Is civilization a disease?

by Stanton Coit

But there are three other distinguishing characteristics of the twentieth century which make for the replacing of civilization by humanization, and for the transition of trade from the harshness of the law into the abounding grace of the gospel.

XXII. THE POWER TO TRANSMIT HUMAN LIFE, ITS SOCIAL CONTROL

First, the limiting of population by the will of human individuals. In the beginning men stole fire from the gods; but life they allowed the Almighty to continue to dispense at his own inscrutable pleasure, while they remained his pleased but puzzled agents in its transmission. It was only in the eighties of the last century, after a hundred thousand years, that man hit upon the idea and the practice of controlling life as he had controlled fire. From the beginning, he had planted the fire-seed according to his own purpose and social need. And now at last he has come to look upon the life-seed as not simply in his keeping as a trust for another, but as his own property to control in the interest of his own future. Can human audacity reach higher? Can the assumption of divine and creative responsibility by man out-strip this latest act of self-government? From beast to citizen, did we say? But have we not found the process during the last four hundred years to be from citizenship to godship, from creature to creator? It was one of your American reformers who entitled a book Man as Social Creator. From beast to citizen seemed dull enough; but from citizen to God—what intoxication of zest does this thought engender! Can the creature dare it? Is this the great venture? Is this the meaning of the travail of the ages? Or is it only a process from citizen to man, from tamed beast to free spirit feeling the Soul of All at the inmost centre of himself, and finding the means at last of incarnating that soul in the community, in politics, trade, and domestic life? Howsoever the new facts and the newer outlook are to be interpreted, it becomes quite clear that if civilization was the taming of beasts, something that is not civilization has begun to assert itself. The liberating of citizens, as it moves to triumphant attainment, must scrap many an institution, many a habit, and set up the reverse of many a rule of conduct. We have indeed reached a new era, one which is not that of taming animals, when young women can—and know that they can—as war-brides strike against the labor of maternity and against the foreseen horror of a fate for one's offspring such as they would never choose for the fruit of their love.

But, secondly, close upon the invention of means for controlling the transmission of life has followed the idea that this control shall not rest with the individuals most intimately concerned, but with the will of the community—of the nation—of federated humanity. If a man has no exclusive right to do as he pleases with his power of labor, to withhold it or direct it irrespective of the general welfare and the will of the commonweal, how much less, say the advocates of eugenic marriage, shall men and women be permitted to follow their own whim and their selfish pleasure as regards the use or waste of the power to communicate life? This new doctrine that men are only trustees for the nation and posterity in their central power to control the future quantity and quality of human beings whom they may bring into existence, recognizes no division of society into the tamed and the tamers. There is no class suggested of monopolists of social power who will regulate the rest of the community, as the owner of cattle controls the breeding of them. The general will of the community, administered under diffused public opinion and through the educated judgment of the individual himself, will decide. Only in cases of what are agreed to be downright crimes will the law step in to condemn and prevent, and then only through agents who are directly accountable to an enlightened and alert public opinion. The retaining of this new mastery of man over the quantity and quality of human life, by the communal conscience against all monopolists, is the transcendent feature of the new order. But if this be so, then trade, our system of producing and distributing wealth, ceases to be merely a question of the control of labor and becomes a question of the control of the transmission of human life. Such control might have been accounted a possible privilege among Virginian breeders of slaves. But so to regard it seems monstrous, now that chattel slavery has been universally condemned, thanks to the triumphant levellers of the last hundred years. What is more, all trade is beginning to be regarded as a question ultimately, not of the manufacture of machines and their products, nor of the propagation of plants and animals, but of the begetting of spiritual agents, who in their turn are to become the makers and masters of the universe in which they are to live.

