The result is that all the scruples and internal restraints with which religion endowed the conscience of man in the past are growing rusty from disuse. Our civilisation, rich and splendid as it is, threatens to be spoiled by fraud, by evil habits, and by oppression. There is no doubt about it; not even in these days is the discipline of work sufficient in itself to keep the State in good order. Man is not a living machine, destined only to produce riches. When he leaves his office and comes back into the world, the modern man there finds a family, sons, parents, friends, persons of the other sex who may attract him, men richer and more powerful than himself, others weaker and poorer, political institutions and public problems; in short, opportunities of doing good or evil, temptations dangerous but agreeable, and duties painful but necessary. And our times not only give him practically no moral assistance to conquer these temptations and to perform these duties, but rather in many ways incite him to yield to the temptations, and to exercise his cunning in evading the duties. Fraud in particular is becoming simply second nature to our civilisation. What is the great industrial movement of modern times but a continual deception for cloaking the deterioration which it is bringing about in the quality of things as the price of increasing the quantity of them? Every day sees an increase in the number of cleverly faked objects, which are not what they seem; and science—especially chemistry—is the highly paid accomplice which furnishes industry with the means of imposing this colossal deception on an inexperienced and ingenuous public. In other words, commerce and industry, which play so large a part in modern life, are becoming more and more a colossal deception in which he succeeds best and makes most money who is cleverest at lying to the public and at foisting on them goods of inferior quality though superior in outward seeming. Now if we see in a social system, on the one hand, a weakening of all the internal restraints which keep a man from lying and cheating, and, on the other, a premium put on that same lying and cheating, must we not expect to find fraud permeating the whole system? And what will our customs be like, what will life be like, in the days when nobody any longer feels any remorse or scruple in cheating his neighbour, and when everybody becomes cheat and cheated turn and turn about, cheat in matters which he understands, cheated in those in which he has to rely on other people?
The growing depravity of customs, furthermore, threatens us with no less a danger. I do not wish to exaggerate the horrors of the modern Babylons, as Catholic priests and Protestant ministers are apt to do. Their grief at seeing the rising generation turn a deaf ear to their wise counsels makes them take too gloomy a view of the present state of affairs. Nevertheless, it is certain that the customs of modern civilisation are hurrying it towards a dangerous crisis. The internal restraints are being relaxed, and temptations and facilities are multiplying with the growth of riches and of cities, and with the increasing mobility of persons of both sexes, so many of whom it prompts to leave their native village or country. Especially in the big cities where everyone is unknown, can easily hide away, and is watched by nobody; where money has greater power over men’s minds because there is more of it and more of it is needed,—virtue runs serious and continual risks. Without being aware of it, we are undoing, little by little, Christianity’s great contribution to the chastening of our customs, by suppressing many of the limits which Christianity had established with such labour in the midst of the unbridled licence of the ancient world. We are travelling, therefore, step by step back towards paganism, with all its conveniences and all its perils. Already, in fact, we can see cropping up here and there in the richer and more highly civilised countries and classes that mortal sickness which killed the ancient civilisations: sterility. One of the reasons why all the most flourishing ancient civilisations have perished is that at the moment of their greatest glory the population suddenly began to dwindle; and this sterility which killed them was the effect to a large extent of the licence of their customs. Love remains fertile only so long as it restrains itself and limits itself. Christianity, by subjecting men’s customs to discipline—one of the noblest of its services to mankind—succeeded for centuries in maintaining in Europe and America an incessant fertility, which has proved to be one of the most potent causes of the increase of our power. But now we can see, with the return of the world to paganism, the beginning of a new era of sterility, especially in the big cities and in the most ancient and most wealthy states.
Lastly, I have referred to another danger which threatens this our social system, victim as it is of its limitless desires; I mean the increase in the opportunities for the strong to abuse their strength. This is certainly the least of the three evils; for thanks to the diffusion of culture and of liberty, the weak have learned and are able, to unite in their own defence. Some balance of justice is obtained and will continue to be obtained by opposing force to force. The balance, however, will be in external things rather than in men’s convictions. For in this unbridled and limitless chase after money and enjoyment, of which the world is the theatre, the spirit of charity is obscured; and men’s minds become accustomed to a hardness and brutality which may perhaps one day startle the world in a disagreeable and terrible way.
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It may seem to some of my readers that I take a delight in uttering gloomy prognostications of the future of modern civilisation. Such, however, is not my intention. Who would dare to deny that, notwithstanding its defects, the civilisation in which we have the good fortune to live is the most splendid and powerful on which the sun has ever shone? But its very grandeur, which is to so large an extent the fruit of our boldness in overthrowing most of the limits which preceding civilisations had placed to human energy, gives birth to a new and formidable problem which is already beginning to confront our speed-loving civilisation, and which is itself, too, a problem of limits, perhaps of the limit par excellence. And that problem may be expressed in one question: Quousque tandem? Up to what point, in our desire to conquer the world and its treasures, to multiply riches, and to increase our power over nature, must we and can we sacrifice beauty, and the forms, ceremonies, and refinements of life, moral and æsthetic? Up to what point must we and can we make legitimate use of the liberty which the modern world has given us; and at what point does abuse of it begin?
