Can you not imagine, my dear Hannevig, that under such a system and order of life, time might be found to be a weighty burden? After the two hours devoted to labor, there are still fourteen waking hours to be disposed of. The people have, it is true, their clubs and their theaters, the national games, their libraries and gardens. But just because all these are free and at their command, is, I presume, reason enough for their finding the amusements thus provided tame and uninteresting. Most of the inhabitants of this city spend their days at the gymnasium. In the exercises and games there practiced, one sees the only evidence or show of excitement and interest indulged in. Both men and women are muscled like athletes, from their continual exercises and perpetual bathing. The athletic party is now trying to pass a law to permit races and contests on the old Greek plan. But the conservatives will scarcely pass it, as they urge that the Olympian games, by developing the physical powers, were in reality only a training-school for the Greek army, and internecine trouble and dissension would surely follow any such public games, as they did in the Greek states.
You have, I believe, asked me if the people here are not allowed to find a scope for their superfluous energies in politics. But politics, as a profession, as a separate and independent function of activity, has ceased to exist. The state or Government is run on the great universal principle of reciprocity which governs the entire community. It exists for the people, is administered by the people, and acts for the people. All surplus revenues, derived from a minimum of equalized taxation are turned over to the public fund, being applied to public use. The machinery of the Government is run on the same principle of light labor which governs individual exertions. Each citizen, men and women alike, of course, serves his or her term as a government official, as in old Prussia men served in the army. As no one is ever re-elected, no matter what his capacity or ability, and as each citizen only serves once during his life-time, there is no such thing known as political strife, or bribery or corruption. Neither is there any political life. The government is as automatic a performance as one of the silk-looms of a factory.
There are certain changes which have lately taken place in the political and international affairs of the people which lead one into a labyrinth of speculation. There has, for instance, been a noticeable and lamentable dying out of international commerce and a general sluggishness of trade which greatly alarms the community at large. All trade and commerce are conducted on the socialistic principle, which forbids the venture of private capital, did such here exist, or of private enterprise. It is the State which directs all such ventures. But the State, for some reason or other, does not appear to be a success as a merchant or as commercial financier. For one thing, the State is tremendously absorbed in its own affairs. As it takes care of its people, educating, training and developing them; as it looks after the material comforts and necessities of its vast population, its own internal duties really absorb all its energies. Then, in a government, founded as this one is, on a principle of equality, which principle is the sworn enemy of ambition there must of necessity be a lack of initiative, a feebleness in aggressive attack, and a want of determination in the pursuance of any given policy. It is only ambitious stable governments which can command and maintain a definite policy of national action. Even the American Republic found it difficult, with its recurrent changes in official departments, to carry into effect great international projects. The people, here, have ended by contenting themselves with the exercise of only so much executive, political or commercial activity as is found actually necessary to maintain their own existence. Men, whether as individuals or as a collective body, are indeed only actively aggressive, ambitious or audacious in proportion as they meet with opposition. It is struggle, and not the absence of it, which makes both men and a nation great.
I have, therefore, ceased to ask myself where are the old magnificent energies which once characterized this people. One looks in vain for the former warfare of intelligence, for the old time audacity of invention, for the fray of commercial contest, for the powerful massing of capital we read of as characteristic of Americans two hundred years ago. All this has gone with the old competitive system.
With the abolishment of competition have died out, naturally, all the prizes and rewards in life which came from individual struggle. As accumulation of personal property, in lands or in moneys, and the possibility of personal advancement are forbidden by law, under this form of government, all incentives to personal activity have disappeared. The law of equality, with its logical decrees for the suppression of superiority, has brought about the other extreme, sterility. The crippling of individual activity has finally produced its legitimate result—it has fatally sapped the energies of the people.
It is a curious and interesting feature in one’s study of this people, to find that it is not the establishment of the law of equality which has been the cause of decay in this people, but the enforcement of the opposite law—the law it was soon found necessary to establish against inequality. It naturally and logically followed that if men are to be made equal, such equality can only be maintained by the suppression of degrees of inequality. Mentally, for instance, the standard must be made low enough for all to attain it; each man, therefore, in time, no matter what his fitness, capacity or gift, was forced to subordinate his particular qualities to the general possibility of attainment. This level of a common mediocrity was more or less difficult to inforce and develop. Their own historians record many interesting accounts of the slow death of inequality. In one I read only yesterday, “So instinctive through long centuries of oppression and misuse of power was the impulse among men to aspire to superiority of attainment, to excel in mental development, or to exhibit richer creative power, that for years the state penitentiaries were filled with men whose crime was their unconquerable desire selfishly to surpass their less fortunate brothers. It is only within our own enlightened twenty-first century that this grave fault has been remedied. Now, happily, no one dreams of insuring his own personal happiness at the expense of others.”
And so, my dear Hannevig, the old drama of history is enacted anew. Years ago men were unhappy because the many had to struggle against the favored few. Here, where all are equal, men are miserable because they are so; because all having equal claims to happiness, find life equally dull and aimless. The perpetual moan here is, O for a chance to be something, to do something, to achieve something!
I shall be able to send you only one more letter, as I return in a few days—by balloon this time, I think, instead of by tunnel.
