factor of change in the society on which it is brought to bear.
The strife of competition throughout the whole sphere of industrial life gives free play to selfishness and the passion of militancy, and permeates society with the warlike spirit.
Advance in morals is the sure step to a better and happier future; but man’s moral nature is largely conditioned by heredity, training and environment, while these, at present, are all unfavourable to a high moral state. A progressive system of general reform therefore has to embrace and combine rational breeding, rational training and a rational order of life in which sympathy and co-operation will take the place of individual competition, and general happiness—not wealth—be the clear aim of man.
The conscious element in evolution is as yet too weak to alter society much or rapidly, but in all civilized countries—Germany, France, Belgium, etc., as well as Great Britain,—changes towards the collective control of land and capital and the reorganization of industry on collectivist principles, have begun, and it is of supreme importance that other changes, equally necessary, should be initiated to advance pari-passu with those.
A central source of corruption is to be found in the disintegration of the ancient family group—the unfitness of an archaic domestic system to achieve the ends of rational training and the acquiring of habits of rational breeding. At the same time there is a growth in social feeling and a spread of public opinion in favour of industrial socialism with some legislative and local action to carry it out, that together, present conditions propitious to change in domestic living and sexual custom. Consequently a reconstruction of domestic life on modern principles among educated people fitted to adapt life to moral ends is pre-eminently a feature of the new order.
At present excessive labour on the part of the proletariat, and enforced idleness on the part of many men and women within the classes, are fatal to progress. Vital forces are exhausted on the one hand, repressed on the other, while the sub-conscious feeling that craves unity and solidarity is outraged and restrained. To restore work to its legitimate place in human life is a primary aim of the new domestic system. That system must be built up on the principle that work for the benefit of all is the duty and privilege of each, and without a due share of social labour no normal man or woman in health can attain to inward peace.
As regards religion, man’s abstract thought must purge itself from materialized ideals, his concrete thought from selfish aims, for he is essentially a religious being and psychical studies affirm that within him there lie latent faculties that relate him to worlds unseen—worlds as yet unrealizable in human consciousness.
In the visible world religious forces must be directed to the great work of social reform. To unselfishly promote the welfare of generations unborn is a profoundly religious course of action. The purest, noblest feelings of man may be enlisted in the cause of progress through union—for social reconstruction, scientific education, gentle training of the young, associated domestic life, facilitation of happy marriage—and for the comfort of all mankind, whether good or bad, clever or dull, fortunate or unfortunate.
Co-operation in work to the banishment of idleness and its accompanying misery ennui is the primary object of the new domestic system, but other ends to attain are—economy, by means of joint labour and joint expense to the relief of monetary anxieties and domestic worries; stability of social position, i.e. no member needing to fear that his home will break up independently of his wishes; social intercourse and enjoyment relieved of conventional etiquette or tyranny; freedom for friendship between the sexes and such conditions of family union as will promote mental capacity and altruistic sentiment in each individual; early marriage without disregard of social responsibility and based upon mutual knowledge of character, habits and tastes; a fitting refuge for old age, rendering impossible the premature destruction of valuable social forces which age alone can supply, and securing the material, intellectual and emotional surroundings necessary for comfort up to the last moment of life.
In the lower social strata where any reconstruction of family life is not yet possible, what is immediately required is a gradual rise of wages with steady improvement in all the conditions of industrial labour. Society also must relinquish such patronage of the poor as fosters their too rapid increase, undermines their self-dependence and tends generally to deterioration of race. Parental responsibility must be strongly inculcated and strictly upheld. Public teaching should be given in all natural laws affecting society, especially the laws of health, increase, and heredity; and, under conditions respectful to human dignity, Malthusian doctrine should be taught, and a knowledge of neo-Malthusian method very carefully imparted.
In the higher social strata within the newly constructed modern homes sexual conduct and parentage with its far-reaching results for good or evil must be controlled or guided into the path of racial regeneration. The scientific study of man’s nature gives sexual passion an honourable position relatively to human life. It rests on the conscience of each adult generation as an imperative social duty to influence the young generation in such wise as that this great passion shall subserve physical and social health and cease to create degradation.
A due activity in growing organs strengthens organic function; therefore, with early marriages and freedom to young love, checked only by scientific knowledge of the laws of health, propagation at the age of maturity is bound to put forth vitality of good quality. In conscious evolution sexual functions are no longer regarded as essentially allied with propagation. They are regarded, however, as properly subject in youth to parental and social control; and that control acts as a perpetual restraint upon licentious, dissolute tendencies and a shield to the young love that seeks personal happiness consistent with domestic purity.
No less potent is the action of control in another direction. Physiology of sex and the laws of inheritance are carefully studied by guardians of domestic peace who, rejecting the ordinary and vulgar conception accept the teaching of science, and science points to philoprogenitiveness, or love of offspring, as the proper motor force in reproduction. Were this force the antecedent cause of parentage throughout the nation, disease and premature death would be undermined and gradually subside. “Indiscriminate survival” gives way before that “rational selection and birth of the fit” which is a fundamental condition of social well-being—the master-spring to a rapid evolution of general happiness.
