As one grows more democratic in feeling, as one's faith in the people receives shock after shock, yet on the whole brightens—so does one's mistrust of the so-called democratic programmes increase. One becomes at once more dissatisfied and less, more reckless and much more cautious. One sees so plainly that the three or four political parties by no means exhaust the political possibilities. The poor, though indeed they have the franchise, remain little more than pawns in the political game. They have to vote for somebody, and nobody is prepared to allow them much without a full return in money or domination. They pay in practice for what theoretically is only their due. Justice for them is mainly bills of costs. The political fight lies still between their masters and would-be masters; not so much now, perhaps, between different factions of property-owners as between the property-owners and the intellectuals. Out of the frying-pan into the fire seems the likely course; for the intellectuals, if they have the chance, enslave the whole man; they are logical and ruthless. The worst tyrannies have been priestly tyrannies, whether of Christians, Brahmins or negro witch-doctors; and those priests were the intellectuals of their time. I wonder when we shall have a party of intellectuals content to find out the people's ideals and to serve them faithfully, instead of trying to foist their own ideals upon the people.
Law-makers, however, will probably continue to work for the supposed benefit of the people rather than on the people's behalf; and equally, the supposed welfare of the people will continue to be the handiest political weapon; for the property-owning, articulate classes are better able to prevent themselves being played with. To those two facts one's political principles must be adjusted. The articulate classes, moreover, are actually so little acquainted with the inner life of the poor that there is no groundwork of general knowledge upon which to base conclusions, and it is impossible to do more than speak from one's own personal experience. I don't mind confessing that, though I should prefer justice all round, yet, if injustice is to be done—as done it must be no doubt—I had rather the poor were not the sufferers. There is no reason to believe that present conditions cannot be bettered—to believe, with Dr Pangloss, que tout est au mieux dans ce meilleur des mondes possibles. I have found that to grow acquainted with the class that is the chief object of social legislation is to see more plainly the room for improvement, and also to see how much better, how much sounder, that class is than it appeared to be from the outside: how much might be gained, of material advantage especially, and at the same time how much there is to be lost of those qualities of character which have been acquired through long training and by infinite sacrifice. To learn to care for the poor, for their own sake, is to fear for them nothing so much as slap-dash, short-sighted social legislation.
THE WILL TO LIVE
The man matters more than his circumstances. The poor man's Courage to Live is his most valuable distinctive quality. Most of his finest virtues spring therefrom. Any material progress which tends to diminish his Courage to Live, or to reduce it to mere Will to Live, must prove in the long run to his and to the nation's disadvantage. And the Courage to Live, like other virtues, diminishes with lack of exercise. Therefore every material advance should provide for the continued, for an even greater, exercise and need of the Courage to Live. If not, then the material advance is best done without.
That is the main constructive conclusion to be drawn. Somewhat akin to it is another conclusion of a more critical nature.
In Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil there is an apophthegm to the effect that, "Insanity in individuals is something rare—but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs it is the rule." And whilst, on the one hand mental specialists have been extending the boundaries of insanity to the point of justifying the popular adage that everyone is a bit mad, they have, on the other hand, tended to narrow down the difference between sanity and its reverse until it has become almost entirely a question of mental inhibition, or self-control.
The highest aim of Mental Hygiene should be to increase the power of mental inhibition amongst all men and women. Control is the basis of all law and the cement of every social system among men and women, without which it would go to pieces.... Sufficient power of self-control should be the essence and test of sanity.[20]
SOCIAL HYGIENE
It is too gratuitously assumed by law-makers (i.e. agitators for legislation as well as legislators) that the poor man is woefully deficient in inhibition and must be legislated for at every turn. Because, for instance, he furnishes the police courts with the majority of 'drunks and disorderlies,' he is treated as a born drunkard, to be sedulously protected against himself, regardless of such facts as (1) there is more of him to get drunk, (2) he prefers 'going on the bust' to the more insidious dram-drinking and drugging, (3) he has more cause to get drunk, (4) he gets drunk publicly, (5) tied-house beer and cheap liquors stimulate to disorderliness more than good liquor. The truth is that the poor have a great deal of self-restraint, quite as much probably as their law-makers; but it is exercised in different directions and, possibly, is somewhat frittered away in small occasions. The poor man has so much more bark than bite. He fails to restrain his cuss-words for example—but then cuss-words were invented to impress fools. There is much in his life that would madden his law-makers, and vice versa. If control is the cement of every social system and if it is the highest aim of mental hygiene, it follows that control should be the highest aim of legislation and custom, which together make up social hygiene. And—always remembering that control is of all virtues the one which strengthens with use and withers with disuse—every piece of new legislation should be most carefully examined as to its probable effect on the self-control of the people. Control, in short should be the paramount criterion of new legislation. A proximate advantage, unless it be a matter of life and death, is too dearly purchased by an ultimate diminution of self-control.
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