Whatever may be the truth among the protozoa, we are safe in applying to society the statement of Ruskin: “Co-operation is always and everywhere the law of life; competition is always and everywhere the law of death.”
Human society eventually reaches a point of development where nature’s haphazard ways are interfered with, and man arranges means to an end. Professor Schiaparelli thought he saw canals on Mars, and inferred intelligent inhabitants. The difference in water-ways, between blind nature and a designing intelligence, is the difference between a rambling river and a straight canal.
Now human society has arrived at a stage where its consciousness of itself and the possibility of self-arrangement, becomes a factor. This is a tremendous step forward, and its future possibilities seem to be illimitable. Before this can be largely effective, however, it will be necessary to thoroughly understand all fundamental social laws.
We had no rod to rule the lightning until we knew the laws of its movement. There will be no real airship until we master the laws of aerial flight. Socialism solves the social problem, not because it has, but because it is, an explanation of the laws of social development in general, and of existing society in particular. On these laws our faith is founded. By consciously arranging the social institutions which so profoundly affect our lives, in harmony with these laws, we shall cease to be the slaves of a blind necessity.
As Engels has well said: “Man’s social organization, hitherto confronting him as a necessity imposed by Nature and history, now becomes the result of his own free action. The extraneous objective forces, that have hitherto governed history, pass under the control of man himself. Only from that time will man himself more and more consciously, make his own history—only from that time will the social causes set in motion by him have, in the main and in a constantly growing measure, the results intended by him. It is the ascent of man from the kingdom of necessity to the kingdom of freedom.”
VIII.
SPENCER’S “SOCIAL ORGANISM.”
The crowning generalization of modern thought is that which presents the Universe as a unity, inter-related in all its parts. By it, the defenders of dualism are discredited, and their theological, metaphysical philosophy is thrown aside. It is no longer God and Man, nor even Man and God, but Man only, with God an anthropomorphic shadow, related to man not as his creator, but as created by him. God and Man are not “two,” but in reality “one.”
Modern science has reversed the order of their appearance, and also the order of their dependence. That which seemed to our primitive ancestors a living reality, a separate and independent being, proves, when submitted to the tests of anthropology and psychology, to have been a creature of their own dreams.
And thus, as a result of scientific research into the origin of dualism and the nature of dreams, as Professor Clifford says: “The dim and shadowy outline of the superhuman deity fades slowly from before us; and as the mist of his presence floats aside, we perceive with greater and greater clearness, the shape of a yet grander and nobler figure—the figure of him who made all Gods and shall unmake them. From the dim dawn of history, and from the inmost depths of every soul, the face of our father man looks out upon us, with the fire of eternal youth in his eyes, and says: ‘Before Jehovah was, I am.’”