Let us then abandon hostility to a science without which to-day we could not see clearly the workings of the existing system, and on the contrary, avail ourselves of all its teachings, recognizing that a study of what industrial conditions to-day are must precede the study of what they could and should be.
The study of political economy is necessary to a study of "social economy." Political economy admittedly deals with the average sensual man, and having determined the rules that determine the actions of the average sensual man, it becomes now the problem of social economy to deal with the average moral man. And the moral man must not be regarded as opposed to the sensual. The moral man includes the sensual, but adds affection, sympathy, and all that makes happiness to the sensual man who may, through absence of affection and sympathy, fail to attain the happiness of which he is in search. Under this definition, while political economy deals with the attainment of wealth, social economy deals with the attainment of happiness; and as man must eat before he can pursue happiness, social economy must concern itself with the acquisition of wealth to satisfy physical needs before it concerns itself with the attainment of justice to satisfy moral needs. An attempt has been made in this book to present the social and economic structure which would best attain happiness. Would such a system at the same time attain justice?[223]
To arrive at a correct notion of justice, we have to refer once more to the difference between what Huxley calls the "cosmic process"—that is to say, the process of the environment of Nature before the advent of Man—and the ethical process, or the process of the artificial environment created by Man. For there is one difference, and a most essential difference, between them to which attention has not yet been directed: namely, that in communities such as those of the bee and ant, the individual is sacrificed to the community; whereas the effort of Man is or should be to so organize his community that it will serve the happiness of the individual. For example, we would not tolerate a community upon the plan we see practised by the bees, under which only one male out of a whole hive is permitted to propagate and all the rest of the males on attaining maturity are caused to die; only one female of the whole hive is allowed to be fertile and to propagate, all the rest being subject to the dreary round of keeping the fertile bee a prisoner, of feeding her, of rearing, feeding and caring for the young in the hive, and incidentally destroying any males who may return to the hive from the nuptial flight. We have to recognize that the great obstacle to happiness in community life is sexual instinct, of which Socialists of the type of Edward Bellamy have for the most part failed to take account.
Reference has been made to the various devices adopted by different races of animals and by Man at different periods and at different places to solve the problem of sexual instinct,[224] and it has been, I think, demonstrated by Professor Giddings, that of all the systems proposed none can compare with our present institution of marriage.[225] The mere fact that the marriage system has survived in the conflict with races that have adopted other systems ought to furnish an argument in favor of its superiority. In the struggle between races of Man, those races the institutions of which require most self-restraint have invariably overwhelmed those races whose institutions require less self-restraint. For example, the tribes that lived without any regulation of sexual instinct and in which children took the name of their mother because the name of their father was not and could not be known, disappeared in the conflict with tribes which insisted upon some restraint to sexual appetite, such as the patriarchal system. Again, the patriarchal system which tolerated polygamy has everywhere been destroyed when it came into conflict with monogamous races, such as our own, which involve still further restraint in the sexual relation.
It would seem, therefore, as though the monogamous marriage were the keystone of our present civilization, for upon it has been built the family, and the education and self-restraint which family life involves.[226] There is too no function of the family more important than that it serves as a model of what the state ought to be as distinguished from what the state actually is; that is to say, a government which should have equal concern for every member of the community, and not one which as at present surfeits some and starves others.
It is the growing idea that a properly constituted state must do this for the protection not only of the many, but of the few that probably give the most continuous aid to Socialism. As Mr. Edwin Björkman expressed it: "We are beginning to grasp the futility of planning the welfare of any one human being apart from the rest of his kind. We are coming to think of ourselves, at last, as links in a chain so firmly bound together that when the devil grabs the hindmost the wrench is felt by the top-most—felt in the very marrow of his bones."[227]
And so while the institution of marriage has removed an obstacle to solidarity in community life, public health has proved its ally. Mr. Björkman has made an estimate of the enormous cost of unnecessary sickness. But the protection of public health is furnishing us a far better argument in favor of solidarity and Socialism than the mere cost of neglecting it. In Cuba our sanitary engineers have practically got rid of yellow fever, not only for that community, but for our own. Recent discoveries tracing malaria to the mosquito are leading to the destruction of this insect. Smallpox and cholera have practically been stamped out, and efforts are now being made to do the same with typhoid and tuberculosis.
Now one feature characterizes all these efforts. They cannot be made by one man for himself; they have to be made by whole communities for whole communities and they will eventually have to be made by the whole world for the whole world. The same thing is true of vagrancy, pauperism, and crime. No individual or group of individuals can handle this problem; it must be handled by every community, and through the further extension of extradition treaties by all countries for the whole world.
Again, reference has been often made in this book to the necessity under which governments, openly professing the policy of laissez faire, have found themselves to enact laws totally inconsistent with this doctrine. Such, laws ought to be sufficient evidence that the days of laissez faire are gone forever; and that this theory, universally proclaimed a century ago as the only sound theory of government, has to-day given way before the recognition that no wealth can compensate a man for the misery of his neighbors; and that even if, abandoning all ideals and all ethics, we confine ourselves to the problem how to make men materially happy, we can only do so by adjusting our institutions so that no man will be allowed to become or to remain a pauper or criminal.
I am not discussing here matters of theory, but matters of fact.