The day is coming, perhaps it may be near at hand, when we shall be able to discover and to apply the true tests of greatness. When, with their help, we are able to write history in a really scientific manner, we shall find that the Napoleons and the others, the records of whose doings now fill our libraries, were not great at all, but the reverse of it, and that the true heroes and benefactors of the nineteenth century were the poor weavers of Rochdale and Ghent, who started and carried forward the co-operative movement. All honour to them for what they have done!
And yet all that they have done is only the solid and hopeful beginning of the realisation of our dreams. For the ideal is superb and exacting. Men are slow to move towards it. They find it hard even to understand and appreciate its beauty and excellence. Let us fervently hope that after the way towards a good and beautiful life for humanity has been so clearly pointed out, an ever-increasing multitude may have the wisdom to walk in it.
We believe that the transition to a reasonable socialism will be marked by a long and testing process of social selection. From the beginning of the movement socialist theories have been subjected to the tests of discussion and of experience. Socialist parties have also undergone very severe trial in debate, organisation, and action. Trade unions and labour parties have been obliged to go through a very hard course of discipline and of suffering.
It should be particularly observed that these tests more and more belong to the domain of intelligence, of moral character, and of skilled organisation. Success in the struggle for existence depends on fitness or adaptation to surrounding conditions. In the lower stages of the struggle for existence, as we saw in Chap. XII., the conditions were of a lower order. In the ascending struggle for a higher existence the conditions are higher and offer a severer and more exacting test. Labour which aspires to a higher life must stand those higher tests. Socialist programmes and resolutions are therefore perfectly right in dwelling on the urgent need for agitation, education, and organisation as a means of training the working class for its great duties and its high career. And we may repeat that the most urgent need of all is the capacity, moral and intellectual, for association.
Thus the transition to socialism can be made only by increasing and widening adaptation to the higher conditions of intelligence, character, and organisation. Once made, the change to socialism will place men in a higher moral and economic environment. As we saw, two vital human interests will under socialism be no longer subject to the conditions of competition, the working day and the ‘daily bread.’ Every able man will be under obligation to perform reasonable service for a competent livelihood; but beyond this his time and faculties will be his own. In this better environment men will find the rights and the opportunities which will give them the basis and scope for a better life. There will be corresponding duties and obligations. And for those who, from vices and defects of temperament or of habit, are not disposed to fulfil such obligations suitable measures of social discipline will need to be devised. The weak and disabled will receive suitable guidance and support. But we may be assured that all normally constituted men will be ready to respond to all natural and reasonable calls.
Social service will be the main field for emulation, rivalry, and ambition, and here the struggle for a higher life may be carried on under the better conditions which will prevail. We may call it competition if we will, but it will be competition on terms that differ entirely from those which exist under the present system. It will be competition for social distinction and rewards. The reticence, secrecy, and hypocrisy, the jealousy and detraction, which are now so common will pass away. Men will be able to live sincerely and openly. Their record will be an open and public one, which their fellow-citizens will be able to read and estimate fairly. And we should avoid the grave mistake of confounding the human qualities that make for success in the present competition with the qualities that would meet with approval under the new system. The qualities that command success at present we all know. The qualities that would meet with favour under a reasonable socialism will be those which answer to the great ideals we have spoken of, and particularly those which fit men for the best social service.
The waste and demoralisation, the injustice and cruelty, which are so rife under the present system will pass away. But the new era will work for much more than the mere abolition of evil. It will make for the positive and integral development of the highest human life. Natural capacity in all the forms that are consistent with social good will have free scope for unfolding itself. We may believe that in the majority of lives the exercise of natural endowment will be in direct conformity with the requirements of social service. It will obviously be for the good of society that each will do the work for which he is best fitted. Spiritual teaching, scientific discovery, literature, art, and music will all be duly prized and rewarded as modes of social service. But if the aspirant wishes to do his share of social work in the form of some ordinary craft, in order to devote his ample leisure to a special pursuit entirely of his own choosing, he will be free to do so. In this matter freedom will be an interest of the first order.
The lesson taught by much recent experience and the goal of many convergent tendencies seem undoubtedly to be, that society should control industry in its own interest. An industry carried on by free associated men would be in perfect accord with other forms and methods of progress, ethical, political, and economic. The purified socialism may be regarded as the co-ordination and consummation of every other form of human progress, inasmuch as it applies to the use of man all the factors of scientific, mechanical, and artistic development in harmony with the prevailing political and ethical ideas.
It is therefore a most desirable form of organisation. And many large and growing symptoms show that it is practicable. It is a type of organisation which may take shape in a thousand diverse ways, according to the differences in historic conditions and in national temperament. Within its limits, as we have seen, there will be reasonable scope for individual development and for every variety of liking and capacity consistent with the well-being of others; but exceptional talent and the generous enthusiasm which is its fitting accompaniment will more and more find their proper field in the service of society, an ideal which is already largely realised in the democratic state.
In a rational socialism we may therefore see a long and widening avenue of progress, along which the improvement of mankind may be continued in a peaceful and gradual, yet most hopeful, sure, and effective way. Such a prospect offers the best remedy for the apathy and frivolity, cynicism and pessimism, which are now so prevalent; and it is the most effectual counteractive to restlessness, discontent, and all the evils and excesses of the revolutionary spirit. Under it the social forces will consciously and directly work for social ideals. The ideal will be made real, and might and right will be reconciled. The real forces which operate in modern history will be shaped by beneficent ideals, till, as Tennyson sings,