[104] "The ordinary brute, who flourishes in the very centre of ornate life, tells us of unknown depths on the verge of which we totter, being bound to thank our stars every day we live that there is not a general outbreak and a revolt from the yoke of civilization."—Times leader, Dec. 25th, 1862. Admitting that our stars are to be thanked for our safety, whom are we to thank for the danger?
[105] Our politicians, even the best of them, regard only the distress caused by the failure of mechanical labour. The degradation caused by its excess is a far more serious subject of thought, and of future fear. I shall examine this part of our subject at length hereafter. There can hardly be any doubt, at present, cast on the truth of the above passages, as all the great thinkers are unanimous on the matter. Plato's words are terrific in their scorn and pity whenever he touches on the mechanical arts. He calls the men employed in them not even human,—but partially and diminutively human, "ανθρωπίσκοι," and opposes such work to noble occupations, not merely as prison is opposed to freedom, but as a convict's dishonoured prison is to the temple (escape from them being like that of a criminal to the sanctuary), and the destruction caused by them being of soul no less than body.—Rep., vi. 9. Compare "Laws," v. 11. Xenophon dwells on the evil of occupations at the furnace (root of βάναυσος), and especially their "ἀσχολία, want of leisure"—Econ. i. 4. (Modern England, with all its pride of education, has lost that first sense of the word "school," and till it recover that it will find no other rightly.) His word for the harm to the soul is to "break" it, as we say of the heart.—Econ. i. 6. And herein also is the root of the scorn, otherwise apparently most strange and cruel, with which Homer, Dante, and Shakespeare always speak of the populace; for it is entirely true that in great states the lower orders are low by nature as well as by task, being precisely that part of the commonwealth which has been thrust down for its coarseness or unworthiness (by coarseness I mean especially insensibility and irreverence; the "profane" of Horace); and when this ceases to be so, and the corruption and the profanity are in the higher instead of the lower orders, there arises, first, helpless confusion; then, if the lower classes deserve power, ensues swift revolution, and they get it: but if neither the populace nor their rulers deserve it, there follows mere darkness and dissolution, till, out of the putrid elements, some new capacity of order rises, like grass on a grave; if not, there is no more hope, nor shadow of turning, for that nation. Atropos has her way with it.
So that the law of national health is like that of a great lake or sea, in perfect but slow circulation, letting the dregs fall continually to the lowest place, and the clear water rise; yet so as that there shall be no neglect of the lower orders, but perfect supervision and sympathy, so that if one member suffer, all members shall suffer with it.
[106] "ὀλίγης, καὶ ἄλλως γιγνομένης." The bitter sentence never was so true as at this day.
[107] Thetic, or Thesmic, would perhaps be a better term than Archic; but liable to be confused with some which we shall want relating to Theoria. The administrators of the three great divisions of law are severally Archons, Merists, and Dicasts. The Archons are the true princes, or beginners of things; or leaders (as of an orchestra); the Merists are properly the Domini, or Lords (law-words) of houses and nations; the Dicasts properly the judges, and that with Olympian justice, which reaches to heaven and hell. The violation of archic law is ἁμαρτία (error) πονηρία (failure), πλημμέλεια (discord). The violation of meristic law is ἀνομία (iniquity). The violation of critic law is ἀδικία (injury). Iniquity is central generic term; for all law is fatal; it is the division to men of their fate; as the fold of their pasture, it is νόμος; as the assigning of their portion, μοῖρα.
[108] These laws need revision quite as much respecting property in national as in private hands. For instance: the public are under a vague impression, that because they have paid for the contents of the British Museum, every one has an equal right to see and to handle them. But the public have similarly paid for the contents of Woolwich Arsenal; yet do not expect free access to it, or handling of its contents. The British Museum is neither a free circulating library, nor a free school; it is a place for the safe preservation, and exhibition on due occasion, of unique books, unique objects of natural history, and unique works of art; its books can no more be used by everybody than its coins can be handled, or its statues cast. Free libraries there ought to be in every quarter of London, with large and complete reading-rooms attached; so also free educational institutions should be open in every quarter of London, all day long and till late at night, well lighted, well catalogued, and rich in contents both of art and natural history. But neither the British Museum nor National Gallery are schools; they are treasuries; and both should be severely restricted in access and in use. Unless some order is taken, and that soon, in the MSS. department of the Museum (Sir Frederic Madden was complaining of this to me only the other day), the best MSS. in the collection will be destroyed, irretrievably, by the careless and continual handling to which they are now subjected.
[109] Two curious economical questions arise laterally with respect to this branch of law, namely, the cost of crime and the cost of judgment. The cost of crime is endured by nations ignorantly, not being clearly stated in their budgets; the cost of judgment patiently (provided only it can be had pure for the money), because the science, or perhaps we ought rather to say the art, of law, is felt to found a noble profession, and discipline; so that civilized nations are usually glad that a number of persons should be supported by funds devoted to disputation and analysis. But it has not yet been calculated what the practical value might have been, in other directions, of the intelligence now occupied in deciding, through courses of years, what might have been decided as justly, had the date of judgment been fixed, in as many hours. Imagine one half of the funds which any great nation devotes to dispute by law, applied to the determination of physical questions in medicine, agriculture, and theoretic science; and calculate the probable results within the next ten years.
I say nothing yet, of the more deadly, more lamentable loss, involved in the use of purchased instead of personal justice,—ἐπακτῷ παρ’ ἄλλων—ἀπορίᾳ’ οἰκείων.
[110] Compare Chaucer's "villany" (clownishness).
"Full foul and chorlishe seemed she,
And eke villanous for to be,
And little coulde of norture
To worship any creature."
[111] "Supply-and-demand,—alas! For what noble work was there ever any audible 'demand' in that poor sense?" ("Past and Present"). Nay, the demand is not loud even for ignoble work. See "Average earnings of Betty Taylor," in Times, of 4th February, of this year [1863]: "Worked from Monday morning at 8 a.m., to Friday night at 5.30 p.m., for 1s. 5½d."—Laissez faire.