A Vision of the Future, Based on the Application of Ethical Principles

by Jane Hume Clapperton

Now the scheme of social reform I advocate points the way to a unification of thought that working itself out through the diverse channels of visible life will eject the causes of evil, bring order where chaos has reigned, and slowly but surely establish the foundations of universal peace. As Richard Harte has well said: “Human beings at present are like a number of little magnets thrown promiscuously into a heap, with their poles pointing in every direction, and wasting their strength in opposing each other. These little magnets have to point in the same direction that they may become bound together into one great magnet, all powerful to attract good, all powerful to repel evil.”

The new system of action bases its thought on the complexity of human nature. It recognizes that the component cells of the physical body are lives which must suffer if the laws of their well-being are not subserved, and the suffering translates itself into pain or into sub-conscious distressful melancholy. It perceives that the social instincts of man hitherto thrust back and crushed are: “the various needs of universal attraction all tending towards unity, striving to meet and mingle in final harmony” (Zola). And further it apprehends that a lofty aspiration—a divine impulse—hovers on the threshold of consciousness waiting to enter as brutal passions and vicious propensities are conquered and dispossessed.

The evils that infest and corrupt our social life and that man must deliberately uproot and eliminate before general happiness becomes possible are—poverty, i.e. a life-long struggle to obtain food, shelter, clothing; the birth of individuals weak and unfit; disease, premature death; enforced celibacy; late marriage; drunkenness; disorganization of family life; prostitution; war; and industrial competition; social injustice and inequality; individual tyranny; crime; barbarous treatment of criminals; disrespect of natural function and consequent injury to health; conventional folly; social repression of innocent enjoyment; religious bigotry; the feebleness of religious guidance and confusion of religious thought.

Partial views of society as well as of individual human nature have hitherto prevailed and given birth to specifics of all kinds for the cure of the diseases of society, and these in the growing tenderness of humanity, have been eagerly adopted and applied, to prove disappointing in the main. The new system deals with society as a whole and throughout all its parts. It requires a full comprehension of each and all the groups or classes of social phenomena and their inter-relations.

Viewing society as a whole, we realize that there are no remedial specifics in the case, that general happiness will be obtained only by a process of evolution, and that the process is one of continual readjustment of multitudinous relations, or unceasing adaptation of individual human life to a social environment, and of social environment to individual human life. The evolution of social environment proceeds towards the highest ethical state which implies a system of society based upon justice and equality. But the realization of this state requires a perfected humanity, hence the path of progress is also in the gradual improvement of individuals—the creation of a superior race whose spontaneous impulses will construct and support a perfected social system.

Unconscious evolution has carried us forward from savagery through many transitions to a state of civilization which, though grossly imperfect, contains within it a new element of advance. Here and there throughout society the power of love and reason combined has become strong, and aided by a scientific knowledge of man and the conditions of his life, it is capable of design, and of intensifying the action of evolutionary forces and immensely increasing their momentum. Reason, however, must invent an effective policy of meliorism which so unites the practical methods of reform as that each will add strength to all, and the result prove a powerful factor of change in the society on which it is brought to bear.

The strife of competition throughout the whole sphere of industrial life gives free play to selfishness and the passion of militancy, and permeates society with the warlike spirit.

Advance in morals is the sure step to a better and happier future; but man’s moral nature is largely conditioned by heredity, training and environment, while these, at present, are all unfavourable to a high moral state. A progressive system of general reform therefore has to embrace and combine rational breeding, rational training and a rational order of life in which sympathy and co-operation will take the place of individual competition, and general happiness—not wealth—be the clear aim of man.

The conscious element in evolution is as yet too weak to alter society much or rapidly, but in all civilized countries—Germany, France, Belgium, etc., as well as Great Britain,—changes towards the collective control of land and capital and the reorganization of industry on collectivist principles, have begun, and it is of supreme importance that other changes, equally necessary, should be initiated to advance pari-passu with those.

A central source of corruption is to be found in the disintegration of the ancient family group—the unfitness of an archaic domestic system to achieve the ends of rational training and the acquiring of habits of rational breeding. At the same time there is a growth in social feeling and a spread of public opinion in favour of industrial socialism with some legislative and local action to carry it out, that together, present conditions propitious to change in domestic living and sexual custom. Consequently a reconstruction of domestic life on modern principles among educated people fitted to adapt life to moral ends is pre-eminently a feature of the new order.