Civilisation: Its Cause and Cure; and Other Essays

by Edward Carpenter

The question arises, What do we need? We are to-day, in this matter, in a somewhat parlous state. The old codes of Morality are moribund; the Ten Commandments command only a very qualified assent; the Christian religion as a real inspiration of practical life and conduct is dead; the social conventions and Mrs. Grundy remain, feebly galling and officious. What are we to do? Are we to bolster up the old codes, in which we have largely ceased to believe, merely in order to have a code?—or are we to let them go?

Of course, if we have decided what the final purpose or life of Man is, then we may say that what is good for that purpose is finally "good," and what is bad for that purpose is finally "evil." The Eastern philosophy, as I have said, deciding that the final purpose of Man is identification with Brahm, declares all actions to be evil (even the most saintly) which are done by the self as separate from Brahm; and all actions as good which are done in the condition of vidya or conscious union. But here, though a final good and evil are allowed and acknowledged, as existing respectively in the conditions of vidya or avidya, those conditions altogether escape any external rule or classification.

Mr. Gilbert Chesterton, taking up this subject not long ago in a criticism[46] of Mr. Orage's little book on Nietzsche, said that all this talk about "beyond good and evil" was nonsense; that we must have some code; and that in effect, any code, even a bad one, was better than none. And one sees what he means. It is perfectly true, in a sense, that the harness, the shafts, and the blinkers keep a large part of the world on the beaten road and out of the ditch, and that folk are always to be found who, rather than use their higher faculties, will rely on these external guides; but to encourage this kind of salvation by blinkers seems the very reverse of what ought to be done; and one might even ask whether salvation by such means is salvation at all—whether the ditch were not better!

Besides, what can we do? It is not so much that we are deliberately abandoning the codes as that they are abandoning us. With the gradual infiltration of new ideas, of Eastern thought, of Darwinian philosophy, of customs and creeds of races other than our own, with Bernard Shaw lecturing on the futility of the Ten Commandments, and so forth, it is not difficult to see that in a short while it will be impossible to rehabilitate any of the ancient codes or to give them a sanction and a sense of awe in the public mind. If with Gilbert Chesterton we should succeed in bolstering up such a thing for a time—well, it will only be for a time.

And the question is, whether the time has not really come for us to stand up—like sensible men and women—and do without rules; whether we cannot trust ourselves at last to throw aside the blinkers. The question is whether we cannot realise that solid and central life which underlies and yet surpasses all rules. For truly, if we cannot do this, our state is pitiable—having ceased to believe in the letter of Morality, and yet unable to find its spirit!

It is here, then, that the New Morality comes in, as more or less clearly understood and expressed by the progressive sections to-day. Modern Socialism, in effect, taking up a position in its way somewhat similar to that of Eastern philosophy, says: Morality in its essence is not a code, but simply the realisation of the Common Life;[47] and that is a thing which is not foreign and alien to humanity, but very germane and natural to it—a thing so natural that without doubt it would be more in evidence than it is, did not the institutions and teachings of Western civilisation tend all along to deny and disguise it. To liberate this instinct of the Common Life, freeing it from hard and cramping rules, and to let it take its own form or forms—grafted on and varied of course by the personal and selective element of Affection and Sympathy—is the hope that lies before the world to-day for the solution of all sorts of moral and social problems.

And the more this position is thought over, the more, I believe, will it commend itself. The sense of organic unity, of the common welfare, the instinct of Humanity, or of general helpfulness, are things which run in all directions through the very fibre of our individual and social life—just as they do through that of the gregarious animals. In a thousand ways: through heredity and the fact that common ancestral blood flows in our veins—though we be only strangers that pass in the street; through psychology, and the similarity of structure and concatenation in our minds; through social linkage, and the necessity of each and all to the others' economic welfare; through personal affection and the ties of the heart; and through the mystic and religious sense which, diving deep below personalities, perceives the vast flood of universal being—in these and many other ways does this Common Life compel us to recognise itself as a fact—perhaps the most fundamental fact of existence.

To teach this simple foundational fact and what flows from it to every child—not only as a theory, but as a practical habit and inspiration of conduct—is not really difficult, but easy. Children, having this sense woven into their very being, grow up in the spirit and practical habitude of it, and from the beginning possess the inspiration of what we call Morality—far more effectually indeed than copy-book maxims can provide. Respect for truth, consideration towards parents and elders, respect for the reasonable properties, dignities, conveniences of others, as well as for one's own needs and dignities, become perfectly natural and habitual. And that this is no mere hypothesis the example of Japan has lately shown where every young thing is brought up so far drenched in the sentiment of community that to give one's life for one's country is looked upon as a privilege.[48] The general lines, I say, of morality would be secure, and much more secure than they now are, if we could only bring the children up in an educational and practical atmosphere of that solidarity which as a matter of fact is demanded to-day by socialism and the economic movement generally.

And on this ground-work, as I have hinted, Personal Affection and Sympathy would build a superstructure of their own; they would outline a society as much more beautiful, powerful and closely knit than the present one founded on the Cash-nexus, as, say, the Athenian society of the time of Pericles was superior to that of the Lapithæ who first bitted and bridled the horse.

While the general Life, equal, pervasive, and in a sense undifferentiated, is a great fact which has to be acknowledged; so this personal Love and Affection, choosing, selecting, and giving outline and form to that life, is equally a fact, equally undeniable, equally sacred—and one which has to be taken in conjunction with the other.