Socialism, at its best, [1] unites with recent political economy and with those who try to “organise” or rationalise charity, in challenging the preconception that poverty must be recognised as a permanent class-function. And this brave denial may remain written to its credit when the controversies of immediate method are forgotten.
[1] I cannot think that in detail its advocates are consistent with their principles on this point. But controversy is not my object here.
We may attempt to indicate in a few words the direction in which the ethical idea incarnate in the institution of the “poor” is tending to supplement and modify itself as clearer notions of a commonwealth arise. It may be observed, by {319} way of introduction, that we cruelly misconceive the Greek mind when we ascribe to it a want of love and compassion, because we miss in its utterances the religious note of devotion to the poor. [1] To a great extent the truest idea of charity was presupposed in the very axioms of a Greek commonwealth. The Greek spoke little of “the poor,” because he recognised no such status. [2] It would have meant to him a functionless class, a dislocation of the body politic. This, in fact, is what it did mean when pauperism began to press upon the Greeks, and the philosopher [3] at once diagnoses the evil, and uses the term, “people without means,” i.e. without ways of supporting themselves, instead of the older word, which rather suggests the “object of ‘charity’”. To get them back into a function, “a means,” is the course which ipso facto rises before him; not to create a new ethical idea for their sake qua déclassés.
[1] Not altogether true, of course. In Homer “all strangers and poor men come from Zeus.”
[2] It is a mistake to treat all these problems as automatically solved for the ancients by slavery. The citizen population had enough dependence on industrial life to be liable to disaster from its dislocation, and that this happened so little was a true success while it lasted.
[3] Aristotle, Politics, 1320, d. 29. The older word is πτωχός [ptochos], “one who crouches or cringes, a beggar”; it always had a bad sense till it was ennobled in the Gospels (Liddell and Scott). Aristotle’s word is ἄπορος [aporos], “without ways and means.” Different from both is πένης [penes], for which we have no proper word, having spoilt “poor” by the idea of dependence. It means a poor man in the sense of one who is not rich enough to live without working. The speeches in which Poverty πενία [penia] defends her merits against Wealth, and in distinction from Beggary πτώχεια [ptocheia], in Aristophanes’ Plutus, are fine, though mixed with fallacies.
The full modern conception of the “poor” as {320} an institution, if they must be an institution, ought at least to avoid the pitfall of acquiescence. Granting the fire and love of the Christian mind to be a gain, yet its object must be brought into relation with the true meaning of a mind or a commonwealth. Devotion to man at his weakest must not be separated from devotion to the possibilities of man at his strongest—possibilities either existent or at least symbolised in the most unhappy of the functionless poor. Self-sacrifice for the poor should not mean a tribute to the maintenance of a vicious status, but an abiding and pervading sense of the claims which the weaker humanity has to be made strong.
6. The Nation-State, we have already suggested, is the widest organisation which has the common experience necessary to found a common life. This is why it is recognised as absolute in power over the individual, and as his representative and champion in the affairs of the world outside. It is obvious that there can be but one such absolute power in relation to any one person; and that, so far as the world is organised, there must be one; and, in fact, his discharge from one allegiance can only be effected by his acceptance of another. The analysis of the previous chapter releases us from the task of setting out the elements which combine in the Nation-State, as the conception of sovereign and ultimate adjustment between the spheres which realise the elements of our ethical life. It should be noted, however, that the principles of the family, the district, and the class, not only enter into the nation in these definite shapes, but affect the general fabric of {321} the national State through the sense of race, of country, and of a pervading standard of life and culture. The reaction of ideal unity on the natural conditions of a state is exemplified by the tendency to substitute ideal frontiers—a meridian or a parallel [1]—for frontiers determined by natural boundaries.
[1] See, e.g., the map of North America.
The Nation-State as an ethical idea is, then, a faith or a purpose—we might say a mission, were not the word too narrow and too aggressive. It seems to be less to its inhabitant than the City-state to its citizens; but that is greatly because, as happens with the higher achievements of mind, it includes too much to be readily apprehended. The modern nation is a history and a religion rather than a clear cut idea. Its power as an idea-force is not known till it is tried. How little the outsider, and even members of the community concerned, were able to gauge beforehand the strength of the sentiment and conception that pervaded the United States through the war of secession. [1] The place of the idea of the Nation-State in the whole of ethical ideas may be illustrated by the Greek conception of Happiness, as that organisation of aims, whatever it may be which permits the fullest harmony to life. The State, as such, we saw, is limited to the office of maintaining the external conditions of a good life; but the conditions cannot be conceived without reference to the life for which they exist, and {322} it is true, therefore, to say that the conception of the Nation-State involves at least an outline of the life to which, as a power, it is instrumental. The State, in short, cannot be understood apart from the nation, nor the conditions from the life, although in exerting political force it is important to distinguish them. As an ethical idea, the idea of a purpose, it is essential to hold the two sides together, if we are not to walk blindly.