The transition, however, from our present state of confused sentiment, illogical thought, and disastrous action in the field of eugenics or stirpiculture, to clearness of purpose and consistency of life, must necessarily be a work of extreme delicacy and patient endeavour. Its achievement requires the nuclei of collectivist homes. Its nurture must take place in the bosom of a superior domestic life. The process, in short, implies an alteration in humanity itself, to be brought about by such preparatory alteration in outward conditions as will set up and bring into play the constant interaction of new social forces.
Individualism in domestic life vitiates the movement towards socialism outside domestic life, for it gives us misshapen units unfit for a better social system—a system that seeks to banish tyranny, despotism, pride, self-will and every anti-social emotion in order to establish the perfect justice and equality that are essential to the highest ethical state. It is a necessity of socialism to lay hold of the family and fashion it anew so that it may produce a superior material of human life, i.e. individual men and women whose enjoyments lie chiefly in sympathy and whose spontaneous impulses are towards an essentially social life.
And further, not only is our present domestic system wholly incapable of dealing with sex relations so as to adapt them to stirpiculture, not only is it so feeble as to be absolutely impotent in the regulation of the conduct of masculine youth outside its boundaries, but it is destitute also of elements required in the organizing of a progressive educational system.
Home education has almost disappeared in the disintegration of family life, while in society the strong forces of aggregation which under diverse conditions of industry and convention group mankind in sections have moulded schools to massive proportions. The youth of the nation is in a great measure cut off from the home influences which are calculated to teach mankind “humanities, not in the academic but in the real sense.” It is congregated in universities and large schools for superior culture and day schools for culture of a less exalted order. In the former, young men and maidens are separated. Domesticity—the quality in human nature on which depends the consolidation of society, is disregarded, whilst to the development of mutual interests, affinity of tastes, harmony of habits and unanimity of social aims between the sexes no attention is paid during the plastic period of life when individual character is in process of determination. In day schools boys and girls are often associated, but under such conditions of mechanical routine, cramming, conflicting and alternating authorities, irregular and erratic forces of moral control, as to make these schools provocative of evil, fostering every anti-social instinct of man.
Co-ordination in the life of the young is the demand of the new system of general reform. The nursery, school and playground must be harmonized, and the entire juvenile orbit, within and without the home, governed by intellectual and moral forces of fixed congruity. The object and aim of true education is the fullest development of an individual’s best powers of thought, feeling, action, by means of their happy exercise at every stage of growth from childhood to maturity. Now book-learning or culture in schools accomplishes very little, but a direct study of nature is an incomparable aid to this end. Each object and process in nature from that of the infinitely great to the infinitely small—if fittingly dealt with by teachers—is instinct with charm for the young of an intelligent race. It excites imagination, awakens thought, kindles enthusiasm, stimulates every latent mental faculty, while the endless variation of beauty in nature—under training to close observation—makes aesthetic appeal to the sense perceptions, and in calling forth wonder, admiration, delight adds richness immeasurably to the quality of human life. Nevertheless the springs and checks of a true education lie deep in a world of feeling. For their exercise home-life is indispensable. Family love is the primary motor force in the education of the feelings, and without the presence of a wide domestic circle habitually fostering the sympathetic and repressing the selfish emotions no high water-mark of civilization will be reached.
There is in man a group of emotions of comparatively recent origin requiring scientific treatment of the utmost delicacy and precision. On the further development of that group depends in a very special manner the rapid evolution of an ethical social system. The group is threefold—egoistic, altruistic, moral. It comprises a sense of personal rights, a sympathetic jealousy for the rights of others, an intellectual and moral sentiment of justice, or equivalence of liberty and social comfort for all mankind. The first element is already very perceptible throughout society. The second is more rare; it must be strengthened or assiduously created in the nursery, schoolroom and domestic circle by a system of training whose characteristic is extreme gentleness. The tender shoots of sympathetic jealousy are incapable of growth in an environment of harsh sound or brutal force. Hence the authority that begets antagonism has no place in the perfected education of the future.
As the young emerge from childhood the responsibilities of life become aids in education, and immensely develop the above emotions. Discipline of conduct within their own order appertains to the young; whilst society, within and without the domestic circle, demands the thorough regulation of young life. Conduct clubs and combinations for a variety of social ends, both sexes taking part, arise among the young; and these promote in the highest degree the healthy growth of such virtuous emotion and habits in the individual as are indispensable to ethical socialism. The method adopted is a just and intelligent criticism to which the youthful mind has previously been trained.
Since pride of birth, pride of wealth and habits of domination and luxury are all unfavourable to the growth of a moral sentiment of social justice, it is not in the upper ranks of society we need look for the public spirit that will devise methods of gradually equalizing the labour of life and its rewards and undermining present class distinctions. As little likely is the sentiment of social justice to spring spontaneously in a fortunate capitalist class where pride of acquisition strongly opposes the principle that reward should not be proportioned to personal capacity—that mental labour has no title to inordinate distinction, but that other useful exertion ethically requires fullness of reward. Reconstruction is necessarily a growth from below. From the proletariat comes the impulse towards industrial reconstruction, and it is in the middle class—and the less wealthy section of that class—that the beings exist who by segregation may form collectivist homes capable of by-and-bye aggregating into the solid foundation of a pure and elevated republican society.
