Whether the joy with which I for the first time pressed to my heart the woman of my love was greater than that with which I welcomed the friend of my soul, the idol of my intellect, to the earthly paradise to which he had shown us the way--this I cannot venture to decide.
When, in the eyes of my revered friend, as he looked upon our new home and the strongly pulsing joyous life that already filled it, I saw tears of joy, and in those tears a sure guarantee of immediate success, I was not seized with such an extravagant delight--almost more than the breast which felt it for the first time could bear--as I felt a few days before when my beloved revealed to me the secret of her heart. But when my hair shall have grown white and my back shall be bent with years, and the recollection of those lover's kisses may no longer drive my blood so feverishly through my veins as to-day, yet the thought of the hour in which, hand in hand with my friend, I experienced the proud pure joy of having accomplished the first and most difficult step towards the redemption of our suffering disinherited brethren out of the tortures of many thousands of years of bondage--the thought of that hour will never lose its bliss-inspiring power as long as I am among the living.
Long, long stood the master on the heights above Eden Vale, eagerly taking in every detail of the charming picture. Then, turning to us standing around him he asked if we had given a name to the country that stretched out before us on all sides, and which was to be our home. When I said that we had not, and added that to him, who had given words to the idea that had led us hither, also belonged the office of finding a word for the country in which that idea was to be realised, he cried out: 'Freedom will find its birthplace in this country; Freeland we will name it.'
BOOK II
CHAPTER VIII
We now resume the thread of our narrative where Ney's journal left off.
With the President there had arrived in Eden Vale three members of the executive committee; five others followed a few days after with the first waggon-caravan from Mombasa; so that, including Ney, Johnston, and Demestre (the last of whom had been co-opted at the suggestion of the two former), twelve were now in Freeland. As hie committee at that time consisted of fifteen members, there still remained three at a distance, of whom one was in London, another at Trieste, and the third at Mombasa, at which places they were for the present to act as the committee's authorised agents in the foreign affairs of the Society. Their duty was to receive fresh members, to collect and provisionally to have charge of the funds, and to superintend the emigrations to Eden Vale.
Their instructions respecting applications for membership were to receive every applicant who was not a relapsed criminal, and who could read and write. The former condition needs no justification. We had an unqualified confidence in the ennobling influence of our social reforms, because those reforms removed the motive that impelled to most vices; we were perfectly satisfied that Freeland would produce no criminals, and would even, if it were not beyond the bounds of possibility, wean from vice those who had been previously made criminals by misery and ignorance; but we wished, in the beginning, to avoid being swamped by bad elements, and, in view of the excusable attempts of certain States to rid themselves in some way or another of their relapsed criminals, we were compelled to exercise caution.
It may seem a greater hardship that the perfectly illiterate were excluded. But this was a necessary requirement of our programme. We wished to transfer the right of the absolute free self-control of the individual to the domain of labour from that of the relation of servitude which had existed for thousands of years. We wished to transform the worker who had been dependent upon his employer for his bread into the independent producer acting at his own risk in free association with free colleagues. It follows, as a matter of course, that in this our work we could use only such workers as were raised above at least the lowest stage of brutality and ignorance. That we thus excluded the most miserable of the miserable, is true; but, apart from the fact that generally the ignorant man lacks a clear consciousness of his misfortune and degradation, and his sufferings are therefore, as a rule, rather of a physical than of a moral nature, we could not allow ourselves to be so led astray by pity as to endanger the success of our work. The ignorant man must be under authority; and as it was not our purpose to educate our members gradually to become free producers, but to introduce them immediately to a system of free production, we were compelled to protect ourselves against ignorance as well as against crime.
Should it, on the other hand, be contended that ability to read and write is of itself by no means a sufficient evidence of the possession of that degree of culture and intelligence which must be presupposed in men who are to exercise control over their own work, the answer is that for such a purpose a very high degree of intelligence is certainly requisite, yet not in all, but only in a relatively not large number of the workers, who thus organise themselves, whilst the majority need not possess more than that moderate amount of mental capacity and mental training which is enough to enable them to look after their own interests. When a hundred or a thousand workers unite to work for their common profit and at their common risk, it is not every one of them that can or need have the abilities requisite to organise and superintend this common production--it is merely necessary that a very few possess this higher degree of intelligence; whilst it is enough for the majority that they are able rightly to judge what ought to be and is the result of the production in common, and what characteristics those must possess in whose hands the guardianship of the common interest is placed. But just here is the knowledge of letters absolutely indispensable, for it is the printed word alone which makes man and his judgment independent of the accidental influences of immediate surroundings and first opens his mind to instruction. It will later on be seen in how large a measure the most comprehensive publicity of all the proceedings connected with this productive activity--a publicity possible only through writing and print--contributed to the success of our work.