The third characteristic event of our century which is to help us to slough off civilization, as our ancestors ten thousand years ago rid themselves of the wild-beast features of barbarism and savagery, is the awakening of women. Their claim to social initiative and responsibility is the extremest possible reach of democratic self-assertion. The remarkable peculiarity of their entrance into trade is not, however, that they are women, but that they are the one half of mankind who have never worked for hire, but always from love, and who have desired the wage less than the approval of those they served. The morals of trade, as it has existed under the relation of master to wage-earner, even the ethics of trades-unionism, cannot survive the censure of women, who on other principles demand for themselves the right of maintenance by the state to protect them in the bearing and rearing of children and the making of homes, and the nursing of the wounded and the sick. Now that women no longer allow themselves as social agents to be ignored, they will insist that not only the morals of marriage and of democratic relations must become humane, but that all trade, as well as all legislation, must be guided by the eugenic motive.

XXIII. FOREIGN TRADE THE BEGETTER OF WARS

I have presumed to say that modern trade discloses civilization in its acutest form. The strict sobriety of this assertion we cannot, perhaps, appreciate to the full, unless we note the relation of trade during the last three hundred years to aggressive warfare. There prevails in the public mind the false notion that somehow peace and trade are akin in spirit and identical in their interests. This notion has been assiduously foisted upon the public by kings of industry and some professors of sociology, who possibly believe that it is true. But the facts of history prove that every great war during the last three centuries has been undertaken in the service of foreign traders, who call upon their government to back their claims. According to Sir John Seeley, the greatest political historian of the British Empire, foreign trade and modern war have always been one and the same thing. Some small nation-state resented the advent and methods of the foreign traders, and began to prepare for self-defence, asserting that it wished to be left alone, and that it meant to defend its own sacred traditions. This the government that backed the traders would not permit, and a clash of arms ensued. Or two rival sets of foreigners were jealous of each other in their effort to possess one and the same market and induced their respective governments to spring at each other's throats. Under such circumstances war does not always arise, because the mere show of vastly superior might is often sufficient to compel immediate submission. Such was the case when the United States in 1853 exhibited in the harbors of bewildered and terrified Japan a fleet of great steamships. The threatened nation, having admitted no foreigners since the Jesuits in the seventeenth century plotted against its political independence, and not knowing how to use steam to propel engines, saw that there was no alternative to violent conquest by their uninvited guests but peaceful submission on their own part.

Such peace, however, is not the holy thing which some persons declare all peace to be. When a man holds up his hands in answer to the challenge of a highway robber, bloodshed is avoided; but the outrage is none the less detestable because perfect quiet prevails. Nor is it the kind of social calm which the angels meant when they proclaimed peace on earth to men of good will. On the contrary, it is that stillness of unchallenged iniquity of which our Lord expressed his menacing hate when He declared that He came not to bring peace but a sword. Trade illustrates civilization in its highest degree of intelligence and elaboration; and foreign trade is only trade in its widest transactions. But foreign trade being the cause of all war, the only way to end warfare is to displace civilization by a system of wealth produced and distributed under communal control. Then commerce will no longer be inspired by the financial interest of private investors, but by the total welfare of the whole people of the nation. But I have touched upon the identity of war and trade only to show their vital connection with civilization as a whole.

XXIV. THE OPPOSITE OF A "RETURN TO NATURE"

Civilization is still advancing by leaps and bounds. Nevertheless, at the same time, with a greater acceleration of development, the men are checkmating the master and transferring control and initiative to the will of the commonwealth. At least, not otherwise am I able to interpret the new deference for nationality which has been aroused in protest against aggressive militarism; nor the kind of industrial legislation that has been enacted during the last decade in California and other western states, in New Zealand and Australia, and even in Italy and England. It all means that the new inventions, although at first seized upon by monopolists, are seen to be such as to provide channels through which the pent-up instincts and hopes of the masses can act with concerted power. It means that also political machinery is being devised for securing the public welfare and protecting opportunities for individual genius and talent. No man asks for more. The world over we have reached the threshold of collective democracy, wherein the consuming of material wealth will be shared with approximate equality and wherein social control will be retained by the collective will, to safeguard individual initiative, and will be administered by public servants who have proved their superior ability, but who remain subject to almost instantaneous recall.