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

by Jane Hume Clapperton

And further, not only is our present domestic system wholly incapable of dealing with sex relations so as to adapt them to stirpiculture, not only is it so feeble as to be absolutely impotent in the regulation of the conduct of masculine youth outside its boundaries, but it is destitute also of elements required in the organizing of a progressive educational system.

Home education has almost disappeared in the disintegration of family life, while in society the strong forces of aggregation which under diverse conditions of industry and convention group mankind in sections have moulded schools to massive proportions. The youth of the nation is in a great measure cut off from the home influences which are calculated to teach mankind “humanities, not in the academic but in the real sense.” It is congregated in universities and large schools for superior culture and day schools for culture of a less exalted order. In the former, young men and maidens are separated. Domesticity—the quality in human nature on which depends the consolidation of society, is disregarded, whilst to the development of mutual interests, affinity of tastes, harmony of habits and unanimity of social aims between the sexes no attention is paid during the plastic period of life when individual character is in process of determination. In day schools boys and girls are often associated, but under such conditions of mechanical routine, cramming, conflicting and alternating authorities, irregular and erratic forces of moral control, as to make these schools provocative of evil, fostering every anti-social instinct of man.

Co-ordination in the life of the young is the demand of the new system of general reform. The nursery, school and playground must be harmonized, and the entire juvenile orbit, within and without the home, governed by intellectual and moral forces of fixed congruity. The object and aim of true education is the fullest development of an individual’s best powers of thought, feeling, action, by means of their happy exercise at every stage of growth from childhood to maturity. Now book-learning or culture in schools accomplishes very little, but a direct study of nature is an incomparable aid to this end. Each object and process in nature from that of the infinitely great to the infinitely small—if fittingly dealt with by teachers—is instinct with charm for the young of an intelligent race. It excites imagination, awakens thought, kindles enthusiasm, stimulates every latent mental faculty, while the endless variation of beauty in nature—under training to close observation—makes aesthetic appeal to the sense perceptions, and in calling forth wonder, admiration, delight adds richness immeasurably to the quality of human life. Nevertheless the springs and checks of a true education lie deep in a world of feeling. For their exercise home-life is indispensable. Family love is the primary motor force in the education of the feelings, and without the presence of a wide domestic circle habitually fostering the sympathetic and repressing the selfish emotions no high water-mark of civilization will be reached.

There is in man a group of emotions of comparatively recent origin requiring scientific treatment of the utmost delicacy and precision. On the further development of that group depends in a very special manner the rapid evolution of an ethical social system. The group is threefold—egoistic, altruistic, moral. It comprises a sense of personal rights, a sympathetic jealousy for the rights of others, an intellectual and moral sentiment of justice, or equivalence of liberty and social comfort for all mankind. The first element is already very perceptible throughout society. The second is more rare; it must be strengthened or assiduously created in the nursery, schoolroom and domestic circle by a system of training whose characteristic is extreme gentleness. The tender shoots of sympathetic jealousy are incapable of growth in an environment of harsh sound or brutal force. Hence the authority that begets antagonism has no place in the perfected education of the future.

As the young emerge from childhood the responsibilities of life become aids in education, and immensely develop the above emotions. Discipline of conduct within their own order appertains to the young; whilst society, within and without the domestic circle, demands the thorough regulation of young life. Conduct clubs and combinations for a variety of social ends, both sexes taking part, arise among the young; and these promote in the highest degree the healthy growth of such virtuous emotion and habits in the individual as are indispensable to ethical socialism. The method adopted is a just and intelligent criticism to which the youthful mind has previously been trained.

Since pride of birth, pride of wealth and habits of domination and luxury are all unfavourable to the growth of a moral sentiment of social justice, it is not in the upper ranks of society we need look for the public spirit that will devise methods of gradually equalizing the labour of life and its rewards and undermining present class distinctions. As little likely is the sentiment of social justice to spring spontaneously in a fortunate capitalist class where pride of acquisition strongly opposes the principle that reward should not be proportioned to personal capacity—that mental labour has no title to inordinate distinction, but that other useful exertion ethically requires fullness of reward. Reconstruction is necessarily a growth from below. From the proletariat comes the impulse towards industrial reconstruction, and it is in the middle class—and the less wealthy section of that class—that the beings exist who by segregation may form collectivist homes capable of by-and-bye aggregating into the solid foundation of a pure and elevated republican society.

Education in these homes where mixture of ages, from the white-haired centenarian to the infant in arms, creates all manner of tender ties, where gentleness and love are the main stimuli in training, where authority is exercised consistently and reasonably, and replaced at maturity by reason and self-control—must eventuate in the production of a superior moral and intellectual type.

The order of social evolution, computed roughly, is as follows: In the first stage, social equality exists; it is an epoch of savagery. In the second stage, differentiation issuing in class distinctions takes place; the birth of social inequality and injustice arising naturally through exercise of superior brute force and cunning. Civilization has here its genesis; and coercion, tyranny, robbery, injustice, avarice, love of power, inequality, are stimuli of civilization and prime elements in the formation of strong nations. Individuals who are inferior, then whole classes socially weak, are compelled by forces, individual and social, to minister to the wants of the strong and superior. Civilization nurtured by inequality and injustice develops in the superior classes of society and slowly spreads downwards. In the third stage, reaction occurs, prompted by civilization itself! Justice and liberty develop in the lower or inferior social classes and spread very slowly upwards without destroying a civilization, become inherent in the superior type of man. The fourth stage is one of readjustment in which civilization becomes general and there is a gradual return to social equality. Ultimately society will have no class distinctions of the present order, no idlers or parasites, no poor and no coercive government. Voluntary co-operation or concerted action for social ends is a self-regulating, self-controlling force which, when fully developed in the new domestic and industrial systems is able to dominate society throughout its length and breadth.

The path of social reform I advocate has now, in its main features, been placed before my readers.

Outside the general policy that will cause the direct action of the system to become a great factor of social change, however, there are sundry courses of less direct action, it is bound to pursue. These bear relation to, first, pauperism and patronage of the poor; second, the proletariat; third, the criminal classes; fourth, the position of woman; fifth, the young; sixth, conventionalism; seventh, political action.