I received recently a copy of The Whim containing some strictures upon the use of the word “regeneration,” in one of my articles, as applied to the invigorating and developing effects of militancy in the history of human societies. I am inclined to agree with you that the word was ill-chosen; but it seems to me that your general attitude upon the matter is not in accordance with evolutional truth. Allow me to quote from Spencer:—
“The successive improvements of the organs of sense and motion, and of the internal coördinating apparatus, which uses them, have indirectly resulted from the antagonisms and competitions of organisms with one another. A parallel truth is disclosed on watching how there evolves the regulating system of a political aggregate, and how there are developed those appliances for offence and defence put in action by it. Everywhere the wars between societies originate governmental structures, and are causes of all such improvements in these structures as increase the efficiency of corporate action against environing societies.”
The history of social evolution, I think, amply proves that the higher conditions of civilization have been reached, and could have been reached, only through the discipline of militancy. Until human nature becomes much more developed than it is now, and the sympathies incomparably more evolved, wars will probably continue; and however much we may detest and condemn war as moral crime, it will be scarcely reasonable to declare that its results are purely evil,—certainly not more reasonable than to assert that to knock down a robber is equally injurious to the moral feelings of the robber and to the personal interest of the striker. As for “regeneration”—the Reformation, the development of European Protestantism and of intellectual liberty, the French Revolution, the Independence of the United States (to mention only a few instances of progress), were rendered possible only by war. As for Japan—immediately after her social organization had been dislocated by outside pressure,—and at a time when serious disintegrations seemed likely,—the results of the war with China were certainly invigorating. National self-confidence was strengthened, national discords extinguished, social disintegrations checked, the sentiment of patriotism immensely developed. To understand these things, of course, it is necessary to understand the Japanese social organization. What holds true of one form of society, as regards the evil of war, does not necessarily hold true of another.
Yours faithfully,
Lafcadio Hearn.
I have reopened the envelope to acknowledge your interesting sketch of Edward Carpenter.... What an attractive personality.
But I fear that I must shock you by my declaration of non-sympathy with much of the work of contemporary would-be reformers. They are toiling for socialism; and socialism will come. It will come very quietly and gently, and tighten about nations as lightly as a spider’s web; and then there will be revolutions! Not sympathy and fraternity and justice—but a Terror in which no man will dare to lift his voice.
No higher condition of human freedom ever existed than what America enjoyed between—let us say, 1870 and 1885. To effect higher conditions, a higher development of human nature would have been necessary. Where have American liberties now gone? A free press has ceased to exist. Within another generation publishers’ syndicates will decide what the public shall be allowed to read. A man can still print his thoughts in a book, though not in any periodical of influence; within another twenty years he will write only what he is told to write. It is a pleasure to read the brave good things sometimes uttered in prints like the Conservator or The Whim; but those papers are but the candlesticks in which free thought now makes its last flickering. In the so-called land of freedom men and women are burnt at the stake in the presence of Christian churches—for the crime of belonging to another race. The stake reëstablished for the vengeance of race-hatred to-day, may to-morrow be maintained for the vengeance of religious hate—mocking itself, of course, under some guise of moral zeal. Competition will soon be a thing of the past; and the future will be to your stock-companies, trusts, and syndicates. The rule of the many will be about as merciful as a calculating-machine, and as moral as a lawn-mower. What socialism means really no one seems to know or care. It will mean the most insufferable oppression that ever weighed upon mankind.
Here are gloomy thoughts for you! You see that I cannot sympathize with the Whitmanesque ideal of democracy. That ideal was the heart-felt expression of a free state that has gone by. It was in itself a generous dream. But social tendencies, inevitable and irresistible, are now impelling the dreamers to self-destruction. The pleasure that in other times one could find in the literature of humanity, of brotherhood, of pity, is numbed to-day by perception of the irresistible drift of things.