Prevailing systems of education no doubt promote the spirit of selfishness:[11] witness the character of the struggle for self-aggrandizement. It is more intense and more widely extended than at any period of the world’s history. That it is more intense is shown by the more and more rapid concentration of populations in cities, where the struggle assumes its most intense form, and exhibits itself in its most threatening aspect.
[11] “In small, undeveloped societies, where for ages complete peace has continued, there exists nothing like what we call Government; no coercive agency, but mere honorary headship, if any headship at all. In these exceptional communities, unaggressive, and from special causes unaggressed upon, there is so little deviation from the virtues of truthfulness, honesty, justice, and generosity, that nothing beyond an occasional expression of public opinion by informally assembled elders is needful.”—“Political Institutions,” ¶¶ 437, 573; “The Sins of Legislators,” in “The Man versus the State,” p. 44. By Herbert Spencer. New York: D. Appleton & Co.
Cities have always been plague-spots on the body politic, and they are not less so now than in ancient times. It is in cities that all dangers to the State originate; and the sole, fundamental reason why cities are a standing menace to the integrity of the social compact is the fact that they are dominated by selfishness. It is in cities that the unnatural, unwholesome desire to live without labor, to live by speculative enterprises, becomes a consuming passion, inoculating with a deeper and darker degree of selfishness an ever-widening circle of people; and selfishness at last inevitably leads to anarchy. It leads to anarchy and chaos because both classes of society become depraved—the rich and powerful through indolence and sensual indulgence, and the poor and wretched through ignorance and privation and their attendant mean vices.
The modern city is the despair of the political economist. It grows relatively faster in population than the rural district, and it would be the extreme of optimism to declare that it grows better.[E4] It does not matter that the city is the centre of learning, the nursery of all the active intelligences which are achieving fresh triumphs daily in every department of science, literature, and art. It is also the centre of vice, and the nursery of every variety of crime.
The difficulty—nay, the despair—of the situation is not relieved or mitigated by the undisputed fact that the ancient city was much worse morally and politically than the modern city, and hence that as between Rome and Chicago there is an immense moral and political advantage in favor of the latter. If Chicago is retrograding morally and politically, what is to prevent it from sinking to the moral and political status of Rome under the infamous emperors of the period of its decadence? If the modern American city is rapidly degenerating, both as a moral force and a political institution, what is to arrest its downward progress? What influence is to intervene to reverse the order and nature of its development?
Rome, in the very agonies of political dissolution, possessed all the then known arts, a splendid literature, and a school of philosophy whose ethical code was more lofty, if less human, than that of the new system which was struggling to replace the old. That the inconceivably atrocious gladiatorial games should have developed into such huge proportions in conjunction with the sublime moral teachings of Seneca, Plutarch, Marcus Aurelius, and a score of others, is the despair of students of Roman history. While they taught, emperors and people alike feasted their eyes on bloody orgies of men and beasts, on scenes of the most horrible barbarity. Caligula took special delight in watching the countenances of the dying, “for he had learned to take an artistic pleasure in observing the variations of their agony.” Criminals dressed in the skins of wild beasts were thrown to bulls which were maddened with red-hot irons. “Four hundred bears were killed in a single day under Caligula; three hundred on another day under Claudius. Under Nero, four hundred tigers fought with bulls and elephants; four hundred bears and three hundred lions were slaughtered by his soldiers. In a single day, at the dedication of the Colosseum by Titus, five thousand animals perished. Under Trajan the games continued for one hundred and twenty-three successive days. Lions, tigers, rhinoceroses, hippopotami, giraffes, bulls, stags, even crocodiles and serpents, were employed to give novelty to the spectacle.”
And yet the civilization that produced these games gave to the world, forever, the moral precepts of the stoics and philosophers. Cicero had maintained the doctrine of the universal brotherhood of man. “Nature ordains,” he says, “that a man should wish the good of every man, whoever he may be, for this very reason: that he is a man.” Menander maintained that “man should deem nothing human foreign to his interest.” Lucan looked forward to the time when “the human race will cast aside its weapons, and all nations learn to love.” In a letter on the death of his slaves Pliny exhibited feelings of strong human affection, and Plutarch, in a letter of consolation to his wife on the death of his daughter, left a touching record of the tenderness of his heart in the recital of a simple trait of the child: “She desired her nurse to press even her dolls to the breast. She was so loving that she wished everything that gave her pleasure to share in the best that she had.” Says Seneca, “The whole universe which you see around you, comprising all things both divine and human, is one. We are members of one great body.” And Epictetus, “You are a citizen and a part of the world. The duty of a citizen is in nothing to consider his own interest distinct from that of others.”
The contrast between these noble moral sentiments and the actual life of the Roman people is truly startling.[E5] It is plain that the profession of lofty moral sentiments by a class, the possession of high literary attainments, and an extensive acquaintance with the arts, do not always afford protection against national degradation and decay. Nor is it by any means certain that the Christian religion is destined to effect more in this regard than the pagan code of morals. Rome embraced religion, but its conversion was powerless to avert political and commercial destruction.
The modern city has for guides the example of all the ancient civilizations and political and moral systems, and in addition it has, in its most vital form, the Christian system of morals and faith. But notwithstanding all these helps it is politically corrupt and morally depraved. Its streets are the scenes of vice scarcely less revolting than those of ancient Rome. It harbors an army of criminals which grows with its growth, and is without any systematized effort either to reform or abolish it. Indeed this army of criminals is constantly reinforced in an increasing ratio to the whole population from the ranks of the rising generation, which is to a degree enforced to ignorance by the inadequacy of educational facilities.[12] Its power to accumulate wealth is increasing, but this power is confined to relatively fewer hands, and this is one of the most alarming features of the situation. For the increase of ignorance, vice, and crime is sure to keep pace with the abnormal growth of estates, stimulated to the highest degree by dishonest business practices and gigantic schemes of speculation.
[12] In support of the truth of these propositions it is sufficient merely to allude to the late disclosures by the Pall Mall Gazette of the prevalence of revolting crimes in London, England. It is also pertinent to remark the attitude of hostility maintained by the higher classes (so called) of the English people towards the editor of the journal in which the disclosures were made, as significant of an alarming degeneration of the moral sense of the British public.