This is the vital problem which I have posed and tried to dissect in the dialogue which my travels in America inspired me to write: the problem treated in the speeches and discussions of the many characters, European and American, who figure in that dialogue. It may seem strange, at first sight, that a discussion of the Old World and the New, in which the contending parties propose to prove which is superior to the other, should end in this second problem, apparently so unlike the first; whether it is necessary or not to place a limit on the unbridled activity and immoderate desires of our times. Anyone who has read the present series of essays, however, will be less likely to find this conclusion singular and obscure. I have repeatedly said, and tried to prove, that there is too great a tendency on both sides of the Atlantic to find an antagonism between Europe and America. If certain tendencies are stronger in one of the two continents, and weaker in the other, these are differences of quantity, not of quality. America is becoming Europeanised, and Europe Americanised. However little reflection and cool reasoning the European may bring to his abuse of America on the score of its excessive zeal in the production of riches, or the American to his abuse of Europe on account of the scanty remains of the spirit of tradition and conservatism in the Old World, each will recognise that he is at the same time inveighing against his own continent. In fact, Europe applies herself with no less zeal than America to the production of greater wealth; and America is no less anxious than Europe to enjoy the advantages which may even now accrue to the world from the spirit of tradition.
Consequently the discussion of the question whether America is superior to Europe or Europe to America is a futile enterprise and labour lost; because the balance between the differences is rapidly adjusting itself. Nevertheless, if any difference exists to-day between the two continents, it is undoubtedly this: that all the phenomena of social life in America are simpler and clearer, and less overlaid and obscured by traditions, institutions, and century-old ideas and sentiments than in Europe. For this reason, the careful observer will find in America a much more profitable field for the study of the dangerous tendencies and exaggerations of modern civilisation which are common to Europe and America. Of these dangerous tendencies, the one which has struck me most in the course of my travels in America, and has given me most food for thought, is precisely this, which I have treated in this my latest work and which forms, as it were, the crown to the whole discussion of the dialogue. Modern civilisation has accomplished miracles and marvels without number, since she left behind her the limits, material and ideal, within which the timid generations of old confined themselves,—since she outstepped and upset these limits on her way to conquer the earth, riches, and liberty. Now, however, precisely because she has crossed all the limits and no longer has any before her, she finds herself impelled on every side, in politics, customs, morals, art, and philosophy, to excesses which may one day prove very dangerous. Men are beginning to have a vague presentiment of this danger. They do not clearly see, however, the quarter from which it threatens. They disquiet themselves without thoroughly diagnosing the evil. And this disquietude may perhaps explain the pessimism which afflicts a civilisation so flourishing and fortunate in many respects as that of our own times.
For this reason, I thought that the great problem of the limits might grow little by little, on board a transatlantic liner, out of a discussion about America. An Italian, who has made money in America, and who, like so many Europeans who have made their fortune thus, is an admirer of the New World, one evening launches out into a eulogy of young America at the expense of old Europe. He extols the civilisation of machinery, progress, and liberty, by contrast with what remains in Europe of the ancient civilisation whose efforts were directed to improving the quality of things rather than augmenting their quantity; which left the world poor while it created arts, religions, moralities, and rights. The discussion becomes heated, complicated, and diffuse until, under the guiding influence of an old savant who knows Europe and America too, it concentrates on this point: Granted that man was well-advised to exceed the ancient limits within which preceding civilisations had confined him, to hurl himself on the world and to conquer it; up to what point may man aspire to liberty in every department of life, without endangering in the long run the most precious fruits of his conquest?
The book does not pretend to solve this formidable problem. No philosopher, no writer, no book could solve it. It can only be solved by a radical revolution in the ideas, sentiments, and interests of the masses. But the book which I have written purports to throw light on some, at least, of the essential aspects of the problem. It endeavours to make it clear to the men of our time, by harping on a principle of great antiquity, great simplicity, and great modesty, which may be perhaps usefully recalled to the memory of present generations, in Europe as well as in America. That principle is, that man is a being of limits; and that he ought, therefore, to observe in his desires a certain mean. A civilisation must remember that it is the sum of the efforts of a great many individuals; that these individuals may be very numerous, but that each one is a small limited being; and that the sum of their efforts cannot be infinite. Consequently, a civilisation must not let its desires and wishes extend untrammelled in every direction. It must learn to confine itself within limits.