Education in these homes where mixture of ages, from the white-haired centenarian to the infant in arms, creates all manner of tender ties, where gentleness and love are the main stimuli in training, where authority is exercised consistently and reasonably, and replaced at maturity by reason and self-control—must eventuate in the production of a superior moral and intellectual type.
The order of social evolution, computed roughly, is as follows: In the first stage, social equality exists; it is an epoch of savagery. In the second stage, differentiation issuing in class distinctions takes place; the birth of social inequality and injustice arising naturally through exercise of superior brute force and cunning. Civilization has here its genesis; and coercion, tyranny, robbery, injustice, avarice, love of power, inequality, are stimuli of civilization and prime elements in the formation of strong nations. Individuals who are inferior, then whole classes socially weak, are compelled by forces, individual and social, to minister to the wants of the strong and superior. Civilization nurtured by inequality and injustice develops in the superior classes of society and slowly spreads downwards. In the third stage, reaction occurs, prompted by civilization itself! Justice and liberty develop in the lower or inferior social classes and spread very slowly upwards without destroying a civilization, become inherent in the superior type of man. The fourth stage is one of readjustment in which civilization becomes general and there is a gradual return to social equality. Ultimately society will have no class distinctions of the present order, no idlers or parasites, no poor and no coercive government. Voluntary co-operation or concerted action for social ends is a self-regulating, self-controlling force which, when fully developed in the new domestic and industrial systems is able to dominate society throughout its length and breadth.
The path of social reform I advocate has now, in its main features, been placed before my readers.
Outside the general policy that will cause the direct action of the system to become a great factor of social change, however, there are sundry courses of less direct action, it is bound to pursue. These bear relation to, first, pauperism and patronage of the poor; second, the proletariat; third, the criminal classes; fourth, the position of woman; fifth, the young; sixth, conventionalism; seventh, political action.
In the first relation the specific policy is to carefully discriminate between benevolence that is beneficial and benevolence that is mischievous in its results on social well-being. Whilst exercising the former, it gives no support to charities that hurt the independence of the poor, or relieve them of parental responsibility. In reproduction it discountenances and opposes the social force of indiscriminate selection which results in survival of the unfit. It seeks to initiate and press forward the counteracting social force of intelligent selection, which brings about the birth of the fit.
In the second relation, the specific policy strenuously supports combinations of workers for the raising of wages, mutual help and democratic political aims preparatory to general socialism.
In the third relation, the specific policy strives to enlighten public opinion upon the nature of crime and the philosophic principles of its treatment. It elaborates a new method in which vindictiveness, the essence of punishment, has no existence; but gentleness towards all evil-doers issues in, first, the effectual protection of society; second, the reform of corrigible criminals; third, the gradual extinction of crime. It urges upon government a cautious deliberate adoption of this method.
In the fourth relation, the action of the policy is to promote the enfranchisement of women, and at every point aid the movement of advance to the position of social equality of sex.
In the fifth and sixth relations, it inculcates by admonition and example, and especially among the young, a return to simplicity of manners, habits and dress. It repudiates conventional etiquette, and opposes the tyranny of fashion. It promotes the association of the sexes in youth under condition of adult control, whether the union be that of marriage, of friendship or of simple intercourse and companionship. It discountenances and takes no part in the excitements of an artificial, frivolous society, but it creates and fosters the vigorating excitements of useful labour, alternating with unconstrained and “tranquil delights.”
In the seventh relation, the specific policy agitates for alteration of the marriage laws, the laws of inheritance of property and the land laws. Equality of sex is required as the basis of the marriage law, accompanied by the condition of easy divorce in order to facilitate the dissolution of false ties in favour of the true. The laws affecting children require adaptation to the ethics of social justice and sex equality. Laxity must give way to strictness in respect of parentage; and child-birth be recognized as an event bearing directly upon the interests of the general public. Hence modification here entails the recognition of illegitimate children and the counteracting of the vicious tendency to shirk parental duty and social responsibility. The land and property laws must be adjusted to a levelling process—the action of paring down large estates and diminishing the massive proportions of private property so slowly as to create no individual suffering or social confusion, such legislative measures being directed, however, to land nationalization and nationalization of capital as their final aim.
In conclusion, let me add, I claim to have shown that “science in the economic field gives certain facts from which a line of social evolution may be foreshadowed,” and that religion and science give, in wider fields, facts and principles that point to lines of illimitable progression for man. “Whether these lines will be followed depends not upon immutable laws beyond our control, but upon the human will.” The general policy I advocate is distinctly reliable so long as it rests on scientific methods and knowledge, but no question is finally exhausted. In the sphere of rational reform free-thought must ever be considered and respected.
New occasions teach new duties;
Time makes ancient good uncouth;
They must upward still and onward,
Who would keep abreast of truth.